Advertising for Businesses and Affiliates using Facebook Gift Applications

**mporgsoft** · 01-16-2010 09:28 PM

Facebook has 350 million active users and the number is growing daily. The average user has 130 friends and spends more than 55 minutes on Facebook each day. If you were an entrepreneur wouldn’t you love to tap into this audience? You can by creating a Facebook gift application.

If you have a Facebook account you definitely were on the receiving end of a gift sent by one of your friends. Was it a mixed cocktail, a Christmas decoration, or a smiley face? Gift giving on Facebook is very popular. Why just say Hello to someone when you can do so with a gift as well. Imagine you just ate out and had the best deep-dish pizza ever. You are home sitting at your computer wishing you could have another bite. Surfing Facebook you search for the name of the pizza house and find that they have a gift application. You select the pizza you ordered and proceed to send a virtual pizza to all of your friends with a note saying you just ate there and it was the best pizza you tasted. You are a happy customer and you publish to your wall that you sent this virtual pizza to all your friends. Your friends are receiving notifications from Facebook that you sent them a gift. On accepting the gift they are brought to the gift application where they see the restaurant information and now they too can publish to their wall that they received a virtual pizza from you so their friends can see. By sending just one virtual pizza advertising of the restaurant is exploding all over Facebook as people see others sending and jump onboard to send one as well. While most probably will not be in a situation to visit this restaurant due to geographic location it gets your name out there.

What if you had a brick and mortar store or a website that sold antique toys? Create a Facebook gift giving application adding as gifts some memorable toys that everyone can relate too. Within the application you have your website address and/or a physical street address as well. As Facebook users start sending gifts to each other from your application and posting to their walls so more and more people can see the gifts and remember when they had one of those. As new people come to the gift application to send their own gifts they notice your website and store information and sales come in as a result from your gift application on Facebook.

Even if you do not have a product you are selling you can still cash in on the gift-giving craze. Affiliates earn money by promoting merchants and receiving commission on sales they generate. Everyone has heard of Harry and David pears. They are the world’s best tasting and can become the next popular gift to send on Facebook. Affiliates can join Harry and David’s affiliate program and place their affiliate links and banners throughout the gift application. Add the merchant’s products as gifts and let the revenue flow in as Facebook users send the virtual products to each other, but also visit your links and make purchases.

Using the gift giving application as a tool for marketing will greatly increase your exposure and the cost of doing so is cheaper than any advertising campaign. Facebook does not charge users to install applications on their Platform. The only cost associated with setting up your own gift application is the gift application software and web hosting for the application files. Make your presence on Facebook today with your own branded gift application.

**InvestInPixels** · 01-17-2010 08:16 AM

Dont you also have to pay to actually send gifts?

**mporgsoft** · 01-17-2010 08:30 AM

As owner of the gift application you can set the cost of gifts to 0 points or any amount. Points do not cost any real money. Points are earned for free by logging into the application each day, and when you are on the receiving end of a gift you earn points as well.

I usually set gifts to 10 points to give a percieved value and to get users back in the application in the following days to accumulate more points to send out gifts to those they were not able to. This steady sending of gifts gives maximum exposure instead of a 1 shot free gift to entire friends list.