I’m quite sure that most of us would’ve thought about this concept at least once in their Twitter life ! Is it really possible to make money through Twitter. I’m not a big fan of this concept and this article is the result of a follower asking me if I really make any money out of Twitter through my profile.
Honestly, I think making money on Twitter is not a big deal if you really want to do it. Its easy. But there is a decision you have to make between your reputation and the possibilities of money you can make. You have to hit a balancing act. And the reasons why I think so is because –
Twitter has not yet evolved in to a trusted monetization platform like blogs.
While blogs are now widely used for monetization purposes, people know what is being monetized and webmasters know where to draw the line. But Twitter is still at an infant stage (when considering monetization) and any effort now might raise eye brows, if you’re doing it in the “unbalanced way”.
So before even thinking about monetizing your twitter profile, think well if you can carry it off. If you can’t, you might just be spoiling an opportunity, which might come later.
Of course, it is, but I believe there are some pre requisites before you can start doing it. Just like any business, you cannot start off just with the air to fill your tyres. You need to have the tyres, the fuel and the car of course to start off successfully. Let’s see what are the pre-requisites you need.
1. An engaging and trusted number of followers.
I don’t really know if your follower number matters but if you’re engaging more with your followers, you have a higher chance to earn more.
2. Possibly a good blog or a website to let people know you more.
Having a blog helps because it might not just be possible for your followers to judge you just from your Twitter profile.
1. Direct advertisement from products/services
If you have a good follower number (who are engaging of course), products and services would be willing to pay you for tweeting about their products. These are like the banner ads you place on your blog. Companies would be more convinced if you can give them your “click through ratio” for the links you post on your tweets. URL tracking services like bit.ly or SU.pr can be used here.
2. Tweeting Affiliate links
If you’re an affiliate marketer, you could also try tweeting those affiliate links to your followers. If you’re a trusted brand, its hugely likely that they would try the products you recommend.
3. Traffic sharing through navigation bars / frames
Sharing your traffic on Twitter with possible interested parties is a good way to ensure a win-win situation for both your readers and advertisers. This can be done by showing off a frame or navigation bar to every link you tweet or (Like Guy Kawasaki does for alltop.com) using a custom URL shortner that will show pages from your advertiser.
4. Twitter profile background Ad space
Your twitter background image is an excellent ad space for products / services interested in increasing their brand visibility. There may not be a huge possibility for this and you have to be a super star on Twitter for potential advertisers to find you interesting but nevertheless this is indeed a possibility.
6. Tweeting links from other sites
Another possible way of earning money on Twitter is to sign up with websites to promote their content. Probably on going contracts on monthly pay out (or similar) to promote their content through your twitter channel.
7. Trying out the money making schemes on Twitter
I’m not sure if any of these really work because they are mostly automated and I’m not a big fan of automating things. There are some proved ways of making money with Twitter like Magpie (Review from Mashable), but I haven’t used it yet and is quite unsure how successful it can be.
Twitter is not a tool to make money . Period. its just a simple communication tool everybody loves using for the simplicity of things. So any move to “make money out of it” is like trying to deceive your followers, who may not have the slightest clue that you are tweeting sponsored ads. I’m quite sure that at least some people would find it a big turn off. But you could always try and make sure that the noise factor is low and thus make any sponsored ad just like your normal tweet. How ? Let’s see.
- Do not accept bids from anyone who approaches you.
While its easy for one to get excited and over do it, I’d suggest to stick to your quality guidelines. I’m sure when you’re open to ads and have a good follower base, there would be offers from left and right, but wait..don’t just be greedy. Go through the website/product and see if it really would help your followers, otherwise keep away from the offer.
- Manually do a screening process of the potential advertisers.
Since there is no automation involved in any of the above mentioned points, do your reality check, every time.
- Stick to tweeting ONLY relevant ads.
Some ads might be well fit for a profile background image while some can go for the URL tweets. Make your decision on what’s best for you and your followers.
- Clearly mark the sponsored ads ads “Advertisement” so your followers know.
Sometimes, even if the ads are relevant, it would be much appreciated if you will mark your sponsored tweets as either “sponsored” or “advertisement”. So that your followers aren’t tricked !
- Don’t only tweet to make money. Know where to draw the line.
Like I said, don’t overdo it. Twitter is not meant for advertising or making money from it. Heck, it doesn’t even make any money for itself, until now. So make your choice, do it only if you think you can pull it off without hurting your followers, in fact only if it helps them in anyway.
These tips are good Twitter guidelines for those who make twitter source of extra income.
I suggest this for those who twitter and their Twittering days will never be the same!
Thanks!
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[...] post: How to make money on Twitter ? Some ideas that work ( without … | More Categories: make money blogging Tags: concept – concept-at-least – [...]
Good post, and I agree… I am not a fan of those automated people. They annoy me. I view Twitter as a communication tool to drive traffic, that is it.
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I agree with your post. good info
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Yes nice post, but I am not in twitter make money right now.
I am now actively related with drive traffic in my blog.
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The concept is one that people love to read about. Many of my contacts included will be happy to learn about this.
BTW I thought of these ideas before but never really got them organized into one place. Thanks for doing that for me.
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Do you think there will be any future ability to use Adsense or similar stuff on your Twitter account?
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Mani Karthik
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I’m not ruling out that possibility. If not AdSense something similar may be installed, but a lot of that depends to whose hands twitter fall into. If its Google, then its an easy guess.
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Nice Info!!!!!!!!!
I too use twitter to fetch traffic for my blog and making money from twitter is the second factor to be considered……
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There is less possibility that twitter will opt for ads , they are receiving funds more than enough…
if they allow users to place ads on their profile then twitter will be among the top 10 sites with ease…
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How to make money on Twitter ? Some ideas that work ( without … – Im quite sure that most of us wo http://tinyurl.com/lohays
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Very useful post! Really! I think the 1st two ways of making money on Twitter are the best.
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