This post was originally published in [2021] and has been fully updated for 2026 with new data and tools.
Waiting for Facebook to prioritize your external links is a losing game in 2026.
To survive the ‘link-less’ social era, you must diversify. I’ve tested every major platform to find the best alternatives to Facebook Instant Articles—Blogger weighs in on which ones offer the highest CPMs and the fastest load times.
Whether you want to own your audience via email or dominate Google’s mobile search, these are the winners you should be using right now.
You can earn money with Instant Articles from ads, putting links to your website, other articles, and advertising an opt-in page.
Keep reading, and I’ll share what makes Instant Articles powerful, how to qualify, and 3 tips to get more traffic to your affiliate offers with little work.
🚀 Your Post-Instant Articles Traffic Checklist
Tick off these alternatives to see which one fits your blog best:
Meta’s Pivot to Video: Why Instant Articles Disappeared and What’s Next
Around April 2024, Meta discontinued the Instant Articles.
I guess people wanted to see short videos like reels. Speaking of short videos, if you want to get in the game, I wrote a post about how to dominate with short videos.
Today, Facebook is a video first place.
If you’re a blogger, Facebook is now a place for groups and teasers. As the saying goes, if you can’t beat them, JOIN them.
Today, blogging isn’t about posting some posts and retiring on a beach.
I think it’s all the above platforms. Don’t get me wrong, a blog is the skeleton of content creation. You can take your blog post and resubmit it to..
- Substack / Beehiiv
- Medium
- Google AMP
- Forums
Oh, and you can take the outline of your blog to make a video. Then there is podcasting, and finally, short videos.
So blogs are great because it creates a landing page, plus get traffic.
What Were Facebook Instant Articles?
What makes Facebook instant articles unique is that on your newsfeed, instead of clicking on an article and going to a website, they “instantly” open up.
This helps with speed, hence the name “instant.”
With a regular article on Facebook, it can take 5 seconds to load. This may not sound like a lot, but it is.
An instant article has a lightning bolt next to it, and it’s instant. Facebook says it is 4.9 times faster than a normal article. According to Unamo 70%, more readers are more likely to read the content with 30% more shares.
The truth is a TINY portion of businesses and bloggers use Instant Articles!
Another benefit is that you can earn money from advertising with Instant Articles. There is greater reach and engagement on Facebook because more people are likely to share it.
Videos can also automatically play in the article.
The Step-by-Step Guide to Monetizing External Links on Facebook in 2026
The best way to use this service is to first publish the post on your OWN blog first. Yes, you do need your own website to use Instant Articles.
Then you would publish the article on Facebook’s service. You’re probably wondering how YOU would benefit from this, right?
For starters, you can earn money from the ads Facebook shows. The cool part is you keep 100% of the direct-sold ad revenue.
The second benefit is that Facebook allows you to put an opt-in box for email marketing on your Facebook Page. When I first got started in affiliate marketing 100 Years ago (ok, more like 10 years ago), email marketing was expensive.
Well, things have changed.
Due to competition and Substack, the prices are very low. You can even get started for FREE or nearly free.
What is so great about building a list is that you own the traffic. Plus, it can provide a few more benefits such as….
- Can promote multiple offers
- Can contact someone WAY in the future
- Promote your other content
- Do list swaps
- Easier to get accepted into affiliate programs
- MUCH higher conversion rate
- Great for launching products
- Get valuable feedback
- Protects you from algorithmic changes
- More personalized marketing
Even better, I’m giving away a few guides on how to build a list, how to make a landing page, and how to earn money from the list HERE.
The third benefit of instant articles is that you can put links in your articles. Yes, these links can lead to articles on your blog or to other Facebook articles.
Both can be of benefit to you.
The bad news is that there are some requirements you need to have to use this service.
What Replaced Facebook Instant Articles? New Eligibility Rules for Bloggers
The first requirement is that you need to have a blog.
The great thing about a blog is that the business is fairly black and white. This means if you know what you’re doing with search analysis, you will know how to get the traffic, and you can even estimate how much traffic you will get.
You might be thinking that blogging is dead.
It’s not. One reason is that you can repurpose your post on other platforms such as Medium, LinkedIn, Substack, Quora, Reddit, and they can be turned into a video.
I created a post HERE that shares 20 benefits of creating a blog, how AI can be helpful, and how to get started step by step.
Now, you have your blog; the next step is to have a Facebook Page. It’s best to have a few hundred followers and some likes.
The articles on your website can be posted to your blog.
The last step is you need to give Facebook 10 articles so they can see how good you are. If you do fail, then you can always just reapply.
3 Ways to Get More Blog Views via Facebook Groups without Instant Articles
One of the best tips I’ve received lately on blogging is to take a blog you put on your website and simply post it on other popular sites.
A duplicate copy penalty doesn’t exist, so you don’t have to worry about it.
The way to get people back to your blog is to put links in your article to other blog posts you wrote! Another reason this is SO helpful is that it forces you to interlink your content.
This means people stay on your website longer, which helps with ad revenue and rankings because Google likes to see this.
Oh, and you get MORE traffic from other sources.
The first place I would start is LinkedIn Articles, which has 775 million users, plus they can rank in the search engines.
All you do is copy your blog post and paste it into LinkedIn articles. The media, such as pictures and videos, you have to manually paste it. It literally takes under 1 minute.
If you do post in other places, it’s best practice to put something like ….This post originally appeared on [your website here],” at the end of your post.
The next place to submit your article for MORE views is Quora, which has 300 million users. I actually created a blog post that shares TONS of tips on using a Quora Space, and you can check it out HERE.
Keep in mind, both of these platforms are like search engines where TONS of viewers will discover your content and your blog.
The third place is Medium, which has 60 million users. Oh, and I forgot to mention you can earn ad revenue on ALL these platforms to make EVEN more money. Cool right?
Substack is another beast that is amazing. It’s an email autoresponder, blog, tweet thing, video platform, you can charge for it, and more. If you want to learn more about Substack, I wrote a post HERE.
Lastly, there are many other formats you can use for your article, such as video marketing, short videos, eBooks, podcasting, slideshare and more.
Conclusion to Best alternatives to Facebook Instant Articles
When it comes to using Facebook Instant Articles, the real question is, why not?
It’s only going to help you.
Another reason I REALLY like posting articles on other places is that it diversifies your traffic. It’s very risky to count on ONLY 1 place for all your traffic because things change.
The way to stay afloat is to have multiple traffic sources, just like it’s a good idea to have multiple assets that give you income. If one income asset goes down, you still have others!
I hope this blog post on how to use Facebook Instant Articles was helpful. Bye for now.