20 October 2011
Twitter has become one of the favorite modes of communication among netizens.

Twitter provides a platform for people to microblog about anything they wish to. Many have realized the potential of Twitter in earning money. There are many ways of monetizing Twitter; however, we will look at the five time-tested methods of turning Twitter into a money churning venture.

Converting Followers into Customer

The potential of Twitter to engage people in spreading the word is not unknown anymore. At least 1 billion tweets are posted every single day and most of them are simple target-less tweets. You can make your tweets your secret weapon to let your followers know what service you provide. However, moderation is the key here. Some experts suggest one advertisement tweet every 15 to 20 normal tweet.

As an example, let us illustrate the success of a Chicago based company which specializes in creating designer T-Shirts. As a part of their user engagement program, the company asked for their followers to submit slogans which could be printed on the T-Shirts. Within 5 months of the program 100,000 tweets were received and 3.5 million users voted for slogans which they liked and wished to be printed on their T-Shirts. The company promised an award of $100 for every mention users made of a $9 T-Shirt in their tweets.

There is no doubt that this model can be successfully adopted to suit many marketing scenarios with a little basic research on the user demographics.

Using the Twitter Platform to Sell Products

Although tweets cannot exceed 140 words, a calculated combination of captivating words can trigger massive number of click on links which leads to sales pages. Although all the leads may not convert to sales, there is a good chance that quite a few user will buy these products or pass the word to their colleagues and friends elsewhere who may be interested.

This was successfully demonstrated by a company called Woot which sells products at dirt cheap rates for one day and changes the product the next day. The company sends out tweets mentioning the products which would be on sale the next day. This led a lot of followers in clicking the links and buying merchandise from the website.

Getting Paid for Account Access

Although this method seems fraught with danger and may make your followers shun your account, not many can ignore the temptation of earning a few extra dollars every month from their Twitter account doing nothing.

What this method basically does is that it paves the way for advertisers to pays you for accessing your Twitter account. If you are wondering what such service will do with your account, the answer is obvious. They will use the account to advertise their products and pay you monthly depending on how many ads they place through your account.

There are several intermediaries who make the process easier and every tweet is preceded with a hash tag which demarcates the originator of the tweet. Some users who have made use of this service are getting richer by $200 dollars every month.

Searching Leads

Most customers nowadays are mobile and net savvy which makes it easier for lead hunters to make targeted attempts to cater customers searching for particular words or phrases on Twitter. If you are a business catering to a demography constrained clientele then this method might do wonders for your establishment.

For example, let us assume that you make a search on Twitter looking for a restaurant in New York; restaurants which look for such leads pay Twitter to let them reply to such searches. This might not sound too promising given the fact that users usually trust Google and other search engines for such purposes, but there are examples which attest the success of this technique.

Apart from these wonderful ways there are options which have been advocated by some as well as warned against by others. The discretion is at your disposal, we advise you to take cautious steps and do your homework well before treading untested paths.