Buying Facebook groups

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by a searcher from Stanford University
in San Francisco, CA, USA

2yrs ago

Buying Facebook groups

Does anyone have experience buying (or selling) Facebook groups? I'm working on a business aimed at seniors (60+) and believe FB groups could be super effective for distribution.

Specifically I'm wondering:
1) Is there a smart way to find the most popular/active groups, other than aimlessly searching/clicking down rabbit holes?
2) Are there tools or hacks to gauge group engagement?
3) What's an appropriate way to value these groups?

So far, it feels a lot like buying website domains. There's no good data out there, and every situation is totally unique.

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reply by a searcher 2yrs ago
in Australia

I run multiple FB groups, one of which has over 350k members and receives 2 million visitors per month.

Here are my answers to your question;

1) You can curate lists of all Facebook groups that currently rank on Google using AHREFS. The list includes relevant data such as keyword volume and traffic numbers, which can help you gauge the activity levels of groups on the platform.

2) Buy/sell groups have the greatest engagement (for sale, job boards, etc) Public groups can grow quickly and reach a larger audience. You can gauge engagement levels by observing the number of comments on each post.

3) Very hard to determine the value of a group. Here's an article I came across that you might find helpful - redacted

reply by a searcher 2yrs ago
from Southwestern University in Houston, TX, USA

All of these answers are great - thanks everyone. The only thing I know about this is that I have friends that do this regularly and they say that the groups are frequently unmonetized at all (labor of love), but you can be a hero by being the conduit to them making money on the list. Importantly, keep in mind that you don't need to do a full acquisition of the list to benefit from it.

Some things you can do in and around monetization of the groups are:

1) Start to get to know the group, it's buying power, and true responsiveness by asking the owner to sponsor the group. For a few hundred bucks a month - much more than the owner was making before - you can do whatever advertising the owner is comfortable with and see what kind of response you get.

2) Ask the owner to do a JV on a newsletter. He provides the emails (they've already opted in to the group communications) and you do all of the newsletter services. He can put as much or as little content into the newsletter as he wants and you get to put your ads in place. Split the revenue.

2a) To advance the deal above, you could sell more ad space to more people and you're still splitting the revenue.

3) Ask to do a test campaign where he will mail the users on your behalf. Agree on a reasonable split of the profits.

3a) Other ads can be JVs with other Facebook groups for more of the same.

4) Through any or all of the above, you can get a feel for if the owner is sick of the work. If so, start talking about outright purchase of the group.

Lots of options - your only limits are the things you can come up with!