Many of us spend a lot of time on our social networks. In fact, the site you’re on right now, VOIS.com, is a social network, so you’re spending time on one right now. Some people are literally “connected” to their networks for every waking hour of their day. For others, having a strong, vibrant social network isn’t just a great way to communicate, but it’s a great way to make a living too.

A strong social network can mean great marketing potential. Members of networks build trust with one another by discussing issues, showing their expertise, learning from one another and, of course, sharing products and product information.

That’s where ReferralVille.com comes in. While marketing “gurus” and supposed social network experts have their way of promoting things and attempting to monetize their social networking, most of us probably don’t have that as our primary goal. That doesn’t mean we can’t do it, in an honest and thoughtful way, of course.

So ReferralVille offers that to us. The idea is to match consumers looking for a service with providers of that service.

The way it works is simple enough and looks like it could be surprisingly effective. The business with a product or service to offer registers with ReferralVille, listing their information. Consumers (who are also social network users) are also signed up on ReferralVille, of course.

The consumer than can look up products they may have used or are using in order to see if they can get a bonus for referring others. Once the service is found, the consumer is given a link and can send that through their networks in the same way you would utilize an affiliate link from Amazon or another site. The difference here is that the short link is specifically made for use on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

The person interested in the service referred by their friend can follow the link to get either a special offer, a special code, or something similar which can be used to give credit to the person referring. This results in a payoff, similar to an affiliate sale, but usually with a higher dividend.

Each payment is tracked and paid through ReferralVille, which collects a 15% transaction fee as their cut.

This makes it free until it pays off for someone, which is a better model than many affiliate systems have for their clients.

Definitely worth trying, ReferralVille is still in beta, but is open to use.