It is really surprising what 140 characters can do! Twitter is good for conversations, following Wall Street, subscribing to someone’s blog, make payments, track words, syndicate hot topics, advertise a brand, be on the front lines of any world news, connect with politicians… The list goes on.
Unfortunately, rule number 1 in the business is: How do you make money out of this? Well, it is still a mystery how Twitter Inc plans to monetize its fastest-growing social network on the US market. However, I can tell you how you can make money with Twitter.
Today, I will release 3 articles about money on Twitter, and refer you to 3 different ad networks that operates on Twitter, and that I have tested.
I will start with the less attractive one: Be a Magpie.
Be A Magpie is not a bad idea, and it could even be your best choice depending on the way you use Twitter. Magpie integrates advertisers messages directly into the stream of Twitters that belong to the network: 5 tweets from the user, 1 from the advertiser, 5 user, 1 advertiser… (you control this occurrence)
Be A Magpie pairs advertisers’ keywords with Twitters’ tags (that Be A Magpie applies to each member of their network). That’s what they call contextualization. A little rough on the edges…
Quite honestly, I didn’t even venture on testing out this service, as I am not attracted at all by inserting unwanted content in my life stream. It doesn’t make sense with the way I use Twitter. That’s how a majority feels actually.
I do think that the service could have some merits for Twitter accounts that relay RSS news extremely frequently (like once every 5 minutes). These services typically don’t attract followers, but they probably get picked up through search feeds. The Be A Magpie ad strategy is different, and it could be a perfect fit for automated Twitter accounts. How much do you make?
You’re earning per magpie-tweet. Every magpie-tweet which appears in your timeline will be rewarded. The amount per tweet depends on the hotness of your tweet’s topics and the number of followers you have. So keep your followers happy and don’t risk annoying them with too many magpie-tweets.
So you do need followers! Once again, you can go around this limit by following people who automatically follow back. Finding something like 500 of them probably takes a little while, but once you’re ready to go, you just sit back and let Twitterfeed generate ad revenues for you.
I still think that this ad system encourages spam Twittering. The two other networks I will mention later today are way more attractive in terms of seamless integration.