Trying to figure out how much is your Facebook fanpage worth? This is often a challenging and touchy subject for many page owners. We live in a strange world, where young teens who created a “lol j/k page” a few years back think they’re sitting on a gold
mine, just because their pages amounted a substantial amount of fans. We hate being the bearer of bad news, and even though our opinion will naturally seem biased (due to the nature of our business), we can tell you that you will not get rich by selling your fanpage. All those countless five digit offers in your inbox are simply scammers trying to grab your attention. You will never, ever see any money from those people. Have you ever tried to collect from one of the offers? No? Well let us tell you the few possible scenarios that you could endure if you decide to do so:
1. The buyer will want the fanpage first, citing trust issues. If you do this, you will never see the page or the money. You can whine to Facebook all you want that your page got stolen, they won’t listen.
2. The buyer will cite trust issues again, to resolve them he will send you a “good faith deposit.” Scammers will usually propose that they will send you a small percentage of the original offer (usually a minuscule amount) in order to gain each other’s trust. They will promise to send the other part of the payment as soon as you make them admin. Again, if you do this, you will never see the page or the other payment.
3. The buyer will claim he sent you money via Western Union. He/she will even send you a picture of the receipt, however, with the MTCN number blocked/blurred out. The MTCN number is what’s needed to collect the money. The buyer will claim that as soon as you hand over the fanpage he/she will give you the number. This is a popular scam, don’t fall for it. There is no money and the receipt is a fake.
4. The buyer will want to “check the settings” or “look at the stats” before he buys. Don’t make him admin, EVER! Under no circumstances don’t give any page privileges to any person unless you’re 100% sure.
5. This is rare, but it does happen. The buyer will actually send you the money via Paypal. You give him the page and you’re all done, right? Wrong. As soon as you hand over the rights he will contact Paypal and report that he has been scammed. With digital goods such as Facebook fanpages it is very hard to prove to Paypal that you held up to your end of the bargain (vs. physical goods where you can just show them the shipping receipt). In the end, Paypal will often side with the scammer and that means that you’re left with nothing.
There are countless ways you can get scammed, so be aware. Deal with real registered companies, and remember, if it’s too good to be true it usually is. All that being said, we can’t deny that fanpages used to be expensive, sometimes very expensive. Back in the day, a 500k active fanpage could have netted you around 2-8K USD, but this is no longer the case. Facebook is getting greedy, and they’re slowly turning their fanpage system into an AdWords type of platform, where you have to pay for each post so the fans can see your content. On December 1st, 2013, Facebook updated their news feed algorithm (EdgeRank) and tweaked it so very few fans see what you post on your fanpage.
From SocialIgnite.com (read more on the update here):
“Facebook’s December News Feed algorithm change is so far punishing brand pages, regardless of how interested fans are in that page’s content, according to a new analysis by Ignite Social Media. Ignite analysts reviewed 689 posts across 21 brand pages (all of significant size, across a variety of industries) and found that, in the week since December 1, organic reach and organic reach percentage have each declined by 44% on average, with some pages seeing declines as high as 88%.”
This crippling update almost instantly devalued fanpages across the world. The very same 500K fanpage used in our example above is now worth around 250 to 1000 USD. The bottom line will greatly be affected by a few conditions buyers look for such as:
1. Fan geographic location. Mainly marketers look for US / UK / CA/ AU based fans, as they are worth the most.
2. Fanpage niche/category. If your fanpage is a general community page based on some popular quote or a joke don’t expect much for it.
3. Fanpage activity (post reach). When you post something and it reaches a lot of people, that generally means more money.
4. Fanpage activity 2 (link reach). When you post a link and it reaches a lot of people, that generally means more money. Link reach is actually one of the most important factors when pricing out a fanpage.
As you can see many factors affect the price, so if you need an exact quote just e-mail us. Now, on a brighter side, there are still some fanpages left that are worth a lot more (even tens of thousands of dollars). Usually, high ticket fanpages are in the following categories:
- Fitness
- Product Reviews
- Healthcare
- Technology
- Religion
- Politics
One of the most important factors to remember for buyers and sellers is that you don’t truly own these fanpages. Facebook holds all the cards, and they don’t like when people buy/sell fanpages. They frequently delete pages for a multiple of reasons, and because of this inherited risk, no one is willing to shell out vast sums of money.