Twitter, the social networking site where people compose messages of up to 280 characters, is not just an avenue to express opinion or to spread news. It also provides an opportunity to make money. How? We’ll explain three (3) simple and effective money-making schemes below.
First, a short history of Twitter. The website was initially planned to be a communications platform based on Short Message Service (SMS) — hence the limited allowed number of characters on Twitter — but the brainchild of Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass turned out to be a successful “micro-blogging service” with 336 million active users worldwide as of 2018. Everyday, millions of users rely primarily on Twitter as a source for news and self-expression but very few people are able to effectively monetize and make money from it.
Is it really possible to earn cash from tweets? Yes! Continue reading to learn how to do it.
What You Need to Do First
There are a variety of ways to make money on Twitter but before we explain how, one thing is for sure: you need followers. Your Twitter account must have unique and genuine followers who fit the type of people who might be interested in what you present or offer.
This begs the question: How do you gain followers on Twitter?
Well, the main suggestion to note would be to gear your content based on your target market. If you want to target bookworms, then maybe tweet about your recommended books and create quick threads about why you find said books useful or interesting. If you’d like to attract gamers, then perhaps tweet game reviews, updates on the latest game patches, or tips and tricks on how to play certain games.
The idea is in order to capture an audience comprised of a certain type of people, make sure that the content you produce would be useful or interesting for them.
Of course, while working to accumulate followers, try being a model citizen, or in this case, a model netizen. Be polite and considerate when you tweet. Respect people and do not tweet controversial opinions that might offend a certain group, race, or nationality. Also, try not to defame or attack a product, service, or company. Why? Because companies are not interested to advertise on Twitter accounts that antagonize a brand. At the same time, doing so might offend some of your followers and they might decide to unfollow you because of that.
To promote your Twitter account, you can also use your other social media accounts to link back to it. From your blog or Youtube channel, create a new content that will publicize your Twitter account. The goal is to increase your follower count and to gain a loyal following.
What’s a “good” number of Twitter followers to achieve before you can make money? Actually, there’s no definite answer to this question. What’s really more important is the quality, not the quantity, of Twitter followers that you have.
What you should work on is to achieve a sizable number of followers that are real, active, and engaged with you and your tweets. You could have 100,000 Twitter followers but if most of them are fake or you simply got them by spamming, then the income schemes (which will explain below) won’t pay off. You could have 5,000 followers but if they are all genuine accounts and highly engaged with your tweets (i.e., they retweet, comment on, reblog your posts), chances are they can help you effectively monetize your Twitter account.
So how do you make money on Twitter? You could choose from a variety of ways below.
How to Make Money on Twitter
1. Through Ads
Obviously, you can have businesses partner with your Twitter account to advertise their products. You can do direct advertising and offer your own advertising packages to interested companies.
Alternatively, you can sign up to programs that provide a marketplace for Twitter users like you and companies looking to advertise in order to secure advertisements that you can promote to your followers.
One such example is Adly (www.adly.com), a site where businesses choose the Twitter accounts which they would like to advertise on. In Adly, you can list the topics or genre of your Twitter account and businesses get to choose if your account fit their criteria. You and the business will then agree on the specifics, such as how much you will be paid and when you will tweet to advertise the company.
The alternative is Sponsored Tweets (www.sponsoredtweets.com). Here, you name the price for businesses to advertise on your account and you get to pick the ads from a pool of interested advertisers. Do note, though, that there are minimum requirements for Twitter accounts before they are accepted to register. Specifically, your Twitter account must be followed by at least 50 people, have at least 100 tweets, and have existed for at least 60 days.
2. Selling Products
When you have built enough of an audience, especially one which you can actively interact with, you can consider selling products to your followers.
One way to sell products is by being an affiliate marketer. This involves registering to an affiliate program which is within the scope of interests of your followers. Once you’ve signed up as an affiliate, you can choose from a variety of business which you can tweet about as a form of advertisement. These companies will give you links which you’ll use to promote the company or product. You then receive compensation for any products bought through that link.
Some legit affiliate marketing programs where you can sign up include:
- Clickbank (www.clickbank.com)
- CJ Affiliate by Conversant (www.cj.com)
- Share-A-Sale (www.shareasale.com)
- Rakuten Affiliate (www.rakutenmarketing.com/affiliate)
- Amazon Associates (www.affiliate-program.amazon.com)
Another way to make money on Twitter would be to sell your own products. You could tweet about a book or ebook you wrote or an apparel you designed or a software, plugin, or app you yourself developed.
Simply give your followers step-by-step instructions on how they can purchase. Payments could be given to you through online services such as PayPal or other merchant payment services. Just make sure that you can meet the demand for your products and that you know how to distribute them. You might have to learn how to cost-effectively ship your products so that they will reach the buyer (and incorporate shipping costs in the purchase price so that you won’t incur a loss).
You could even take this scheme further by having your followers take part in a contest, say, for a design of the cover of your book or the title of your app, game, or software. Maybe you could also invite them to join a raffle which allows them to win a prize from you, provided that they retweet your posts. This surely can help boost your reach and also your follower count.
3. Crowdfunding
Another easy but effective way to raise money through Twitter would be to crowdfund or to solicit donations from your followers. This hinges on the idea that your services and/or purpose are worth donating for, so try to be very careful when asking money this way.
Some followers are willing to donate money if they find you and your tweets helpful. Don’t be afraid to use this method, but make sure that your followers truly see the value of your content. Otherwise, you’ll just appear like you’re begging for money or scamming people. Also, if you’re seeking funds to be used for charity, make sure that you update your followers with where the funds went so as to not cause controversy.
There you have it, three (3) simple but effective ways to create income through your Twitter account. Many users have already profited from these doable money-making activities on Twitter. Now go and try earning money from your tweets! Good luck!
