Facebook mum's group founder defends charging members $10 joining fee

The founder of the “Mums the Word-Aus” Facebook group has hit back after being slammed online for proposing a $10 joining fee to become a member of the closed group.

Carly Abrahams, who hails from Sydney, started the group five years ago but it now has over 24,000 members who seek advice on everything from support to useful contractors.

However, those members were up in arms when the administrator revealed they will now be charged a retrospective joining fee – with people crunching the numbers and claiming Carly and her team of admins could come away with a salary of $240,000.

Now, mum=of-one Carly has defended her decision to charge people for being in the Facebook community, saying people don’t understand how big a job it is for her.

“People don't know this but it's a lot of work for me,” Carly told the Daily Mail.

“I have no downtime because I'm constantly checking the page. I check every single post to make sure they don't breach the guidelines.

“It's a 24/7 job for me.”

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Carly said the money she collects from members would go into a business fund and be distributed to admins.

She also claimed that because it’s a closed Facebook group, she can’t charge advertisers for space on the site.

Her explanation comes just two days after she took to the page to reveal that all new members, and the 24,306 existing members will now be charged a $10 one off fee to cover the salary costs of running the page, monitoring comments and replying to messages.

"Managing and monitoring this wonderful Facebook page is a 24/7 job for me," she wrote, "I get messages on weekends, late at night, from 5:30am and everything in between and if I don’t respond they just keep coming."

"I ask that if you have ever found this group useful, if it’s every helped you find a babysitter, plumber, cleaning tip, baby support, parenting advice or anything at all and you’d like to give back or support then you can just click this safe and secure PayPal link."

Since then, a new Facebook group called “Mums Advice – Free” has been set up and already has nearly 1,000 members.

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