Where Does Social Media Earn From ?!
Have You Ever Wondered Where Social Media Networks Like Whatsapp, Instagram, And Telegram Come From? We Use Multiple Social Networks For Free Every Day, And We Do Not Pay Any Fees, So How Do Social Networks Pay For The Use Of Millions Of Their Users?
Why do messengers and social networks increase their revenue every day? How did Mark Zuckerberg become one of the richest people in the world? How does Instagram pay its employees?
For many users, the question is, how can these free sites and software pay billions of dollars to build and provide infrastructure for the use of millions or perhaps billions of users?
Where does social media come from?
Making money on social media and messaging is not that complicated and weird. There are so many ways to monetize through social media that perhaps the simplest of them is advertising. But in addition to advertising, social networks also earn money in various other ways.
Advertising
As we said, advertising is the first way. In general, if you do not pay for social networks, then you are paid! Yes, you read that right; You are the end-user, and the advertisers are the source of money for social media! By using these platforms, you are selling your time and attention to them, and the advertisers are using it to their advantage.
Every social network with more viewers has more revenue from advertising, just like the rate of advertising on a popular TV network and a regular TV network!
Developers have spent a lot of time and money building a user-centric space, and you can use it for free.
In this way, they can use your presence and show you ads, but the display of ads should be such that it does not affect your user experience.
Internet advertising is an attractive market, and advertisers are willing to pay the highest amount to attract users’ attention; the more they pay, the more people will see their ads.
Social networks have special ways of showing ads, for example, separating male and female users and showing ads targeted at men to them and ads targeted at women targeting women.
Even your geographical area and interests are involved in showing ads. For example, a platform like YouTube shows a Dutch company ad only to its Dutch users, or it understands according to the channels you follow and your YouTube searches. It shows you what you are interested in and advertises on the same topics.
Large social networks generate revenue by advertising or promoting (promoting an account from the same social network). Most of the revenue comes from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TickTock, and YouTube.
Sell creative product
Social media is finding other creative ways to make money. One of these creative ways is to sell a product. For example, we see the sale of stickers or gift cards by various media. Some social networks also charge a small fee to customize the user interface, such as wallpapers and image filters, which will generate a lot of revenue for those messengers or social networks.
Pay the subscription fee.
Do you pay to use Twitter, Instagram, or WhatsApp? Probably (or definitely) not. Even if they were not free to use, most people still would not pay for it.
One way to generate revenue for social networks is to sell subscriptions. In this way, professional users of that social network are willing to pay a monthly subscription fee to access more facilities.
Some social networks, such as LinkedIn, have a subscription fee and offer more features to users for a fee. On LinkedIn, job seekers must subscribe to find better working conditions. YouTube also has a shared account for its users, and by purchasing it, more possibilities are given to channel owners and even ordinary users.
investment
The majority of social networks have risky investments on their agenda. Investors usually accept the risk of investing in companies in which they see potential; So by investing in them, they hope that their investment will return over time.
Facebook is a prime example of this system. They came into being with venture capital. The same is true for Twitter. Both have made millions of dollars in venture capital. The purpose of these investments is to make money from them or to sell them to larger companies.
Revenue of WhatsApp, Telegram, and Instagram social networks
But social networks have different ways of earning money depending on the type of audience and their work system. Some of these revenue streams are unique, and others are common among messengers and social networks. In the following, we will take a closer look at the source of income of social networks.
Facebook revenue
Facebook is the largest social network in the world and the owner of WhatsApp and Instagram. Like Twitter, most of the company’s revenue comes from advertising. An article was recently published in which Facebook was announced to earn $ 230 per second through advertising so that Facebook earns several billion dollars a day through advertising alone.
Data sales
Messengers and social networks have always claimed that they do not sell users ‘private information to other companies. Still, there have been repeated reports of heavy contracts by large and small social networks to share users’ information with various companies.
In this regard, we can mention the scandal of the sale of Facebook information to Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 US elections and the trial of Zuckerberg.
Of course, only shared information is not completely confidential. For example, according to this information, Facebook was able to sell its users’ use of different operating systems, their activities, and their interests to different companies under a contract to provide better services to their customers.
In one of Facebook’s old contracts with a restaurant in a region of the United States, Facebook told the restaurant what kind of music people in that region enjoy the most.
In this way, the people’s favorite music plays in the restaurant, which made the people feel better during the meal. The number of customers of that restaurant increased significantly in a short period of time.
Buy other companies
As we said, Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp, and venture capital is one of the company’s revenues streams. Facebook buys these companies’ revenue by buying them, and Facebook helps these companies grow and increases their revenue, so Instagram and WhatsApp revenue all go to Facebook.
WhatsApp messenger revenue
WhatsApp was founded in 2009 and was acquired by Facebook in 2014. In the past, the revenue model was shared and downloaded for $ 1, and the user had to pay another $ 1 for each year of use.
In January 2016, Facebook stated that because WhatsApp revenue is “minimal,”; It may not generate significant revenue in the long run, and its revenue plan is set to change. Shortly afterward, WhatsApp announced in a blog post that the social network subscription period was over and that using the messenger app would be free.
WhatsApp Business
The app has no ads yet; But the company wrote in a blog post at the time: “Starting this year (2016), we will be testing tools to use WhatsApp to connect with the businesses and organizations you want.” The goal is for people to connect directly with banks, airlines, etc., through the app, and businesses will have to pay for this.
Since the launch of WhatsApp Business, in this version of WhatsApp, people can link to reputable companies and use them. Companies can also use WhatsApp to send messages and notifications to their employees. Using WhatsApp Business is free for users, but businesses have to pay to use different parts of WhatsApp Business.
Sell stickers
You must be familiar with WhatsApp paid stickers. These stickers have attractive designs and can be purchased for a small fee. Although the purchase price of stickers is low, according to the WhatsApp billion users, if two out of every 100 WhatsApp users buy a multi-dollar sticker pack a year, WhatsApp will generate tens of millions of dollars.
Money transfer
WhatsApp has launched its money transfer system for Indian users. In this way, Indian users can transfer money using the WhatsApp in-app portal. Now, given the millions of Indian users on WhatsApp, transferring money from these messengers and paying a small fee will bring a lot of revenue to WhatsApp…
Although WhatsApp’s financial statements are unclear (Facebook does not announce its earnings as a company), Forbes estimates its revenue at $ 4 billion and revenue at $ 4 per user in 2020. As of February 2020, Facebook had more than 2 billion users.
Instagram revenue
In 2012, Facebook bought the social network Instagram for $ 1 billion, and in 2018 its value reached $ 100 billion. In 2019, more than 98% of Facebook’s revenue came from advertising, and a significant amount of it came from Instagram.
As mentioned earlier, Facebook does not report revenue by company: But analysts’ research shows that Instagram’s advertising revenue growth is higher than its parent company and is a prime example of social media revenue.
When Facebook bought Instagram, the social network was limited to image sharing and video capabilities add within a year. Like many big names in the social media world, Instagram started as a fun, no-brainer idea. Still, now both the parent company, Facebook and Instagram, are making money from advertising.
Telegram revenue
Launched in 2013, Telegram is a messaging app focused on privacy and encryption. According to news and analysis, this application does not have any revenue yet; In 2018, an initial value of $ 1.7 billion (Initial Coin Offering). Telegram wants to keep the app 100% free while maintaining its growth.
Telegram’s income is zero. In fact, Telegram does not earn any income; Or at least has no income plan. Of course, Dvorov was trying to offer a TON digital currency, which has now been halted. “He believes in fast and secure messaging, which is 100% free,” Durov wrote in a blog post.
A part of the blog post published in Telegram is as follows:
We believe in instant messaging, which is 100% free.
Our guide, Pavel Durov, funded the telegram with large financial contributions; So we have enough money right now. If Telegram’s work is completed, we will introduce non-essential financial options to support infrastructure and pay developer fees. But making a profit will never be Telegram’s ultimate goal.
According to durov, Telegram will always be free and never seek to generate revenue, nor will it ever be sold to any company. durov has previously mentioned that silicon companies have made multibillion-dollar offers to buy Telegram, but Dvorov has rejected them.
Accordingly, Telegram’s current income is through the investment of managers and public donations (Donate). People and users of Telegram can donate any amount of money to the company’s office to help these messengers, and Telegram will cover its expenses based on these donations.
Telegram’s monetization has fueled rumors that the messengers were collaborating with security agencies worldwide or in Russi. Still, soo far, none of these allegations have been substantiated, and Durov has consistently denied the allegations.
