How to Earn Money Using Twitter
Twitter is a personal yet extremely effective way of making money online. It is not twitter itself that will make you money, but it is about how you influence your followers to make money for you. It is about connecting with people via social networking throughout the world that can become your customers as such. There are many different business avenues that are profiting from using twitter, and here we will explore some of them, and give you some great tips to start making some serious money straight away. Twitter can be used for expanding an existing business or promoting a new one. If you have an online business then twitter can play an important role in adding to your revenue, it just depends on how seriously you take it, and how much time and research you are prepared to put in.
Making Money on Twitter - Getting Started
The first thing you need to do before setting up your twitter account is to know your business and know your customers. If you are considering starting a new business then you will need to decide on what you business will be and how many people will be interested in it. It is important to know your target market, and you should undertake deep research into this before starting your account. The reason for this is because of the importance of the username. For example if you are aiming to gain traffic to your fishing website, then it will be no good having your username as "hamster man", as people are less likely to connect with you and follow you when your username contradicts your business area. However if you was to have a username such as Carp Fishing Tips; you may find that more people of relevance will take an interest in you , which is ultimately what you want. Therefore it is very important to identify your audience early in the game.
When conducting research you need to find out whether or not there is a target market for your business. Are there millions of people throughout the world that are going to be interested in carp fishing tips? and if so are these people on twitter. If they are on twitter then is there already someone else that is dominating the market, and can you compete with this person. It goes without say that research is the most important thing when it comes to starting a twitter account in order to make money. You will also need to know who will be in your extended network. Remember that people twitter because of interest, will your topic be interesting enough to lure people in and can you sustain it for a long period of time? Try to look into the developing market and consider whether your topic will still be of relevance in two years from now? For example if you started a twitter page about video cassette players 10 years ago, then you would now be in trouble because of the impact of dvd's. If this was to hapen to you then how could you tackle it and change the business to work in your favour.
Getting People to Follow You
Ultimately if you have no followers then you are not going to make any money from twitter. On the other hand you could have 200000 followers but none of who are interested in your topic or business. Therefore you need to ensure that you are targetting your target audience. There are many ways to gain and attract new followers, here are some tips to get you started.
Image is important. For example if you are aiming your tweets at fishermen, then you will not want a picture of your new baby son as your profile picture. You will be much more successfull with a picture of you holding a large fish that you caught whilst on vacation!
Be Interesting and Controversial Keep your tweets interesting and controversial so that people want to hear more and more from you. Do not waffle about rubbish that is irrelevant but instead try to link the two together. E.g. on your fishing twitter do not tweet - "elephants had children". But tweet something more like "New world record carp caught this morning or was it a fake?". Get the idea?....
Be Gueniune, Don't lie and don't make stuff up otherwise people will become bored with you and lose interest, and likely will stop following you. Never trick people into visiting a link on your site because you will be considered a spammer. For example do not put a link called "Biggest carp picture" - and really when they get to it they find a iphone nano for sale. This is not the way, so give it up now.
Following Others and Direct Messaging is one way of letting others know what you are all about. When following others you should make sure that you are following people who have an interest in your area and you should check to see when they last signed on because you do not want to waste time requesting followers with people who never or very rarely use twitter. A tip is to follow a large person in your market who already has lots of followers. This way you know that the audience will already be related to your topic. You can go a little bit wider and message people who you might believe to be interested in your topic but take some time to think about what you are doing. For example, is it really worth messaging 18 year old girls to follow your fishing tweets - NO. Make sure you know your audience and you have something to offer them.
Consider your language and the way in which you interact. If you have business clients on your twitter then you should not be tweeting irrelevant personal tweets or innappropriate language. Remember image is everything - being professional and guenuinly real at the sae time is the best combination.
Targetting Specific Networks and websites to join you on twitter is a great way to get followers, and can work extremely quickly. Target networks whereby people already have an interest in your topic. So a fishing forum, chat room or website might be appropriate if you are targetting fisherman. remember to be exciting, guenuine, real and interesting as much as you possibly can, and put yourself into the target market to see where your opportunities lie.
How To Keep Existing Followers and Encourage New Ones
Now you have some followers you need to ensure that you keep them. You do this in a number of ways, of which some include what you did to get them to follow you in the first place. Remember to be be exciting, gueniune, real, controversial, interesting, to the point, knowledgable and maintain a respectable image. Now you need to take it to the next step of twitter domination.
Open your stream to see all that is happening your extended networks. See what it is that people are talking about and try to get involved in their conversations, but do not become a nuisance. This is where it becomes fun, people will start to talk about your tweets and post to one another to follow. As long as you keep your tweets working well your followers will double, triple and then rocket sky high within no time at all. The more followers you already have, the easier it becomes to get more. You will also become a higher choice when someone searches for you or the topic you discuss.
Tweet no more than 5-10 times a Day, you do not want start to sound boring and repetitive. Do not repeat the same tweet over and over again otherwise you will lose followers rather than gain more. You will need to remember the important factors of tweeting in order to be successfull, and I doubt very much you could find more than 5-10 great tweets in a day - not if you are thinking it through properly anyway. You can use tweetstats.com to measure your tweets.
Be available to reply. Try to make sure that you are available to reply to messages that are sent to you,and think them through before replying. One good idea is to use a mobile phone such as the blackberry or iphone to update tweets and messages whenever you need to.
Keep up to date with the market and do not start slacking. You have some followers now you must keep them interested and interest their extended networks.
How to Make Money From Your Followers On the Web.
There are a number of different ways that you can make money from your followers on twitter, and it will soon become a wonderful marketing tool for you or your business. Lets take a look at how to make money through twitter.
Pay Per Click - Google Adsense
Google adsense is the giant of all affiliate programs. Google adsense allows you to place adverts on your site, and then profit from them each time someone clicks on the ad - Hence the name pay per click. One of the reasons this works so well is because you can choose from a huge range of ads to display on your pages, which are relevant to the topic. Therefore if you have a website about ipod phones then you will be able to have ads that are relevant to the ipod.
Twitter can be used as an effective traffic boosting tool to your website as you are able to post links for all your followers to see. When they visit your site there is a good chance that they will click on an advertisement providing it is relevant to the topic of interest. By posting links to your twitter feed you will also be providing your websites with "backlinks" which could result in your page being rated higher in the google page rankings. Not to mention that your tweets also get posted on google rankings, and therefore people using the search engine are more likely to come across your page. When you begin to get good traffic to your site(s) then your page will move further and further up the google listings.
You should consider your topic and use google adwords to see which ads pay the most money and which topics are likely to be profitable. Some ads will only pay $0.10 per click, whilst others pay up to $15 per click. You can block ads that you do not wish to appear on your sites, and customize the ads that you decide to use. Visit google adsense to find out more about what it could do for you and your business.
When you sign up with google you will need to activate your account in order to receive payment. A google envelope will sent to you via post, from which you will enter the pin number on the adsense website.
Google will give you a number of options for payment, with the most popular being payments straight into your account, and also cheques. You can also follow up your sites and get some great free reporting via google adsense to help you know where the money are generating is coming from.
Amazon Affiliates
Amazon affiliates will allow you to sell its products via your website. Amazon affiliates program is free to join and relatively easy to sign up. You can display any product that Amazon are selling, and if someone goes through your page to amazon and then makes a purchase you will receive a refferal fee. The best thing about this is that it doesn't even have to be the product that you are advertising that sells. Whatever you sell, providing they got to amazon via your page will make you a tidy profit. Bob Proctor.
Referal Fees for Amazon start low, but as you sell more products the higher your referals will become. Therefore there is a huge potential to make some serious money through Amazon.
If you was going to go ahead with the fishing idea on twitter then you could create a website that sells fishing products through Amazon. Once the trust has built up with your followers you can recommend them the occasional product, and they will more than likely visit your page, and make a purchase (even if it wasn't what you recommended). After time they may use you page for all their fishing purchases and even recommend it to their friends. Now this will not hugely profitable if you have 4 follows visit your site, but imagine if you had 2,000 followers visit your online shop when you posted a tweet - The results could be colosal. Visit Amazon Affilliate Program to find out more about joining Amazon affiliate program. The best month to start promoting your sites to your followers is November, December, because you will have more potential of selling all sorts of products during the Christmas rush.
You can choose your payment type, with the most popular being paid straight into your account, or by cheque.
Ebay Affiliate Programs
Ebay offer a very similar service to Amazon, whereby you can display products being sold on auction or buy it now, and receive a referal rate for the sale coming through your site. You will have to keep on top of the game with Ebay and it may require you to update your website more often than some of the other options. Nevertheless it works wonders for some, so if you are interested then you can find out more at ebaypartnernetwork.com.
Clickbank Affiliates
Clickbank works on the same principal as Amazon and Ebay Affiliates but it provides you with much higher referal rates, sometimes as high as 60%. Yes, that is 60% of the price the product sells at.
The biggest advantage to using clickbank through twitter is that it does not even require you to have your own website. You can literally post links on your twitter that will take a customer straight to the selling page - if they then make a purchase you will see a nice referal fee, up to 60%. This is perhaps the easiest of the above, but you are slightly more limited without having a website. Clickbank claim that their clients have earned over 1 billion pounds and state that it is now your turn to think outside the box! visit the click bank site and see what they have to offer clickbank.com.
Considering a Domain
There are many websites and blogs that will allow you to produce webpages under their domain name completely free of charge. This is a great way to start up a website and most of the time you will find that they consist of templates which makes your web building extremely easy. Hubpages and Squidoo are sites that allow you to build page after page, and then place google ad's, amazon affilliates and more completely free of charge. However you should take into account that hubpages will take 40% of the money you make through google adsense, whilst squidoo will take 50%. The beauty about these sites is that there is no investment other than time that needs to be taken on your part.
If you choose to do it your own way, with your own web domain then you will be required to pay a fee for your domain. Domains start at as little as $5.99 per year, but then you have to take into consideration webspace and how much downloads you will get for your money. More profit can be made through google adsense etc by having your own domain as there will be host taking 40-50% of your profits. Sometimes it is worth investing a little in order to see bigger rewards.
Tax
Any business from which you make money should be registered and tax should be paid. This site gives you an idea of how tax works with google adsense and amazon affiliates in the UK, but bare in mind that each country has different tax laws and legislations.
Summary
Having read through the site I am sure that you will be convinced that it is possible to get rich quick online, as well as getting rich slowly! It all depends how much time, effort, and energy you are willing to put into succeeding through twitter. Once you have a starting income you may be able to ditch your day job and become your own boss full time. If you aready made it to this stage then the sky is the limit! Just enjoy it....
