We talked about the criteria a successful FB App MUST incorporate to ensure that it takes on a life of its own through viral distribution.  We also talked about how you get started, especially if you don’t have any programming skills.

If you are already developing a Facebook Application, you will want to know about the free application hosting with programming functions. This is especially critical because successful Facebook applications could have 500,000 or more daily active users a day.

To access this massive 45-minute recording, you should add the $uperRewards application.

After you have added it, you can submit your application to join the $uperRewards Developers group.

The developers group will also contain tips on application design and game mechanics and ideas for incorporating the $uperRewards application into your application and increase your monetization.

Current Facebook Application owners who have added $uperRewards have reported up to a 20 times increase in profit since adding the application.

As we are manually reviewing each application, it may take up to 48 hours to approve your application.

Here are the links:

–> $uperRewards Application

–> $uperRewards Developers Group

Among our discussion topics:

• How to get your marketing efforts started on Facebook
• How to effectively use Facebook Social Ads
• Facebook Social Ads marketing and pricing strategies
• Using Facebook’s ‘Walled Garden’ architecture to your advantage
• The future of Facebook and search engines

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, to find out more, listen to the podcast below.

***The best part has to be to monster 45-minute final segment of the interview which I’ll be releasing on Monday.

Stay tuned.

Following the post on the launch of Jason “Chickenhole” Bailey’s $uperRewards Facebook monetization service, I have been hearing that a lack of programming skills (PHP especially) seems to be the biggest stumbling block.

It’s actually the least of the issues you will face, because you can easily outsource the programming and API work to a developer in an Eastern European country or to India.

The biggest challenges you will face are:

• Create something that is useful for your visitors AND profitable for yourself
• How to stand out from the crowd

I’m finding that social network applications tend to fall into 2 categories:

• Monetization isn’t planned into the application and tends to be loosely added on

Take a look at this Facebook application – Defense of the Ancients –

There are banners for the AceBucks monetization application at the top and the bottom of the page.

In these instances, it’s very much “interruptive” monetization – like having ads in a TV program.

If you have a Tivo, you can wipe them out.

Similarly, with prolonged exposure to such ad placements outside of the prime real estate (the gameplay area), visitors will develop “banner blindness” after the first or second day, with the result that clickthrough rates plunge below 1% in many cases.

This is not specific to this specific application, but probably affects about 80% of such applications out there.

• Pure monetization applications

On the other hand, you have applications which are solely created to monetize. It just looks like a thinly disguised zip/email submit form. The application’s only sole reason to exist seems to collect your personal information or have you buy something.

There’s little or no content, and in my eyes, they’re the Facebook equivalent of “Made For Adsense” sites.

You might install them because they tend to be in shiny colors, but then they’re removed after the brief thrill wears off.

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So does that mean “trying to earn an income off a social network is pointless” or is too hard or that the market is saturated, or that Facebook is going to clamp down on all money making attempts?

I don’t think so. Here’s why.

If you create value, you will be sticking around for a long time.

Value is something which adds to the user’s social experience – you might give them some entertainment, some useful information, a tip, a coupon code for something they had been planning to buy, a joke to lighten their day…

The definition is this: If they spent some time on your application and they get more value, compared to the time they spent on it. (eg. reading your information in 2 minutes, save them 30 minutes of trawling through Wikipedia, for example), then you’ve created a value user experience.

They’ll be likely to add your application and if you have an “add friend” capability, they’ll send it to their friends and your community will grow exponentially through the power of viral marketing.

If you build value as the foundation, the traffic and the growth will come.

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Monetization:

So if direct, in-your-face, interruptive monetization techniques do not work, how do you monetize?

Use the AdSense “ad blending” techniques or product placement strategies you see on TV and movies as an example.

If monetization is a natural part of your application, and has been planned into your application development, it will be less likely to stick out like a sore thumb.

Let’s look at some of the stats Jason Bailey has thrown out – For the regular Facebook apps, it’s not uncommon to see clickthrough rates of less than 1% for the traditional monetization methods. But in cases of applications where the monetization has been integrated into the application, you can expect to see clickthrough rates of 75%.

What does this mean?

Planning has to be an integral part of your monetization process.

The monetization channel is built-in and becomes part of your application.

Seth Godin covers this aspect well in his books.

In a Fast Company article dating back to 1998, Seth Godin talks about Permission Marketing –

The new model, he argues, is built around permission. The challenge for marketers is to persuade consumers to volunteer attention – to “raise their hands” (one of Godin’s favorite phrases) – to agree to learn more about a company and its products. “Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers,” he says. “It’s not just about entertainment – it’s about education.”

And if you’re hearing some echoes of free iPods and free Xbox360s as you read this next paragraph, you’re not alone…

You can use lots of techniques to make it worthwhile for people to give you permission to talk to them. We use games because they work. Sweepstakes have been around for 700 years. Game shows were among the first programs on radio and television. Back in 1990, Prodigy asked us to create a game for it. The game’s first run ended late last year, and we’ve started it up again. It’s called Guts. Players get seven trivia questions a week. Each question is worth more points than the one before, and each is harder than the one before. You can stop at any time and keep your current score, and then come back the next week for another round. But if you miss one question, you not only lose the points from that week – you lose all your points for the whole game. So it takes guts to stay in. So far, more than 3 million people have played Guts. It’s the most popular online game in history.

People love games. They’re fun, exciting, engaging. We not only entertain people but also educate them – and we get paid for it! We create promotions in which the game itself involves information about products. People search for ads and read them because they have to find missing pieces of information to get the prizes they want. When’s the last time you searched for a TV commercial?

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As an example of a social network that has it’s own economy (which translates into a real world dollars-and-sense economy) take a look at Second Life:

The Linden (Second Life’s unit of currency) can be converted into real world currency. And the economy has it’s instruction manuals:

With titles focused on how to get rich in second life, how to do “everything” in second life.

These “make money online” books  are available at Amazon, for real dollars, of course…

So it’s a matter of time before the flood of make money on Facebook books appear.

–

If you are still looking for examples, take a look at free MMPOG Maplestory:

The free MMPOG which is a sideways third-person RPG shooter is free to play, but if you want upgrades, you need to pay for them.

So if you’re paying real world money for virtual items,

Real $$$ -> Virtual weapons/armor.

Wouldn’t the virtual social economy that’s building up on Facebook be something that can be converted into real world currency too?

Virtual rewards points -> Real world prizes and real world cash

For more information, check out:

–> $uper Rewards Facebook Monetization Service

Even better, Facebook applications and their developers are banking big, to the tune of a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and possibly even a million dollars in a week.

Enter the latest entrant, Facebook application $uper Rewards, spearheaded by Jason “Chickenhole” Bailey.

While Jason is one of the owners of CPA network Millnic Media, he has mentioned that $uper Rewards is independent of Millnic Media and will work other networks and merchants to expand it’s business opportunity.

What is $uper Rewards?

$uper Rewards functions as a “Facebook Application monetization widget” that Facebook Application developers can insert in their applications.

It’s based on a PHP architecture and provides access to more than 300 offers from about 12 different affiliate/CPA networks.

The $uper Rewards platform includes features like geo-targeting functions to provide geographically appropriate offers to the application users.

Jason Bailey “Chickenhole”

As Jason describes the service: “$R is a tool for any points/rewards based application which allows developers to easily manage incentivzable offers from dozens of CPA networks. This is a DEAD SIMPLE cut and paste solution that does 95% of the work associated with monetizing such an app for you.”

Among the key features of $uper Rewards:

• Incentivizable Offers to cover EVERY COUNTRY on the planet
• Over 30 Canada Specific offers
• Over 25 UK specific offers

Some of the other features, include:

• Geo Targeting management
• Managing all of the creative
• Maximizing revenue from each user, including customer support

Some of the Facebook Applications already incorporating $R include:

• Hockey Pool Pro
• Scratch and Win
• Plane Crazy
• SexyPoke!

Some feedback from an early adopter: “$uperRewards rocks. We tried the main CPA networks – offerpal, cpalead etc etc. Right now $uperRewards is generating exactly 20 times the revenue per daily active user of the next best network we used.”

Compared to other comparable services, $R offers the highest payouts:

myOfferPal 60/40
CPA Storm 50/50
CPA Lead 75/25
$R: 90% to publisher

I’m currently helping Jason with the business development and application developer side of the business.

If you’d like to find out more about $R and incorporate it into your application, you can join the $uperRewards application group via this tracking link. (be sure to drop me a Facebook PM though.)

Register via the link above and you’ll get access to the $R information/optimization/resource page which once it’s up.

To better explain $uperRewards, here are two videos from Jason’s recent presentation at the Vancouver Facebook Developers Garage.



$uper Rewards Part 1



$uper Rewards Part 2

If you are a Facebook Application developer or are planning to develop one, you can sign up for $uperRewards, and drop me a note via Facebook private message, so your application can be tracked.

Jason’s one of the super affiliates that I’ve learned a number of techniques from and he’s also one of the partners at CPA network Millnic Media.

I had a chance to talk to Jason and he’s mentioned that he’s spending lots of time monetizing the Facebook social network through the applications.

If you’re still wondering about the financial viability of developing a Facebook App, Jason talks about how a particular app generated $1 MILLION in a week (did I get your attention?), and how the arbitrage mechanics work on Facebook.

In fact, to get an insight, you might want to check out the presentation he gave at a Facebook Developer’s Garage in Vancouver last October.

Check these videos out:

As a bonus and if you’re new to CPA marketing, Jason also explains the mechanics of how zip/email submits work and what happens to the data collected by the network.

As Millnic’s set up by a group of affiliates who’ve created an affiliate-focused network, you can expect their offers to incorporate affiliate-friendly features.

If you’re interested, you can sign up for the:

–> Millnic Media CPA Network

UPDATE: Check out:

–> $uper Rewards Facebook Monetization Service