2Performant is a self-service affiliate platform where e-shops work easily with digital marketing natives at a cost per sale model. 

Each of us has probably searched at least once on Google: “How to make money at home?”. You get several result to this query, but not of them to really help us. This time, however, I think I have the right solution for you.

I cannot promise you can quit your job tomorrow to start being your own boss or that you will have the car you’ve always dreamt of or that this is “a certain way to get rich fast”. But I can tell you I have a solution to help you make some extra money, using you Facebook account.

What I am talking about is affiliate marketing. In other words: you write an attractive post about an online store and if one of your Facebook friends (that clicked on your post) will buy anything from that store, you will receive a commission for that sale. Simple, isn’t it?

This is the first article from the How to do affiliate marketing on Facebook? “Trilogy”. It’s a trilogy because there are three big ways and I will tell you about the latter two in articles to come:

• Using your personal Facebook account
• Using a Facebook page
• Using the Facebook groups

Contents:

A. Beginners Glossary

B. How do I start?

C. How do I post an affiliate marketing link on Facebook?

 

 A. Beginners Glossary

In order to start affiliate marketing you need to understand the following key terms:

Affiliate Marketing = simply put, it means that you persuade other people to buy products/services from certain online stores, while you earn commissions as percentage of those sales values.

Advertiser (affiliate program) = the store that want to be promoted through affiliate marketing.

Affiliate = the person that wants to promote advertisers using different affiliate marketing techniques.

Affiliate Link = a link with a unique id for your affiliate account, due to which your commissions will never be attributed to another account.

Types of actions = there are 2 types of actions for which you can earn commissions: sale for which you will receive a commission from the value if that product/service and lead (for instance, persuading a friend to become an Avon representative) for which you will receive a fixed amount.

Type of programs (regarding the commission payment system):

• post-paid = a generated commission needs to be approved and will later on be paid for by the advertiser; only after it is paid, the money will be added into your affiliate account.
• pre-paid = after a generated commission is approved, the money will be added to your account instantly.

Cookie life = this is the file that “remembers” the date that someone went on a site using you affiliate link. When a cookie life is 31 days, it means that if the person clicking the link also makes a purchase within the 31 days, then you get the commission. If 32 days pass since the person first clicked the link, then you will not receive the commission.

*Remember: Cookies can be overwritten. That means that if a person clicks two different affiliate links (but for the same store) the commission will be added to the link that was last clicked.

Health = the financial status of the affiliate program.

• Green – it means that the balance is ok and it can cover all the commissions
• Yellow – it estimates that the balance can only cover commissions for the next 10 days.
• Orange – it shows that the balance can only cover commissions for the next 7 days.
• Red – it estimates that the program could be suspended in the next 3 days.
• Black – it means that the program is temporarily suspended.

B. How do I start?

The first step is to connect to the 2Performant.com platform.

1. Log in/Register a new account

If you have an account already, log in HERE and if you haven’t one yet, you can create it HERE. After creating a new account, a new window will pop and you should fill in the blanks as follows:

2. Selecting affiliate programs

After logging in (or creating a new account) the Dashboard will be displayed. The next step is about selecting the affiliate programs that you would like to promote in your Facebook account. For instance, a guy that is into sports and has a lot of other friends with the same hobby, could start promoting sport products online stores.

A girl that is passionate about make up could start promoting cosmetic products, while one that is into fashion could promote clothes and shoes. These are but just a few examples, but when you pick the stores you want to promote you should first answer these questions:

• What is my hobby? What products/services could I “sell” the best?
• What would my friends want to buy? What is it that they could be interested in?
• What commission would I get from that certain store?
• Could I write a relevant and catchy post that might persuade my friends to buy a product from that store?

After answering all the questions above, you should take a look at the partner online stores and apply to their programs. You need to go to Affiliate Programs on the left hand side of the screen. Here you will find all the stores and you can sort them by the category of the products/services they are selling. You will also find here details regarding their program, like:

• Type of program: post-paid or pre-paid
• The store’s category
• They country it sells it’s products/services
• The program’s conditions: the commission’s type and value, the cookie life and currency
• Health
• Commission approval rate

When you decided on what program(s) to promote, hit the “Apply now” button on the right.

Now you have to wait until you are approved.

3. Checking the affiliate programs we were approved for.

Also in the Affiliate programs section, you need to click on the “Approved” tab in the upper menu, just like shown below.

4. Bookmarklet – the affiliate link generating tool 

With the help of this tool you will be able to create unique links associated to your account and to the affiliate program you wish to promote. In other words, the 2Performant platform will know that thanks to you somebody ended up on a certain online store and if that person makes a purchase, the commission will be associated to your account.

In order to activate this tool, you need to go to Tools -> Bookmarklet, then to drag the red button, while keeping a continuous click on the left mouse button, up to the white toolbar, right under https://network.2performant.com/affiliate/tools/bookmarklet. See below exactly how it’s done:

 C. How do I post an affiliate link on Facebook? 

5. Generating and copying the affiliate link

To make it easier, I will take Elefant.ro affiliate program as an example. Once you are approved, you can get down to business. Go to the store’s website, in this case on www.elefant.ro and start surfing the website until you find a product or a product category (or even the homepage) that might be interesting to promote.

In the example below, you can see that I have picked a book. When I got on the page I want to share with my friends on Facebook, I hit the Bookmarklet button and then I clicked on Copy. Thus the browser copies the generated in link to clipboard (meaning that it remembers it) in order to insert in into Facebook. Check the steps below:

Go now to Facebook. All you have to do is to insert the new link in order to prepare your post. Inserting the link can be done in 2 ways:

• click the right mouse button and choose the Paste option
• click the Ctrl and V buttons simultaneoulsy.

In the example below I used the first manner:

6. The finishing touch…

Basically, getting here, I could already press Post and… that’s it! But I like to smooth up the post a little and I recommend you to do so as well. For example, if I delete that long link, the image (of the book) will stay there. Therefore, we can write a message that can catch the eye, something like: “I read this book last week and I thought it was great! I highly recommend it!”

When a Facebook friend will click that image to see what that book is about, a 2Performant cookie will be placed. If that friend buys that book (or anything else on Elefant.ro), I will get a commission from his purchase’s value.

7. Shortening the affiliate links

Another way would be to shorten that link so that it takes up only a few characters in my post. This way is much better when we want to use our own picture(or not to use an image at all). To shorten the links, we can use https://goo.gl/. You can also use bitly.com or ow.ly

In the example below I have used goo.gl. I have inserted the code I added earlier on Facebook and this site shortened it for me. We will use this short version of Facebook, like shown below. You will see that after generating the short link I clicked on that button on the right: this means that the browser will remember this link. You can do the same by selecting the link and then right click and choose Copy.

Now you can write a short post (and add any image you want) and you can invite your Facebook friends to click this link:

Keep up the good work!

I hope this tutorial will be helpful for you and if you have any other questions, leave a comment or contact us at support@2Performant.com.

We tracked more than 3,000,000 sales since 2009 for more than 550 clients and 57,000 affiliates. Come on board, we have cookies!

Read Part 2: https://2performant.com/blog/tutorial-how-to-do-affiliate-marketing-on-facebook/

Read Part 3: https://2performant.com/blog/tutorial-how-to-do-affiliate-marketing-on-facebook-iii/