The short version: monetise your Facebook page when you have consistent engagement (not just followers), you meet Facebook's actual technical requirements, and you can prove the income will outweigh the reach you'll lose to ads and algorithm changes. For most pages that's later than you think, not sooner, because the payout on Facebook is small and the trust cost of getting it wrong is not.
Before you plan around a number, run yours through the free Facebook money calculator to see a realistic monthly band.
The numbers Facebook checks first
Before you decide anything based on gut feeling, know what Meta's Partner Monetisation Policies require, because most of the "should I monetise" debate people have with themselves is irrelevant if they don't hit the technical bar yet.
For the step by step version, see Does Facebook Pay For Likes On Posts.
For in-stream ads on video, you need at minimum:
- 10,000 followers on the Page
- 600,000 total minutes viewed across your videos in the last 60 days
- 5 or more active videos posted on the Page
- Compliance with Meta's Partner Monetisation Policies and Community Standards, no strikes for things like reused content or misleading claims
Stars (viewer gifting during live video) has a lower bar in some regions, sometimes as few as 500 followers, but the payout per star is roughly one US cent, so you'd need thousands of stars a month before it covers a coffee. Facebook Bonuses (the performance-based bonus programme Meta rolled into most regions by 2024) don't require you to apply, Meta invites eligible Pages, and eligibility is based on the same watch time and follower thresholds above.
If you're not near those numbers yet, the "when should I monetise" question is premature. Go and read how many Facebook page likes you need to get paid before you spend another hour thinking about ad placement, because follower count alone won't get you there and neither will likes bought from a growth service five years ago that are still sitting dead in your audience.
What happened when a client monetised too early
In 2021 I worked with a UK home-baking page, just under 42,000 likes, lovely engaged little community, mostly women aged 35 to 55 swapping banana bread photos. She hit the follower threshold, got the invite to turn on in-stream ads, and switched them on the same afternoon without checking her watch time numbers.
Her videos were short, 45 seconds to a minute, recipe clips filmed on her phone. In-stream ads need a minimum video length to insert a mid-roll break, and hers were too short for anything but a pre-roll. So viewers got a 15-second ad before every single clip, on content that used to autoplay instantly in the feed. Within three weeks her average view duration dropped by around 40 percent and her reach on new posts fell noticeably, because Facebook's algorithm reads early drop-off as a signal the content isn't holding attention and shows it to fewer people next time.
Her ad revenue for that first full month came to £11.20. She turned monetisation back off within six weeks. The lesson wasn't "don't monetise," it was "don't monetise a content format that isn't built for it yet." She'd have been better off making three or four longer, 3-minute recipe walkthroughs a week for two months first, building the watch time, then switching ads on once the format could carry them.
That's the bit nobody tells you when they're excited about hitting 10,000 followers: the follower number is the least important gate. The content shape matters more.
The uncomfortable bit about Facebook payouts
Here's what most people don't want to hear before they get excited about the word "monetise": Facebook page monetisation, for the overwhelming majority of small and mid-size pages, pays very little. I've seen real numbers from clients ranging from £8 to £340 a month on pages between 20,000 and 150,000 followers, and the £340 one was an outlier with viral video luck that month, not a repeatable system.
Compare that to when you should monetise a YouTube channel, where the ad rates and the audience retention tools are simply better built for creators, and you start to see why a lot of experienced page owners treat Facebook monetisation as a small bonus on top of the real business, not the business itself. If your actual goal is income, the Page is usually the top-of-funnel awareness layer that sends people to a newsletter, a paid community, a course, or a service, and the ad revenue from the Page itself is a rounding error next to that.
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So the honest first question isn't "am I eligible yet" it's "is Facebook ad revenue even the right monetisation model for what this page is." A recipe page with high watch time video is. A B2B thought-leadership page that posts text updates and links is not, and no amount of waiting will change that, because in-stream ads need video and Stars need live video, and if that's not your format, this whole monetisation path just isn't built for you.
A step-by-step way to decide, not guess
This is the process I walk clients through rather than a vague "when it feels right":
- Step 1: Check the type of Page you have. Not every Page qualifies at all, some categories are excluded from monetisation entirely regardless of size. Check which types of Facebook pages qualify for monetisation before doing anything else, because if your category is excluded, none of the rest of this matters yet.
- Step 2: Pull your last 60 days of watch time. Go to Meta Business Suite, Insights, and look at total minutes viewed. If you're nowhere near 600,000 minutes, your job for now is more consistent video, not monetisation strategy.
- Step 3: Look at video length and format. If your videos average under 60 seconds, mid-roll in-stream ads won't work well for you yet. Test longer formats, 2 to 4 minutes, before switching ads on.
- Step 4: Check your engagement rate, not just your follower count. A Page with 15,000 followers and a 6 percent engagement rate will monetise better than one with 60,000 followers and 0.5 percent engagement, because both watch time and ad relevance scores depend on people sticking around.
- Step 5: Model the actual money against the actual cost. Estimate a realistic monthly payout using the £8 to £340 range above as a benchmark for your size, then weigh it honestly against any drop in reach or reader trust from adding ads. If the number is under £50 a month and you're a business using the Page to build authority, it's rarely worth the trade.
- Step 6: Turn it on for one content format only, not the whole Page. Test in-stream ads on your longest, most watched video type first. Measure retention for four weeks before rolling it wider.
Signs you're not ready, even if Facebook says you are
Meta's eligibility check is a technical gate, not a strategic one. You can pass it and still not be ready. Watch for these signs:
- Your comments section is full of questions about your product or service, not just general chat, meaning the Page is already a warm sales channel, and inserting ads dilutes that.
- Your Page's whole value is trust and tone, a therapist's page, a small charity, a local business, and a stranger's random ad appearing mid-video would look odd against what your Page looks like to a first-time visitor.
- You haven't posted consistently for at least 90 days. Facebook can pull monetisation eligibility if activity drops, so switching on ads right before you go quiet for a month wastes the setup.
- You have a Facebook Group running alongside the Page that's doing more commercial heavy lifting, in which case it's worth reading how much a Facebook Group is worth before assuming the Page is where the money question belongs at all.
What I'd tell you if you asked me directly
If someone messages me tomorrow asking "should I turn on monetisation now," my answer is almost always the same three questions back: what's your 60-day watch time, what's your average video length, and what else is this Page currently doing for your business that ads might interrupt. Nine times out of ten, the answer to that third question is the real one. A Page that's quietly sending warm leads to a service business is worth more unmonetised than the £40 a month it might earn from ads that make it feel less like a trusted source and more like a billboard.
The exception is pure content pages, no product behind them, built purely on video and reach. For those, the calculation flips. If you're not selling anything else through the Page, ad revenue isn't competing with anything, it's just upside, and the only real question is whether your watch time supports it yet.
Related reading: categories in facebook.
Related reading: facebook blank page.
Frequently asked questions
How many followers do I need before Facebook lets me monetise?
For in-stream video ads you need a minimum of 10,000 Page followers, plus 600,000 minutes of video watch time in the past 60 days and at least 5 active videos. Some Stars eligibility can start as low as 500 followers in certain regions, but the payout per Star is around one US cent, so it rarely adds up to meaningful money at that size.
How much money does Facebook page monetisation pay?
Real client numbers I've seen range from about £8 to £340 a month on pages between 20,000 and 150,000 followers, with most sitting well under £100. It's typically a small add-on to a business, not a standalone income, unless you're running a high-volume video content page specifically built for it.
Should I monetise my Facebook page if I use it mainly to promote my business?
Usually not straight away. If your Page's real value is warm leads and trust, ads inserted into your content can interrupt that relationship for very little payout. Test it on one video format first and measure whether reach or reply rates drop before rolling ads out across the whole Page.
What's the biggest mistake people make when they first turn on monetisation?
Turning on in-stream ads before their video length and watch time support them. Short clips under a minute don't fit mid-roll ad breaks well, drop-off increases, and Facebook's algorithm then shows the content to fewer people, which costs more in reach than the ad revenue earns back.
