Sponsored Tweets Case Study & Stats
- 36 Comments
- By Zac Johnson on September 22nd, 2009
This month I’ve reviewed Sponsored Tweets, and now it’s time to share some actual numbers. This month I ran two test campaigns, totaling almost $1400. Before going into the campaign breakdowns, I can say that advertising through Twitter can definitely send you a decent amount of traffic fast. The process of generating leads, finding the best deals and improving your ad copy is where it gets tough.
For my test campaigns, I decided to promote a blog post from ZacJohnson.com and RoyalTutorial.com. Since I had no idea how traffic would convert, I sent the users to two of my blogs in hopes of bringing in new leads, while possibly grabbing some new readers for each of the sites. The blog posts were targeted towards Twitter users.
Campaign #1 - ZacJohnson Blog Post
$735.50 Spent / 92 Tweeters to 1.9m Followers / 2773 clicks (.27 epc)
Campaign #2 - RoyalTutorial Blog Post
$612.58 Spent / 94 Tweeters to 619k followers / 1477 clicks (.42 epc)
Ad Copy:
It’s recommended that you leave the ad copy up to your tweeter to create. However, since this was a large test with two ad campaigns, I wanted to create the ad copy so I had a general idea how it do across the board. It might be best to have big “web celebs” create your ad copy, but I bought from many general accounts and thought I could write better copy.
Buying Tweets Based on CPM or Celebrity:
Before setting up your ad campaigns, you should try and get a general idea who you are marketing to. You can sort through available tweeters by keyword, but it may just be better to buy based on CPM numbers. The cpm cost on Sponsored Tweets is decided by the tweeter and ranges from $0.00 to $790.51. Do your research and you can advertise to accounts with a large following for a much cheaper price than other.
A few of the celebrities available through Sponsored Tweets are listed below. You have to call for most of the celeb account pricing, but Bob Villa has a cpm of $3.27. Thought he has 900k follers, at this rate it would most likely be way to expensive for any site or marketers to make a decent ROI, unless you had a targetted “home improvement” type of offer.
Quality of Traffic:
The only tracking available through Sponsored Tweets at the moment, is stats on the tweeter and how many clicks they’ve sent from their tweet. If you are looking for conversion tracking, this is something you will have to create on your end. With that said, I had over 100 signups come through from the test ad campaigns on Sponsored Tweets. It was a quick easy signup and there were over 4,000 clicks, so we are looking at a 2.5-4% conversion range. If you look at the campaign numbers again, you will see the first campaign was much cheaper on a eCPC basis. This may have been because of ad copy, but I also went with a different variation of tweeters among the two campaigns as well.
If you had the ability to do pixel tracking and see which tweeters actually delivered conversions, this could be a very valuable tool. There is also a huge click through rate on clicks when comparing different tweeters. Depending on the tweeter, some clicks ended up costing me over $1.00 per click, while others brought in traffic for just a few pennies. With the large variation of follower amounts and cpms, it’s tough to get an idea on where your conversions are coming from when buying on a mass scale.
How long do clicks keep coming in?
Before going live with my campaigns, I was very curious how long my tweets would keep getting traffic. You would think once the tweet goes out, you have roughly 24 hours to get the most traffic. This is true… most tweets are seen and either ignored or clicked. You will see most of your traffic come in right when the campaigns go live. I’m also seeing much better click results earlier in the week vs. later and on the weekends. I still refresh my stats and see clicks come in from tweets that went out over a week ago, so there is a long tail of clicks coming in… just very thin.
Does Sponsored Tweets Work?:
With a cost of roughly $1000 (+25% bonus offered this month), and over 4,000 clicks coming through, it was definitely worth the test to see what type of traffic and leads you can get from advertising directly on Twitter. The 100+ leads that came through are also good sign that people are acting on links. For anyone looking to send out straight CPA offers, it may take you some time to find what works, what ad copy to use and your max cpm price to pay… but once figured out, you can make money and bring in traffic.
I’ll probably setup a few more ad campaigns and be more precise on who I choose to send out tweets, tracking conversions better, and will keep you updated.
For anyone looking to give Sponsored Tweets a try, they are still offering a 25% bonus on any deposits you make into your account before the end of the month.
- Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Twitter
"With great power comes great responsibility".... my Uncle Ben told me that. Haha, just kidding! I'm Zac Johnson and I've been making money online for over 10 years now. In short, I started making money online while I was in high school... but my passion for marketing and making money goes back way earlier than that. I created ZacJohnson.com to help motivate you to start making money online, and live the life the you always dreamed of.
Very nice case study. I think that as long as you can get an offer targeted to who is tweeting, you might have some good luck. The prices are nuts, but it’s a new thing and those celebs are making some bank by selling out their twitter accounts.
Replyinteresting. guess larger scaled and promoting a blog better for branding? as for cpa stuff? i know my test was base on conversion ration. and click do still keep coming in, but not as heavily as the first set of clicks. a click or to does creep through
ReplyI spent around $350 for ShoeMoney tweet and earned 0 dollars in return. Save your money
Reply@Mike I think like any ad campaign, it depends on your product and pitch. Remember the people using Twitter aren’t necessarily the people buying products on infomercials, and vice versa, so you have to target towards your audience.
Reply@Mike:
It depends on your niche and the selling phrase that are you using. You should be studying your niche very well before advertising it.
Reply@Mike:
ReplyWhenever people actually lose money from online advertising, it’s generally because they didn’t do enough research and need to refine their closing strategy. The advertiser’s job is to get you eyeballs, it’s up to you to make use of them.
Oh how you come up with that case study..
ReplyI was impresses with that.. its a wiser way of promoting the business.
this was a cool read…I have a few campaigns that I want to try out but like some of the people that lost money, I don’t want to be poorly targeting my audience so will take some more time figuring all this magic out
ReplyInteresting find. Now that they have implemented the “guaranteed EPC or you get a retweet” policy I can definitely see this taking off. When I did it I spent about $300 with a terrible EPC. I think your it was your tweet that had the best CTR.
ReplyYeah I ran sponsored tweets, and the conversions suck.
Replythis is great… sponsoredtweets work on you… and me also.. rock
ReplySending traffic to your blog - what was the lead definition? RSS signup? Newsletter signup? An actual CPA lead you got paid for?..
ReplyHey Zac,
I was one of the Tweeters who ran your ad and am very interested to hear your findings. I liked that you wrote your own ad copy - but if it’s a campaign specifically about a product, then I like to have some general guidelines and write my own.
As you say, if you could track conversions it would be even more interesting
That’s great news you had an overall very positive experience with enough Sponsored Tweets conversions to make it attractive to do another advertising campaign.
ReplyIt’s paid content, not uncommon in the blogging and Twitter takes it seriously.
ReplyAdvertising itself is a game and an art. Somebody wins, somebody not. If you wanna be the first get it a try.
Nice news to know, thanks, Zac
As a new blogger I listen about sponsored tweet first time. Is it really work good?
ReplyGood find, am pleased to join Sponsored Tweets when i did, as it is known that Twitter has turned to be one of the most effective advertising platform these adays.
ReplyOK, so maybe you can now expalin to us how to actually buy some ads in their system?? It is super easy to sign up as a publisher and I’ve gotten some good cash for tweeting myself, but yesterday I wanted to spend some money advertising and couldn’t figure it out? N
ow I read you post today and tried again and still see no where to actually buy anything????
What am I missing?
ReplyI never liked the idea of making money from tweets, but Sponsored tweet is one of few programs which I actually liked…
ReplyProbably control over ad tweets is something which I always wanted..and since its been recommended by some big players..I dont mind trying it out…
@Legitimate work at home jobs:
ReplyTo everyone that keeps asking… it’s been good. I’ve personally made over $300 from a view tweets sent out, and have spent over $1400. Try it out, it’s the only way you’ll really know.
The traffic i got through tweeter was very untargeted
ReplyI did a test run myself and didnt find too many conversions. The traffic and clicks were there, just not the conversions…
ReplyTell us more about the lead generation aspect. you mentioned 100+ leads… how many “conversions” did you receive from the 4000 clicks? if it was 100 that seems fairly low (like 2.5% or so) any more data people can share about the usefulness of getting people onto your list via this technique would help us evaluate it further…
ReplyScam.
ReplyIs there any CPC campaign worth spending money on? It seems sponsored tweets are not the best way to spend your advertisement budget…
ReplyFor those of you interested in making money on Twitter, I have written couple of posts on that topic http://www.money-era.com/category/monetizing-twitter/
ReplyI tried it aswell. The ROI wasn’t that bad. I prefer to spend my money on adwords though.
Cheers
ReplyI don’t think I’ll ever get into this kind of advertising. I think advertising on twitter would only work well for certain niches In other niches, it would just be a big waste of money.
ReplyI think to make money from this will still require more testing and time trial.. Tweets can be rather random to many..
ReplyWell sponsored tweets are really making news these days. Interesting to see that they are targeting top bloggers to write about them …
ReplyTwitter with advertisements is only good for the publishers, but never for the advertisers
Take the advertisers’ money!
-Mike
ReplyReally interesting stuff. Sponsored Tweets seems to be a definite bargain. I’ve already sign up. Now am waiting and we’ll see how it goes.
Replyit’s generally because they didn’t do enough research and need to refine their closing strategy. The advertiser’s job is to get you eyeballs, it’s up to you to make use of them.
ReplyI did a test run myself and didnt find too many conversions. The traffic and clicks were there, just not the conversions…
ReplyIf you try a CPA campaign please post those results as well. Are there any other advertiser filters that you have use in sponsored tweets that improve results such as the followers to followed ratio?
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