online income - earning money from a blog or facebook page

[mqq]

Hi everyone, i'm looking for some advice on earning hobby income via a blog or facebook page.

I have a facebook hobby page, it's got 2500 likes so far - yes, i realise this is not a huge number, but bear in mind I have only posted a handful of times and I have done no paid advertising at all. It's a niche topic which has potentially a huge following (I had a play with facebook ads and there are about 4 million people who could be interested, that's only in US, UK, Aus and NZ), so the page could grow considerably if I play it right.

My question is, is it really possible to make money off a fb page? How could it work? How do other people make money off facebook / blog pages? Bear in mind that this would be a page with limited capacity for me to sell anything (I could sell a few things with low profit amounts, so it's not ideal from that perspective). I know if I create a blog I could get payments from advertising, assuming I can direct people to the blog from facebook.

The topic is something I am interested in anyway, so I wouldn't necessarily be looking for a constant stream of income, rather, to make my hobby cost-neutral.  I have just found very little info about how people actually make money online, other than by creating a following and then selling them stuff, or by having ads on their blog.

Any ideas most welcome!!!
MQQ

[Ricky]

I'm pretty sure Facebook is going to be nothing more than a portal for your actual site. The only revenue that exists will go to Facebook since they control the ads. So it Facebook would just be a way for your followers to see when you have new posts or just a way to involve the community. Twitter is more common though for public figures to keep fans up to date.

[Mr. Frugalwoods]

I know a couple of people who have monetized facebook groups.  They trick is to get them out of facebook and into an email system... and then market to them as you would any other niche list.

Just remember, Facebook can (and does!) change the game at any time.  Recent algorithm changes make groups and pages much less likely to appear in your fan's feeds.  I'm not a fan of building a business on someone else's front lawn :-)

[mqq]

Thanks Ricky and Mr Frugalwoods - I agree that keeping things solely on Facebook doesn't seem to be a smart way to go! Facebook tends to be more of a meeting point than an end-point.

Other than selling people stuff, and making money through ads, do you know of any other ways people make money from blogs etc? One other one I thought of was offering consultancy based on the topic of their page (eg MMM could consult on frugality).