How to Make Money with Twitter

Written by Zac Johnson
social social social

Lately Twitter has just been about everywhere. It seems like once the celebrities grabbed notice, it just went widespread through television and all media outlets. However, Twitter still isn’t making any money. Look back in time and you will see the same scenerio with MySpace and Facebook. These mega huge community web sites were created and used by millions, but still weren’t generating any money. On the flip side, when you have such a massive amount of users on a service, there are a few who are bound to figure out how to start making money.

Today I came across an interesting post on John Chow’s blog, where he goes into some detail on one of his latest affiliate promotions. First John posted a “tweet” on Twitter about the “Ultimate Footer Ad” that he is using. After his first two tweets about the product, John generated over $306 in product sales within the first 24 hours.

Keep in mind, John has over 13,000 followers, but the concept is that he generated all of those sales JUST by using twitter. John later went on to compare his sales numbers vs. blog post, and a follow mailing to his newsletter. The newsletter mailing ended up making the most money, but the Twitter post only took a few seconds.

Personally, I’ve only used Twitter for networking and keeping my followers updated with my blog. The search.twitter.com feature on the site is exploding in use as of lately. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some type of ad system or monetization from Twitter in the future. This is also an excellent resource for seeing what others are promoting, or saying about other affiliate products.

There is so much potential for making money with Twitter, but it’s still a young service and many are very protective of how others are using the service. A lot of sites (including mine) have run contests and promotions, where they are ask Twitter users to retweet a short sentence and a link your site, in exchange for being entered into a contest. This isn’t a big generator for money, but will build your followers and branding on Twitter.

It’s all about how you come off to your Twitter followers. It’s easy for someone to click “follow”, and see what you have to say. But if you are continually linking out, or trying to sell your users, they can just as easily (and more anxiously), click that “unfollow” button.

What methods have you seen, or used, for generating revenue on Twitter? The best method for long term success is to focus on building a loyal following of “followers” and keep them updated with quality tweets and what you are currently working on. You have a much better chance on having them value your opinion and clicking on your links, if you don’t continually spam or try to sell them.

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34 Replies to “How to Make Money with Twitter”

  1. Good perspective on things. Its true that if all you are going to do is peddle links on Twitter, then your followers will slowly become unfollowers….there must be a balance and in business, closer you are to the line, the bigger the payoff.

  2. I found it hard to be engaged on Twitter, simply because it's hard to follow hundreds of people at the same time.

    You really have to be a powerful blogger (or a popular blogger) so that people care to follow and really are following you

  3. Making money out of twitter. Now you've got my attention! If you have a following of 13,000 odd it does make sense to use it as a tool to promote offers you might have, but you need to firstly build up that following, that is where the challenge lies!

  4. It would be interesting to find out how much a follower on twitter are worth.

    A lot of people just follow in order to get a follow back.

    Chow posted that the time spent to tweet the offer was minimal but one should also consider the time spent on getting all those followers. So what is the time spent on each sale?

    But for marketing i've noticed its just the obvious. Cloaking an affiliate link with a url minimizer and then tweet something like. I really like this tool link

  6. I've had only minor success on twitter so far. I have a following of about 600 users but I've found that most links I post only will generate around 5-10 interested clicks. I don't post links too often as I'm still trying to find the balance.

  7. @Michael Aulia:

    Following hundreds of people is something I'm still coming ot terms with. I think the best solution is to break people into groups based upon how you'd know them and then to use a service like TweetDeck. It makes it easier to follow the ones you're most interested in responding to.

  8. Actually, most of the stuff about making money from twitter that I have seen is right here in your posts. You have done a good job covering the landscape.

  9. I think Twitter has some possibilities sure but the amount of spam tools created to blast that system I think will be its down fall. Myspace and FaceBook from what I can tell are hard to spam – at least I never heard of any automated tools for doing it, unlike twitter.

    Seeings how John has a rep from being an affiliate marketer, its nice to see that he is doing it now a lot more!

  11. I was a little late to twitter but I am now building everything up. I have around 200 followers now and see a few clicks for each link I click but I try to also respond to a few peoples tweets daily and I received around 55 of my followers all from a politician responding to one of my tweets so it shows you how much power Twitter actually has in not just making money but branding your business.

  12. Twitter spreads the word out and if you have so many people to see what you are saying…then you are bound to make money out of it.

  13. I'm still always debating the idea of autofollowing. It will increase your own followers, because most people want you to follow them back. On the flip side, I want to see what the main people I follow have to say, and if I was to auto follow everyone back… it would probably get lost in the clutter.

  15. Heh, I just left a comment on John's post about his experiment. It isn't that amazing as he has the followers and reputation to do it. Even though he tells everyone to try it, it's not that easy.

    I have tried it and it doesn't work out like he says. It just comes down to your "NAME".

    -Mike

  16. Thanks for the great ideas, Zac … will definitely be implementing some of these!

  17. Got some ideas… Twitter – its new big thing, better use it than ignore.

    A lot of people really just follow in order to get a follow back.

  18. I too only use Twitter for promoting my blog posts and to keep in touch, I have yet to venture into true money making with Twitter, I would imagine you need tons of followers and popularity,

  19. I don't think so it would be that easy to earn money. That would also mean spending too much time on Twitter for few bucks.

  20. It seems like most of the people I follow spams their websites all the time. I find it hard to connect with people on Twitter. I can add someone and then they would have an auto DM to tell me thanks for following them – here is my website (link).

  21. Twitter is another great revenue source everyone can use at no cost. Tweet relevant things to your followers and you are sure to see a quick and easy return.

  23. @Crazy Oldie:

    You're right Crazy Oldie (love the name, BTW :-))

    Unless you're actually providing some kind of value to your followers, you won't keep them for long.

    It's a bit like blogs which just posts affiliate product reviews, there's little value for the readers, so they won't hang around.

  24. You bet.. read this on JCDC too. Its quite amazing to see him make almost as much on twitter as his mailing list..

  26. If its another money earner then why not use it! There are many new sites springing up to monetize twitter. Overall though I would opt for tweeting messages and links that are of value and stand a better chance of getting clicked.

  27. I was a bit late to jump on the twitter bandwagon, but now that I have I can truly see just how popular it is. You are absolutely right, twitter swept through America like a rolling fire. Its important to use these huge online community sites to promote yourself and your business. There is no other better source of free marketing.

  29. I have just started my campaign on twitter and am looking forward to see how it pans out.

    I have setup other tweets based on similar subject matter as I am promoting, but as general knowledge tweets and not promotion so as not to spam my promotion links in every post.

    I am getting a small amount of new followers every 3 to 4 hours which is very cool.

    <abbr>darrenf’s last blog post..cosmic 11</abbr>

  30. Hi, there.I can recommend The Internet's Fastest, Easiest And Laziest 'Plug-And-Play' Software For Making Immediate Money Online With Twitter.

  31. I have made a nice chunk of cash through twitter. Namely, I was able to secure two consulting contracts. I think most of my followers are there because they just hit the button, but regardless of who is following me, I'm trying to talk to one type of audience, be interesting but most importantly informative. I have put countless days into my twitter account, probably too much. Now I have about 15000 followers. When it comes down to how much I made on it so far, it was definitely worth it, and I will concentrate on twitter much more. Also, I got lot's of other requests and responses which maybe indirectly responsible for some more business, but I have no way to measure that.

  32. i think this will be very good for affiliate marketers who are promoting products of other websites

  33. I use twitter but again find people just follow you to follow them, seems bit pointless.
    I haven't really gained much work or quotes from twitter i tend to have a look and see so many posts it turns me off it.
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