Social media giant Facebook has announced additional revenue creation streams for content creators as it explores various methods to replicate the TikTok’s success in the short video content space.

In a new blog post, the Menlo Park, California headquartered technology giant outlined three new ways for content creators to monetise on Facebook: earning revenue from short-form videos, opening monetisation to more content creators and accelerating fan support.

Video creators can now earn money from videos as short as one minute long, with a minimally interruptive ad running at 30 seconds. For videos three minutes or longer, an ad can be shown 45 seconds in. Previously only three-minute or longer videos could monetise with in-stream ads, with an ad shown no earlier than 1 minute.

In the first method, the company has now opened monetisation opportunities for all video types and is testing sticker ads in Stories. “Video creators can now earn money from videos as short as one minute long, with a minimally interruptive ad running at 30 seconds. For videos three minutes or longer, an ad can be shown 45 seconds in. Previously only three-minute or longer videos could monetize with in-stream ads, with an ad shown no earlier than 1 minute,” the blog said.

The company is currently exploring in-stream ad formats that increase engagement through rewards or product interaction. This is aimed at increasing the revenue potentials of content creators.

With a strong focus on short-form video monetisation, the company is set to begin testing monetisation on Facebook Stories with ads that look like stickers. Content creators will receive a portion of the resulting revenue. It plans to broaden the testing to more content creators soon and expand it to short-form videos on Facebook, eventually providing a way for content creators to monetize this popular content.

It has also updated eligibility criteria to allow more content creators to monetise their videos with in-stream ads. To join our in-stream ad for video-on-demand program, Facebook Pages must have 600,000 total minutes viewed from any combination of video uploads – on-demand, live and previously Live – in the last 60 days; 5 or more active video uploads or previously Live videos; and videos must be published, not deleted, and compliant with its content monetisation policies.

Previously, Facebook only considered at least three-minute-long on-demand videos. The updated eligibility would allow video creators that primarily create Live and short-form videos to monetise their recorded videos. Yet, they need to publish from a Page (not a profile) with at least 10,000 followers, and be 18 years old.

Facebook also announced that it is investing $7 million over the next few months in consumer education and adoption via free Stars, a site currency. “During certain Star-enabled livestreams, some people will see an offer to claim free Stars that they can send at their discretion to their favourite content creators to boost their visibility and connection with the creator and add to the creators’ earnings,” the blog post said.

According to the company, people sent video and gaming creators an average of 1 billion Stars per month which is equal to $10 million a month, in the past 6 months.

The company is also expanding its paid online event feature, launched August last year, to 24 additional countries.

Facebook’s fan subscriptions feature will also be expanded to an additional 10 countries.

In a nutshell, content creators can now earn money from ads via in-stream ads programme, from the support of their fans via fan subscriptions and paid online events, through Stars feature and with paid partnerships via branded content and brand collabs manager.

According to the company, the number of content creators earning the equivalent of $10,000 per month grew 88% and content creators earning $1,000 per month grew 94% from 2019 to 2020.