It’s here. Affiliate Marketing Model on Facebook

Now someone has figured out a new way to sell things on Facebook. I expect there will be more companies will use this model - by giving user an incentive to help you on sales.

T-Shirt Money Maker by BustedTees has several incentives for users to sell T-shirts on their behalf. You install their application, display their t-shirt pattern on your profile, and earn money from each T-shirt you sell on your profile page. Plus you get a referral fee for everyone who installs the application from your profile.

This is smart, because people are likely to buy a product based on friends’ “recommendation” than they see it on an advertisement. This is similar to how affiliate advertising model works between a web publisher and a reader. The usual issue on affiliate marketing is that readers degrade the piece of review or information on the web page when they see an affiliate link to a product. As BustedTees doesn’t hide the fact that you get your slice of money by branding their app as “T-Shirt Money Maker”, this should help gaining buyer’s trust.

My prediction is that more products will move their affiliate marketing strategy from web to social networking. Who wouldn’t want to tap into 47 million active users?