Why Influencers Suddenly Love Facebook. (No Joke.) “It’s My Biggest Source of Income”

After neglecting his Facebook page for years, dismissing it as a relic for older people, creator Anwar Jibawi started to notice a surprising change — the checks he received from the social media site were getting bigger and bigger.

That was enough to make Jibawi pay more attention. Shortly thereafter, he hired a new team member to keep up with his tempo of posting comedy sketch videos 10 times a day. Facebook has since become one of his biggest income sources. “It’s not unusual for it to hit six figures a month,” says Jibawi, who has 20 million followers on the platform.

The shift, noticed by many other creators, was the effect of a change in the social media site’s monetization policy last fall: Facebook now pays creators based on the performance of their posts rather than through a share of ad revenue. The move has creators now treating the platform as a top income source.