Make Money With Twitter! 5 Monetization Models
By Steve Poland • March 29, 2007
With Twitter’s recent API addition, there is potential for many new applications to be built off the Twitter back-end (although, not quite yet). Twitter usernames are essentially keywords used for these applications built on the Twitter platform — and Twitter username squatting is happening. The question is, how will these new businesses monetize — and how will Twitter itself monetize:
The power in any advertising-supported website, publication, TV show, etc, is community (readers, viewers, listeners, etc). Build a great service, get people to use it (or read, listen, view) and you can then send out specific ads to those users. Example 1: Have a Twitter username for “Knicks” (i.e. NY Knicks, a basketball team in the NBA). People add that user as their friend — the “Knicks” username pushes out any Knicks news… the minute it happens! Ditto on sports scores — if a Knicks game is going on, it’ll send out the score during the game to keep you alerted, if you want to be. If you can get 10,000 Knicks fans on your list — then you can either:
1) Put an ad in any blank space at the end of your 140-character messages — i.e. “Drink an ice cold, refreshing Pepsi.”
2) Send out an advertisement every 10th or 50th (whatever you learn to be OK with your users) twitter. Thus, I may receive 10 twitters of news announcements, and the 11th is an advertisement for Grey Goose vodka.
Next options…
3) Pay-Per-Twitter Message — If there was a username called “NYCtechJobs” — any person looking for a tech job in NYC could be a friend of this list, and be notified instantly of any new NYC tech jobs. Where would those jobs come from? Initially possibly just from Craigs List, Monster, Hot Jobs, etc … but then say you have 2,000 users that are the friends of “NYCtechJobs”, that means you have 2,000 prospective tech employees in the NYC area. A company would love to get their latest tech job out to those prospects, so they can find a hire — thus, they go to a web page you have setup, and they are able to create a message up to 140 characters (likely include a URL to full job details) with some details on the job. You can charge the employer for posting this.
Ditto with a list (er, username) like “NYCfurniture”. People could pay to broadcast their message to all of the friends of “NYCfurniture”.
4) Charge for access to your Twitter messages — Your username can be private and only your friends can receive/view your twitters. Thus, if you had valuable/timely information — you could have a subscription-based service where you charge $X for people to be your friend, and then they would have access to your twitters. Thus, a celebrity could charge for this — or a newspaper might do this to give you access to the news first — or some blogger that finds online shopping deals could send them to you … basically, if the user wanted to be “in the know” for whatever offering, they’d pay $X for access (per week or month). Note: You’d have to verify their subscriptions — and if they haven’t paid for the month, you’d remove them as a friend from your Twitter account.
5) Commissions on user purchases — Setup a service that allows users to buy products through this. User would need to setup an account with you with their credit card (or PayPal info, or a deposit into this proposed payment service) stored. I imagine a user could be browsing Wired magazine and be able to quickly purchase a subscription for $10 by ripping out their cell phone, Twittering a code like “d buy wired”, with a confirmation coming back to the user and them approving the confirmation possibly using a password, then the transaction occurring.
The biggest question on everyone’s minds is what Evan Williams is thinking. They’re opening up their back-end to allow the development of applications on the Twitter platform (which I think is real smart, because people are going to build useful applications for Twitter users — and everyone will be using Twitter in some capacity more often) … but will Evan plan to charge these companies that are building apps? Will Evan not want these apps monetizing themselves? How is Evan planning to monetize Twitter — or will he sell and leave that to a Yahoo/Microsoft/News Corp to figure out how to extract value out of the massive userbase (like his sale of Blogger to Google)? I don’t think Evan knows the answers quite yet — he’s just focused on building a great application for users.
You can follow me at twitter.com/techquilashots.
Related posts:
- Twitter - Become the (Facebook) Platform, For Mobile I had an idea last week while chatting with Alex Payne, one of the Twitter developers. In the past, I wrote about how Twitter opened up their API for direct messages — which I thought...
- Twitter Usernames Are Like Domains in 1995 I posted an article on TechCrunch last night after I requested the Twitter dev team to open their API and expose “direct messages”. (Note: Some others had requested similar functionality from Twitter). I saw the...
- “Pull” Twitter Apps Not Practical Until… “Pull” Twitter apps aren’t very practical until a setting is added to each user account. Right now, if someone adds me as a friend — I still can’t receive any direct messages they send me,...
- Make Money on Twitter, in minutes Good post for making money on Twitter by mixing in affiliate marketing on @esnagel’s blog: http://www.netnagel.com/2008/12/no-good-deed-goes-unpunished.html SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Make Money With Twitter! 5 Monetization Models", url: "http://blog.stevepoland.com/make-money-with-twitter-5-monetization-models/" });...
- It’s Time for Twitter Premium Accounts Former TechCrunch writer Nick Gonzalez’s post “Who Owns Your Social Media Accounts“, as a reply to my Twitter Needs Better Username Policy (the ‘celtics’ fiasco), got me thinking… This is the perfect opportunity for Twitter...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Comments
47 Responses to “Make Money With Twitter! 5 Monetization Models”
Got something to say?
Steve's start-up Extendy
Sign-up for Extendy beta launch notification
Follow 'STP' on Twitter
http://twitter.com/STPSubscribe to Steve Poland's Writings
Search
Recently Written
- How to Startup! (not being a programmer)
- Start-up Roadmap?
- 100+ Web Start-up Business Ideas
- IDEA #100 - Twitter License Plate social network
- RE: The First Ten Things the New CEO of MySpace Should Do
- Staffing Plan for a Widget Startup Company
- BarCamp Buffalo #3 (May 4, 2009 @ 6:30PM)
- If You Suck, You’re Dead
- Google’s New Competitor: 1 Geek
- Open Letter to Airlines (United Airlines et al)
Admin
Recent Readers
| Categories |
You’ve got some great ideas here steve. One thing I realized with my website is that it’s better to build a good site and get a userbase, rather than try and squeeze every 10 cents you can out of AdSense. Once Twitter hits the MySpace crowd, it will be much more marketable.
Anyways, am I the only one that thinks Twitter is painfully slow? Your little widget on your blog takes forever to load, and whenever I try to go to a Twitter page, it takes quite a while. What’s going to happen when they have 10x as many users?
@Chris — they are working to scale the service.
Maybe it’s just because I don’t ever text message - I don’t even have a plan that offers it (meaning I pay $0.10 per message), but I can’t think of a single thing I would be interested in getting sent to my phone.
If I want the news I’ll just hop online and I think that’s how the majority of users are. I think the market for a group of users that have no access except for their phone is very slim. Those users that are on the road all the time already have a solution for this problem anyways - data packages with their Blackberry.
I don’t know how effective it might be, but Twitter could definitely be used for “Punch the Monkey” types of promos. For example, if you were at a sporting event, a company like Pizza Hut could put an ad up on the scoreboard for a few minutes at half time saying, “The first 100 people to send a text message to “d pizzahut (your email) will receive an emailed coupon for $10 off their next order.” Interactive advertising/marketing can best be done by SMS/Twit because it is (1) mobile and (2) simple. So, instead of “40404 starbucks” to get a location, it could be a billboard saying “$1 off a latte if you send your email to ‘d starbucks’ on Twitter. Exit now to use your coupon!” Great for tracking marketing and giving something back to the customer of near-term use.
First off, keep up the posts on Twitter.. I love em! How about daily horoscopes? Yes, I’ve got the horoscopes name on Twitter
[...] Techquila Shots » Make Money With Twitter! 5 Monetization Models (tags: business advertising ideas) [...]
Brilliant, Collin! I’ve covered boldlygoing and myself (jameskirk) as far as twitter names go. And I’m really not in the least bit concerned about this technology otherwise, however, now you’re talking about how I can get a Grande Cap low foam for a buck off, RIGHT NOW. Count me in!
Funny, I was going to take horoscopes. Maybe I’ll see if ‘horoscopea’ is available…Twitter Squatting!
i do not understand the big hype over twitter. maybe im slow. it seems to me that twitter is just a glorified away message that has been a part of IM for a while. Couldn’t you do the exact same thing with your IM away message as you do with twitter? Couldn’t yahoo, msoft, aol, gtalk add this functionality pretty easy to their existing clients? educate me on what im missing..
Kevin, if you want to buy “horoscopes” from me, let me know.. I’ll sell it to ya for $100,000
It is easy to see how excited you are about twitter. I’m curious though, how is this different from IM Bots? And everyone already uses IM. Why didn’t that concept ever take off?
[...] Techquila Shots » Make Money With Twitter! 5 Monetization Models More talk about possbile Twitter monetization models (tags: twitter) [...]
speaking of monetization ideas using SMS…have you seen this? http://www.flickr.com/photos/mil8/437835224/
Ok, I’ve set up a bot that will deliver horoscopes daily to your twitter account… check it out!
http://twitter.com/horoscopes
@marc - Wow, that is genius. What country is this being done in? I see a 5-digit shortcode, so assuming USA? I’d think there are legality issues — such as the ability to enter the sweepstakes without a fee.
OK, how about rentals that delivers new apartment listings to your cell the moment they come on the market with a number to scoop them up. I have rentals, sfrentals, larentals–anyone want to help?
@IM people — Yes, there is an IM component to this. But the big point is the mobility. With this, it’s easy to pull out your phone and send a text message to ‘pull’ information. Yes, people are using the service on the web/online — but the mobility — the offline component — is what’s going to exciting to watch.
How’s this for a twitter name: adgj
Why? I’ll give you a hint: the ‘@’ key on my phone is shift + 1
@Steve
In reference to the test-message sweepstakes online - these are done in the US. Watch SpikeTV around 10PM PST and there is an hour long show featuring these simple questions. You can either text message in or enter online.
They really are a great way to make money - easy questions mean more people text in. You text in to enter, they send a message back asking if you really want to enter, you respond with Yes, and then if you are selected they call you. Once they get X amount of people on the phone they pick one at random and tell the rest, “You were so close - try again!” You can usually enter 10 times per question with about 10 questions per hour.
If you enter online it’s free - which is how I think they get around the legality issues.
Brilliant. I must admit that for the first time I can see what the very point of this service can be.
I don’t know anything about Twitter yet. Thanks for the info.
This is a very creative way to make money online, I haven’t tried it yet. For me, I make most of my money from Affiliate Programs and PPC programs like Google Adsense.
Another thing, thenewsroom.com is a good way to make money too, show video and get money. Cool!
Have a nice day, guys!
This concept is nothing new in regards to adlinks within messages. Yahoo has tried adlinks and it failed to a large extent.
If you want to make money from Twitter, your best chance is by placing an ad on your profile.
Its logical that the next step for many users with a large following is to began to monetize that group. Here is a good article that I read today on two different ways to monetize your profile - one thru short urls and the other thru gaming.
http://blogcampaigning.com/2008/10/making-money-with-twitter/
I like idea #4.. charge for friend access.. lots of ppl have protected access now and it does make a lot of sense.. im using a great feature right now called twitwall that can be used as a miniblog.. for posting, links, vids, pics, podcasts etc.. really find it helps with promotion.. great post!
Just for fun I started a Twitter group on facebook: Twitter for attractive 20-somethings. Feel free to join it if you want to make some new twitter friends
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=33601934854
I would like to add the best way to make money on twitter: Learn To Earn on TWITTER : 3 Easy steps Risk free Genuine Start Immediately https://www.twittad.com/a/bS Proven Technique thanks and god bless
Unless there are major back end changes there will always be limitations in using twitter from a monetization perspective. As I wrote on a recent post, don’t go into Twitter expecting much money. Just use it as a prescence building tool.
My take? Here it is: “Top 10 Ways to Make Living As Witty Writer Who Wears Sweats & Twitters All Day” http://tinyurl.com/83moye
Thanks for the post. I’d most likely charge my followers for accessing my twitter. I like that business model.
For those not on Twitter yet, I read a very good article on how to get started on twitter - an excellent step by step beginners guide. I read it got on twitter within 15 minutes.
Following the steps, I managed to get about 300 followers in 2 weeks. Hope this helps you too.
Read Twitter for beginners
Now I hope to start monetizing my twitter.
[...] Some mercenary guidance: Make Money with Twitter! 5 Monetization Models [...]
I’ve also come across a service which pays a twitter member on the basis of 1 No. of followers 2 No of tweets on average everyday.
They pay for using twitter account and send ads in ratio 1: 50.
I think its not bad but one must have a large number of followers and regular tweets to make some money.
[...] how Twitter could monetize its business model, themes wasn’t one of them! Steve Polland also did the same, the thing that concerns me about his thinking on Twitter monetization is about how Twitter should [...]
some very good ways to make money with twitter you have posted there.
Thanks a lot
I’m not so sure charging for being a friend would work, atleast not for 99.99% of Twitter Users.
For business owners looking for twitter marketing strategies check out twittersalesdriver.com. There are a bunch of free tutorials
twitter.com/tylerkessler
I agree with a lot of these past posts especially the one who mentioned Twitter is all about creating a following! I’ve been using Twitter for a few weeks now and have gained a massive momentum to my new website http://UnemploymentKiller.com, I have a community setup and encourage my followers to join like minded people looking to learn how to make money online. Come check it out if you want an example I have a video tutorial on using Twitter + Open Inviter API + TweetLater.com to explode your traffic and sales. Come check it out if your interested.
Good one.Yes one can monetize their profile with ads placing.
Make more money with your twitter profile visit http://www.twittad.com/a/Ajh
[...] But, can you use Twitter to increase your income. Steve Poland founder of inseconds recently wrote Make Money With Twitter! 5 Monetization Models. Steve Poland shows some ways that you can monetize with [...]
An easy way for me due to my profession was to provide answers to complex questions for Airsoft guns that break. Instead of buying a new one you can pay $1.00 for an answer of what is needed and every step on how to fix it, includes links to parts, manual pdf, plus a step by step by me. So far getting over 100 buys a day…
Yes we can make more money with our twitter profile by selling our profile to advertisers,placing an ad in the blank space.
For great twitter trips and tricks and to increase your followers visit
http://bit.ly/TlXWr
[...] But, can you use Twitter to increase your income. Steve Poland founder of inseconds recently wrote Make Money With Twitter! 5 Monetization Models. Steve Poland shows some ways that you can monetize with [...]
[...] Make Money With Twitter! 5 Monetization Models [...]
[...] Make Money With Twitter! 5 Monetization Models [...]
There is a site where you can make money, its some kind of google ads mechanism, http://bit.ly/533sV
make money from your twitter account
http://revtwt.com/index.php?id=10172
Thank you very much i tweeted this url
Very nice article. Initially I thought it is another scam.