Facebook is trying out paid subscriptions for Groups Facebook is trying out paid subscriptions for Groups

Content creators may soon have another way to make money: the number one social network in the world has recently announced that it's going to start testing out a new paid subscription feature for some of its Group pages. The fees will be set by the Group admins and they will range between $4.99 and $29.99 per month. Those who subscribe will gain access to special sub-Groups featuring exclusive content, thus being able to contribute to their favorite communities.

According to the announcement, Facebook won't take any share of the incomes during the trial period, but in the first year of subscription 30% of the money will go to iOS or Android while after that the share given to the two operating system will drop to 15%. It is unclear at this point if the social network will start charging for this feature once the testing is completed, but being able to further monetize Groups could be very important to Facebook. At the moment, only a few manually selected cooking, parenting and home decor Groups will be able to have paid subscription, but if everything goes according to plan, it probably won't be long until Groups with monthly subscriptions become a common practice.

As far as I'm concerned, paid subscription to some Groups is a good thing, even if a lot of people won't happy to spend money on content that was previously free. Creators need money in order to keep posting the stuff that we like and this seems like a hassle-free way of supporting them. Furthermore, it's been a while since Facebook has started prioritizing "authentic" content, so it's about time that the creators who provide are getting taken care of.

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