For group admins, it can be hard to strike a balance between maintaining a Facebook community and making a living outside the social networking site at the same time. Alex Deve, Product Director of Groups at Facebook, noted the group admins" desire to earn money in order to engage more with their communities. As a response, Facebook announced that it has started testing a new feature that allows admins to charge group members a monthly fee in exchange for exclusive content.
Subscription groups will sit alongside the free groups, but with higher-quality content for paying members. These premium groups will feature built-in tools for collecting payments. It"s worth pointing out that not all Facebook groups will require payment from members and the choice to collect a monthly fee is up to the admin.
As part of the pilot test, subscription groups will initially go live for Grown and Flown Parents: College Admissions and Affordability, which helps parents prepare their high school children for college application. Meal Planning Central Premium, which offers meal preparation tutorials to members, is also among the first set of Facebook groups to get the new feature, among others. Users who wish to join these communities can now sign up via the Facebook app for iOS and Android.
Along the way, Facebook aims to gain feedback and input from these early adopters in order to better improve the premium group experience for both the admins and members.
Would you pay to be a part of a self help or meme group? Let us know in the comments!