Creators earned over $2 billion on Facebook in 2024. Stories monetization will take earnings even higher.

Meta is opening up a new revenue stream for Facebook creators, and this time, the opportunity to make money comes on Stories. An expansion of the existing Facebook Content Monetization program will enable earnings on disappearing public posts.

Stories have been available on Facebook since 2017, when Meta brought Snapchat’s signature format to several of its properties. The ephemeral posts are most commonly associated with friend-to-friend communications, but they can be a useful tool for public accounts as well. Snapchat has harnessed the potential of its Stories by steadily progressing creator monetization opportunities for the format.

Now Facebook is following suit. Its form of Stories monetization will use the same model that dictates payouts across Facebook’s consolidated revenue streams. A Meta rep told TechCrunch that earnings will scale with a post’s performance but will not require creators to hit a viewership threshold before cashing out.

Facebook shared the news of its new revenue stream through (you guessed it) a Stories post

. The creator hosting the video, Keto Snackz, claimed that he has already made $5,000 by participating in the beta version of Facebook’s Stories monetization program. He noted that Reels creators can cut clips from their vertical videos and profit from those snippets on Stories.

The timing of the update suggests that Meta is still looking to improve its creator economy so that it can win over any TikTokers who choose to leave the app (or are forced to do so via federal decree). There’s another interesting pattern in play here: On both Facebook and Instagram, Meta is making serious investments in the formats that let ordinary users communicate with one another. Instagram’s DMs have gotten a glow-up, and now Facebook Stories is being revamped as well.

Perhaps, as Meta contemplates whether to launch a new app that would focus entirely on Reels, it is thinking about what monetization would look like on Reels-free versions of Facebook and Instagram. In that scenario, Stories may play a key role, but creators have to adopt them first.