From the archive. First published in February 2017. Rewritten for clarity, with a note on what happened afterwards.
In the early days of Facebook Live, Facebook paid publishers and celebrities directly to stream. BuzzFeed, the New York Times and others received cheques to produce live video. In 2017 the company began shifting from direct payments towards sharing advertising revenue instead.
The pattern that followed
Facebook’s approach to paying creators has swung repeatedly between three models: direct payments to selected partners, bonus programmes open to more people, and advertising revenue share. Each has been introduced, scaled back or closed over the years.
The constant is that direct payments favoured whoever was already large, and revenue share favours whoever generates watch time. Only the second model is available to a page owner building from nothing.
Where payouts come from now
- In stream advertising on video, paid against watch time rather than follower count.
- Brand deals, which for most mid sized pages are the main income and are negotiated off platform.
- Affiliate and own product sales, where the page feeds something you control.
The wider comparison
If you are choosing where to build for revenue rather than reach, the economics are not close. YouTube pays a 55 percent share on long form and operates a pool for Shorts. Telegram pays public channel owners with at least 1,000 subscribers half the advertising revenue shown in their channel. X ended its creator revenue sharing in September 2026 and replaced it with a programme requiring a paid subscription, 500 verified followers and 5 million quarterly impressions, paying on an undisclosed formula. Threads pays creators nothing at all.
We go through all of it in where else to build an audience.
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