After running a several campaigns on SponsoredTweets and spending a few thousand dollars, it’s time to reflect back upon my results and what I’ve experienced using both Twitter and SponsoredTweets. Being able to compare my CPM results with my CPC results is quite interesting, and will make setting up future campaigns a lot more rewarding. Even with the future of companies like SponsoredTweets and Ad.ly in jeopardy, advertising through Twitter will always be an option which these same principles can be applied.

CPM Advertising Costs Too Much
When SponsoredTweets first came out, the only option for advertising was to buy on a CPM model. Since Twitter advertising was such a new concept, there really was no average for what advertising to other Twitter users should cost. After going live with a campaign, many advertisers would find clicks end up costing over $1 each. SponsoredTweets later introduced “ClickWatch“, which would retweet your offer up to three times if your cost per click was over $1. With the introduction of CPC advertising, this is no longer an issue.

CPC Advertising Drives Better Results
About a week before the Twitter announcement to no longer allow third party advertising through their API, I setup a new campaign on SponsoredTweets using their CPC model. I deposit $300 into my ad campaign and was paying out .10 per click (.06 to tweeters, as SponsoredTweets takes 40%) to drive traffic to my Six Figure Affiliate Blogging free ebook. The results have been interesting… I personally wouldn’t want to send a “sponsored tweet” worth only .06 per click to my followers, but over 1,050 SponsoredTweets users already have. The volume was quite low at the .10 rate, but then I increased my rate to .12 and the volume picked up. Another disturbing key point is the number of fraudulent and robot clicks, nearly 4,000 clicks. If you were buying on CPM these clicks really wouldn’t matter, but it just shows how much crap traffic is floating around on Twitter. I would definitely stick with CPC advertising.

Twitter Users and Writing Ad Copy
This isn’t surprising, but it ad copy swing either way. If you come out with an affiliate product and want other internet marketers to send out a tweet about it, I’m sure they will write something great. However this hasn’t always been the case with my campaigns. During my CPC campaign for Six Figure Affiliate Blogging, I let anyone pick up the offer and tweet out whatever they want.

Let’s view a few examples of tweets that were sent out through my latest CPC ad campaign. The majority of tweets were effective and written something like “Tell your followers to about Zac Johnson’s new “Six Figure Affiliate Blogging” ebook. It’s 100% free to download.“, but more than a handful have slipped by where they just say something like “sponsor http://spn.tw/teRwx“… which provides no value and is sure not to get many clicks. Lastly, some tweets were even offensive, such as the ““Six Figure Affiliate Blogging” ebook. its free. you can learn 2 blog for $$$ so that you can buy a gun and suicide #ad http://spn.tw/espL” tweet. If a large and well known company was to allow auto approval of their tweet campaigns, this could come back to haunt them.

Clicks, Tweets and Conversion Rates
Despite what the click amounts are, and how the tweets are written, it all comes down to conversions. SponsoredTweets tracking says there were roughly 2,000 legitimate clicks. When I head over to my Google Analytics stats, it shows roughly 700. Not disputing numbers, but just going off what the reports tell me. The overall conversion rate for my Six Figure Affiliate Blogging SponsoredTweets campaign is at 9.3%, this is quite low compared to the average 50% most JV partners and affiliates are seeing. As of now, this campaign costs a few dollars per lead when advertising through Twitter and paying .12 per click.

These are a few of the main take aways I have experienced through advertising on SponsoredTweets. As Twitter policies change and SponsoredTweets has to become more of a manual / approval process, we may see improvements in higher quality tweets sent out, and CPC/CPM bidding.

Do you have a similar or different advertising experience with Twitter or SponsoredTweets?

Earlier this month SponsoredTweets announced they are now accepting advertisers for their new CPC model. Their only previous method for advertising, was simply to pay whatever that tweeter was looking to receive. For most advertisers this usually resulted in extremely high click costs, even with ClickWatch in place to prevent high ad costs.

With the new CPC model in place, it opens a whole new world for advertising on Twitter. You no longer have to worry about ending up with high click cost numbers, and this allows more functionality and control over your ad campaigns.

Last week I set up my own ad campaign to promote Six Figure Affiliate Blogging and targeted only “blogging” and “affiliate” related tweeters. The results are below.

So far 128 different users have sent out a tweet, and only 120 legitimate clicks have been sent in. Sponsored Tweets has done a really great job at managing fraud, as they have captured 640 clicks that they describe are from “Clicks that are from bots or were considered fraudulent, duplicates, generated from click farms or otherwise considered invalid.“. If these weren’t weeded out, it would have ended up costing me an extra $64.00.

My settings are to pay out .10 per click to twitter users that send out my message, but SponsoredTweets takes a 60% cut, which brings it down to .04 per click in the marketplace. I think the 60% rate is way too high, and makes most of the advertisers look really cheap, but they are actually willing to pay double what it looks like. You can see the rest of available CPC tweets to send out below.

If the volume was there and ST didn’t take such a big chunk of the deposit, I think there would be a lot more action. This would also make for a great opportunity to push affiliate offers, as you have a set price you are paying per click.

So how is my campaign actually perfoming? So far only $12 of the $300 I deposit was spent. Of the 120 valid clicks that came through, the landing page converted at 13% vs. the 60% average it’s seeing from most others promoting it. Roughly 15 leads for $12… not looking too good, but we are only 5% into the total spending of my ad campaign. I might end up raising the CPC to see if more tweeters decide to pick it up in the marketplace.

UPDATE: Today Twitter came out with news that they will no longer allow third party advertising through the use of their API. This will dramatically affect companies like SponsoredTweets and Ad.ly. Ted Murphy (founder of Izea / SponsoredTweets) had the following to say. The biggest take away is the following quote from Ted;

“We are going to make some changes to the way Sponsored Tweets works. We will no longer be publishing directly to your account through the Twitter API. Instead you will have to write the tweet yourself in whatever Twitter client you see fit.

Yes, it will be a more manual process. Yes, we liked the old way better too. But we want to comply with Twitters guidelines and be a good ecosystem partner. We have always made adjustments to our system to remain in compliance. Twitter has allotted 30 days to make this change, we will try to get it out as soon as we can. Until then it is business as usual.”

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