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Britain Lockhart never knows what he will find when he dives in search of treasure. Her Facebook viewers who tune in for a surprise reveal don’t either. His page, Depths of History, has been steadily growing on the social network since he started posting videos there about two years ago. He now has 70,000 subscribers on his page, which has started generating thousands of dollars per month in ad revenue.
“I really didn’t think it would be that profitable at all, but Facebook has such a variety of users on its interface who don’t even use YouTube, but they will be on Facebook,” he says, adding that he “ I will post his YouTube videos to Facebook to generate ad revenue on both.
His income varies, although he says he will generally earn between $ 2,000 and $ 3,000 per month through Facebook. But in 2021 so far, that revenue has unexpectedly dried up. January’s payment was only $ 931, leaving him thousands of dollars short. In February, it was even lower, at just $ 664. He rechecked his creative backend, and the numbers didn’t make sense either. Facebook’s revenue estimator predicted it should have received $ 3,397 for January and $ 1,747.52 for February. When the checks arrived he ran out of over $ 4,000
“It was like a slap in the face,” Lockhart says. “I couldn’t wait to buy more photo equipment to grow my business, buy things that could extend me working with Facebook and me working with YouTube.”
And he’s not the only one who hasn’t been fully paid. The edge spoke to two other video makers on Facebook, who all say the company bypassed them in cash and ignored their requests for help. The creators had no reason to initially question how much they were paid since Facebook’s estimated earnings tool almost always reflected their actual payments. Usually, they would only go short by a few hundred dollars. But after their earnings appear to have declined for two months in a row, the creators say they’ve looked into the problem. All three say the problems started in January, around the time Facebook switched to its new Pages experience and updated how creators can monetize.
The sudden change is particularly alarming given Facebook’s ambiguous approach to revenue sharing in general. The core business of the company has always been direct and targeted advertising, but Facebook now sees an opportunity to share its revenue with video creators, like YouTube or Twitch. Facebook has wooed all kinds of creators – gamers, writers, and video hosts – with broader monetization options, like InStream ads, purchases, and even subscription newsletters. It’s still unclear how many creators are on Facebook, but the strategy seems to be working somewhat. Facebook claims that there are over a million stores on its app and Instagram, and that from 2019 to 2020, the number of content creators on Facebook earning the equivalent of $ 10,000 per month increased by 88%, and creators earning $ 1000 per month increased by 94%. .
But these creators say Facebook only cares about advertisers, leaving them with no one to turn to when their payments are unexpectedly short. They asked for help, but the company gave them no comment on what might not be the case.
After The edge requested comment, however, Facebook said it “fixed a technical issue that was preventing a small number of Facebook video creators from receiving full payments for their InStream ads.”
“We are advising these partners that they will receive these remaining in-stream payments during the April payment cycle, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
It’s good news for creators to get a rebate, but it’s still an alarming precedent – withholding thousands of dollars for months with little explanation or guaranteeing the same problem won’t happen again at the end of the day. to come up.
Volodymyr Popkov, the creator of the Painting Inspiration page, which features acrylic painting art tutorials, suggests that Facebook doesn’t value the creators who make the platform thrive. “They have Facebook live chat support for people who spend money on ads, who bring [Facebook] their money, but for people who are like us creators, they owe us money right now, and they’re not doing anything, ”he says.
Facebook estimated that Popkov would receive $ 13,000 in January, he says, but he only received $ 4,600. In February, he was valued at $ 29,000, but he only earned $ 6,400. He knows the number is only an estimate, but he says he saw no change in the number of viewers on his videos – at least not enough to account for a shortfall of $ 32,000. This is a particular problem because Popkov employs artists to create illustrations for the page. His Facebook income serves as a payroll for them, as does his income from YouTube.
Another creator, Erik Reed, of the Outdoors page with Erik, says he owes him over $ 10,000, going over the estimation tools. He specifically joined Facebook because other creators told him the monetization options and engagement levels were worth it.
Facebook has a long history of shoddy metrics causing problems for partners. Earlier this month, court documents showed that Facebook has been providing advertisers with “inflated and misleading” metrics for years on how many people their ads reach. The company apparently knew that the reach of these ads was magnified by fake accounts and duplicates, but chose not to remove them. A Facebook spokesperson said The edge at the time this reach tool only provided an “estimate,” although Facebook allegedly knew of advertisers based on decisions around the metric. The company has also been the subject of lawsuits in the past, claiming it knowingly overestimates the amount of video content that users watch. Facebook settled the dispute in 2019.
The creators who spoke The edge have all diversified away from Facebook to avoid being too dependent on a single platform; they all run YouTube channels with their Facebook pages as well as other social pages. For the revenue sharing model to work, Facebook needs creators to stay happy and publish. But more and more, creators are skeptical of the company’s incentives.
“Working with platforms is difficult,” Popkov says. “And you are not working on your [own] platform, so it’s not like I can trust them.
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