Needless to say that we all use Facebook almost on a daily basis to stay connected with friends, relatives and basically to socialize with others. If Facebook were a country it would have been the world’s 3rd largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India. Facebook is the largest social network in the world with 500 million active users of whom 50% log in on a daily basis. So, it is no wonder why marketers are interested in figuring out how to reach their target audience using Facebook.

An average Facebook user has 130 friends
An average Facebook user spends 700 minutes per month on Facebook
Each day, Facebook Pages have created 5.3 billion fans

The above Facebook statistics indicate, Facebook can be a goldmine for business if done right. We normally use Facebook for socializing and there is nothing wrong with it. Marketers take due advantages of Facebook’s viral features and Facebook advertising to reach their targeted audience. So if you use Facebook as a marketing platform, you will make money online provided the steps are executed properly.

As because Facebook is a very big thing, there are countless business opportunities in and around. You have to pick up an opportunity and go with that. We will discuss about the major ones.

A. Make friends and make money off of them

B. Create fanpages, get fans and make money off of them

C. Use Facebook advertising and make money

D. Develop Facebook apps and make money

E. Use Facebook as a source of traffic for your AdSense site

If you do affiliate marketing, product owner or the affiliate network you work for will pay you. For example if you promote Clickbank products and make sales ClickBank will pay you the commission. If you sell your own product you will get paid by the customers directly or by the network you are using as a Vendor. If you promote CPA offers, the concerned CPA company will pay you the commissions. If you drive traffic to your AdSense sites, you understand you will get paid by Google for the Ad clicks you get. Now let us elaborate on the points mentioned above.

It’s not like Facebook rewards money just because you have lot of friends. Rather there is a restriction of up to 5000 friends beyond which you can not add friends. 5000 friends is no less though. The whole point is to make friends  who you think will be interested to buy a certain kind of products. We all know that Facebook does not allow multiple accounts. But if you can do it with completely separate email address FB may not be able to catch you.

Opening up a different account has to be based on purpose. Before you start making friends, you need to understand exactly what kind of people you are going to add as a friend.I will try to make it clear by giving an example. If you are planning to sell rock music then making friends with people interested in rock music would make sense. Similarly, if you are planning to sell dog food or something related to dogs, it’s common sense that dog owners would be a good fit to make friends. As you know that people from developed countries are more comfortable in purchasing online, you can specifically make friends within a certain country, for example USA.

Once you have a targeted list of friends in Facebook you know well that you can reach them by updating your status. Once you update your status, it will be visible in your friends news feed unless it is blocked. As you are a friend you have to be social and you should not always try to sell something or should not always link to CPA offers just because you will make money out of that.

This is a great way to make money from Facebook. If you are still unaware of Facebook Fan pages, let me give you an example of Facebook Fanpage, http://www.facebook.com/OnlineMoneyKey is our Fan page. More targeted likes you get on your fan page, more profitable it becomes. And you have every option to monetize your Fan pages by promoting affiliate offers, CPA offers or you can drive targeted visitors to your blog/website to grow your audience and eventually make money out of them.  Before you start creating fanpages, you need to so a little bit of research to find out a social niche which is profitable as well. Keyword research and market research will help you come up with that. Follow this simple steps to create fanpages and try to get targeted likes.

We all know that Facebook has got a viral structure. Sharable content gets shared like anything within a very short span of time.  To get very targeted customers you can advertise in Facebook and get more likes on your fan page or you can directly send them to the affiliate offers/CPA offers to make money. The beauty of Facebook advertising is ,you can target very specifically. For example, you want to target USA as a region, Female within a range of 18-30, interested in Pop Songs. You can be even more specific which greatly improves the conversion rate when you try to sell something.

You are well aware that there are literally countless Application Software being used on Facebook platform both Paid & Free. For example RSS Grafiti is an application which helps you publish your blog posts automatically to your Fan page by  using the RSS feed. This particular application is is free but there is an option to upgrade to use its full features.

Similarly if you (somebody on behalf of you ) can develop a Facebook application and market it, you can make money. Application you plan to create should be of use. If you can create quality games which run on Facebook platform, you can sell it.

Last but not the least is driving your fan page fans to your AdSense site so that they click your ads and you make money from Google AdSense. You can do it as a friend and as a Fan page Administrator. All you have to do is to interact with your existing fans and friends and direct them to your websites/blogs by updating your status along with a link to your site.

This guide may not serve as a step by step guide to make money from Facebook but it does help you choose the right direction to FB success.