Monetizing Twitter – a review based on experience [ May 5th, 2010 ] Posted in » Make Money, Twitter

A number of people used to blog in the past just so that they could make money. The same is quickly becoming true on Twitter. There are so many Twitter accounts that churn out just automated tweets, and participate in all kinds of services to generate followers. Well, there is good reason for it. If you have anything over a 100 followers on Twitter, you have a good chance of making money on Twitter. Actually, you stand a better chance of making money on Twitter is your followers are organically grown (i.e. if they became your followers because they liked what you tweet, or you were referred by someone as a great person to follow). The reason is that such followers are likelier to read what you tweet, and click on links that you tweet.

So, how do you make money on Twitter? Mostly it involves making a sponsored tweet – yes, you get paid for a tweet. How do you get paid? Well, you sign up with services which allow you to do that. There are tons of these services. Some are of course fraudulent, and others are not so well paying. I tried my hand at this, and shortlisted this to three services which seem promising (one of which has already paid me twice). Below are short and sweet reviews of these three services, as I see them.

The first one (and the one I doubt the most) is called Magpie. My observations for this service are:

  • It auto-tweets to your account – set it, forget it. Although, you can set it for pre-approval so that you go and approve each tweet, but you can also set it for auto-approval.
  • It allows pay-per-tweet model. So, you actually get paid per tweet.
  • The drawback is that you can only cash out once you reach $50.

With Magpie, in less than a month, I have already accumulated $5.09 (as of this post), and it has tweeted out about 22 tweets for this amount. That is a good amount of earning. However, the moment of truth only comes in if you get paid. There are reports of people who have gotten paid, and there are reports of people who said that Magpie declared their Twitter accounts as violating terms, and so cancelled their payments. So, I don’t know what would happen with my account. I don’t think I am violating their terms of service, so let’s see.

The second one (and the one I don’t doubt as much, since its by a company which is well known). It’s called SponsoredTweets, by a company called Izea.Here are my observations on this service:

  • It works just as some of the other Izea services work – you get invited to opportunities (I got about 4 invites in the last month). If you don’t respond to the opportunity, then it can expire. So it does not auto-approve for you. Once you accept an opportunity (you can negotiate the tweet price), you write your tweet, and then wait for advertiser approval. Once the advertiser approves, SponsoredTweets tweets out the tweet you wrote on your behalf automatically.
  • It is a pay-per-tweet model.
  • You can only cash out once you reach $50.
  • The good thing is that you can set your own price. So, if you have a lot of followers, you can charge a higher price per tweet.

In 4 tweets, I have accumulated $1.95 in my account. The good thing is that I am certain, that i will get a payout whenever I make it to $50. Izea has a very good track record of payment (and I have been paid by them before while using PayPerPost and SocialSpark).

The final one and the one that is the best so far is called MyLikes. This is a very new company on the scene, but they are great. They have an overall StumbleUpon like model (not entirely) where you can basically create a ‘like’ for anything in the world. And that is what you do on the site. I love to spend time on it. However, part of the model is that you can create “Sponsored Likes” which you can then tweet out to Twitter, and then get paid for it. Here are my observations:

  • It is a pay-per-click model, primarily. So every sponsored like has a link, and you get paid for the number of clicks that link generates. They do have a pay-per-tweet, but you hardly every see campaigns which are pay-per-tweet.
  • It only allows you to send one sponsored tweet every day.
  • It pays you weekly – yes weekly, every Friday.
  • The minimum payout is $2. Yes that is two dollars.

In the last month, I have been paid twice, with the third payment expected this weekend. Below is a screenshot from my PayPal account showing one of the payments from MyLikes. In total, I have made a little over $12 from MyLikes so far.

image

So, as you can see, it is not a bad service to be used.

There are many other our there, but I have decided to stay with these three. Between them, I get a maximum of 2-4 paid tweets in a day, and that helps me keep the paid content to a relatively low percentage, since I send out about 20-30 tweets a day on average. If you are going to check any of the services out, I request you to use the above links since they contain referral information which helps me out, and it doesn’t harm you any.

Also, if you would like to follow me on Twitter, then click here.

Update (Jun 21, 2010): Well, I have been into these services a bit longer now. I thought I would update this article a little. Of the three services I have reviewed above:

  • MyLikes continues to excel. I have gotten a payment from them every week. Once again, you can sign up with them by clicking here.
  • SponsoredTweets continues to accrue money for me. After a certain while, I got access to Pay-Per-Click as well. There are always some opportunities available. I tend to use the PayPerTweet opportunities more, though those are not available as often. To sign up, you can click here.
  • Magpie has been a disappointment. I have not received a tweet from them in over 12 days. I have a little under $15 just sitting there which I can’t withdraw till I reach $50. I will update this post if this situation changes, but I am not keeping my hopes too high.

Aside from the two above, I finally decided to try out another service called RevTwt. I have only tweeted from it twice so far (again trying to keep sponsored content to a minimum in my stream). But, they always have a fairly large inventory of ads to tweet from. I have heard a lot about them, so I am going to keep my hopes up for this system.

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Convert office paper waste into toilet paper

Yes, you read that title right. Someone created a machine to convert office paper into toilet paper. This is basically a paper recycling plant which you can place right in your office. The machine was created by a Japanese company (nutty inventors, them Japanese) called Oriental. If you visit that link, you will notice that the website is in Japanese. You can try Google Translate on the page to read it in English. The machine is called WhiteGoat (seriously, I couldn’t make heads or tails of the name), and it basically takes your office paper waste in from one end, and throws out toilet paper rolls out the other. Here’s how the website depicts this process:

whitegoat

Basically, you are saving the environment by using this machine (they say). It does operate at 1100 watts, and takes about 30 minutes to convert 40 A4 sheets into one toilet paper roll. Which means that unless you are using clean electricity, you might still be producing a lot of pollution using this machine. Here’s a video about this machine on YouTube from an exhibition where this machine was demonstrated.

 

Oh also, it is supposed to cost $100,000 (couldn’t confirm this from the website), and weighs 600 Kg. Still, it could save you a ton in toilet paper cost and earn you environment points at the same time.

March 15th, 2010 | 1 Comment

A step in the right direction

Here’s something real cool. But before I tell you what it is, let me ask you: how many devices do you have that get charged through a USB port? I thought so. Almost everyone today has one device or more which use USB to charge. And yet, we don’t have the ability to charge directly from the wall without using a special adapter.

Well, that is changing. Take a look at the following picture:

usb wall

Yup, it’s a wall socket with two USB ports built-in. And this device is a near reality and is currently pre-ordering for less than $20.00. Here’s the link to the manufacturer’s site which explains the specifications and gives some more information about the socket: http://store.fastmac.com/product_info.php?products_id=458. I love it when technology moves in the right direction.

February 23rd, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Crazy trick photography

Here’s a new term that I learned today – Sleeveface – a phenomenon wherein one or more persons obscure or augment body parts with record sleeve(s), causing an illusion.Well, pictures are louder than words, and so, here goes. All photos are taken from Flickr, and are marked under Creative Commons. Click the photo to visit the photographer’s page to see other work by the photographer.

There are hundreds of these out there, go look for your own (just search for sleeveface).

the Coltrane side...

 Sleeveface Barbara Streisand -Duquesa

 Sleeveface

 SleeveFace Gaudério - Neto Fagundes

 sleeveface 2

 sleeveface adriano celentano

 

Simon & Garfunkel Chato

 Duets

February 19th, 2010 | Leave a Comment

I have to say, the Windows Phone looks really slick

Windows Phone was announced today, and I have to say, I am impressed (if demo videos are anything to go by). It looks really slick, and at least graphically, it makes the iPhone look like something from the last century. Now, if it can only match up the iPhone on usability and ease of use, I am definitely going to consider getting one.

Head over to http://www.windowsphone7series.com/ for demos and general buzz. Notice that they want to call it Windows Phone, and not Windows Mobile 7. They are going to be very strict with manufacturers on the phone specifications (a leaf out of Apple’s book, I guess). Here are a couple of screenshots to get you started.

Windows Phone

Windows Phone 2

For a quick understanding of what’s new and what’s it all about, check out the coverage on MobileCrunch: http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/02/15/microsoft-announces-windows-mobile-7-now-officially-dubbed-windows-phone/

February 15th, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Google is experimenting with Gigabit Internet – WOW

This just came in. While Google has been discussing better bandwidth access with the US government agencies, it decided to take it up a notch by announcing an experimental gigabit internet access in Unites States for offer for up to 500,000 consumers. This is amazing, it really is. From their blog:

We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.

Well, I wish some of this high bandwidth stuff would come into India. Anyway, it would be interesting to see what people come up with for these type of bandwidths speeds. Google is hoping to see some innovation. So are we.

February 10th, 2010 | 1 Comment

Another comic about good code

I love comics, because they often put the true reality in your face. Have you seen the comic about the only measure of code quality? Well, here’s another comic (this one by Geek and Poke) which describes exactly what good code is. Great one :)

good code

February 8th, 2010 | Leave a Comment

A work of art, if not more

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of LG Chocolate Touch. All opinions are 100% mine.

These days there are so many options available when it comes to buying a mobile phone. The reason is that there are so many more requirements that the consumer has of their phone – making calls (of course), using the internet, listening to music, taking photos, social networking with friends, and many more. One of the phones that fulfills most of these requirements is a a device by LG called LG Chocolate Touch. This phone has a lot of neat features that have the potential to make this a phone of choice.

Let’s look at some features. If you listen to music on your phone, then you won’t be disappointed because it incorporates the Dolby Mobile technology for crystal clear sound. This means you don’t have to lug around that mp3 player with you anymore. A dedicated key for social network messaging allows easy access to send status updates to Twitter, Facebook or whichever social network that you are active on. The 3.2 megapixel camera and recorder eliminate the need to carry your point-and-shoot as well as your camcorder with you wherever you go.

These features combine with the great software which gives you very beautiful visual displays, great text and voice messaging capabilities, and cute features such as rhythmic vibrations which cause the phone to vibrate in sync with the beat of the music. All in all, it makes a great little package which should be a good option for people on the move who want to stay connected with their friends.

Visit my sponsor: What Would You Do?

January 29th, 2010 | Leave a Comment
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