The social media giant Facebook certainly seems like an enormous marketing opportunity. The millions of users worldwide that log in on a daily basis would surely suggest so. Affiliate marketing on Facebook has really began to gather attention as a viable source of online income. Some have had great success with their social networking endeavors, while others have not.

For those of you who don’t know, here is a crash course in affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing begins with an individual signing up to a companies affiliate program. It’s free to become an affiliate. As an affiliate, you would promote the companies product, and receive a commission when a sale is made through you. Sales are tracked through a unique link that will be given to you by the company when you join a program. All you do is send traffic to the product, the merchant will handle the sales.

Now lets talk about affiliate marketing on Facebook. First you’ll need to join the site. It’s best to gather as many friends as you can once you join. You’ll need lots of them in order to be successful with marketing in this environment. Also join groups, or start your own group. It’s not a good idea to constantly bother your friends daily with product reviews and recommendations. Occasional product promotion and link dropping is okay. What you can do is create a fan page for your product. Then you can promote your fan page through outside sources, such as article marketing, or link to it on your own blog. Ideally you want your Facebook friends to share your product recommendation with their friends, who would then share it with their friends, and so on. Users constantly upload things daily to the site.

Facebook ads are another way to accomplish affiliate marketing on Facebook. They are similar to other pay per click advertising networks. Their ads offer two options. Cost per view, or cost per click. This means you either pay when an ad is clicked on, or pay when it is viewed. Facebook ads allow you target a very specific demographic of people who would most likely be interested in your product. Unlike other ad networks you can link directly to a sales page. This means you don’t need your own website or landing page as with traditional advertising. The downside is that they have very strict guidelines that must be followed in order for your ad to be accepted. The approval times are very long.

Another creative way of affiliate marketing on Facebook is through the use of applications. One such application is called radical buy. It really isn’t radical at all, but has an interesting twist. It is an application for running classified ads on Facebook. You can buy or sell on the social network with it. The twist is that you can earn a commission from the advertiser for helping sell their merchandise. You could post the ad on your page and if someone buys the item, you get the commission. The amount of the commission is determined buy the seller. There are other interesting applications for use on the site as well.