The internet has a long-term interest (some would say obsession) with figuring out ways to make money online. Certainly, there’s a fascination with how much money the leading bloggers make from their publications, as well as how they do it, which includes anything from standard web advertising programs to affiliate links, sponsorship and paid content.

But using similar methods, can it be done on Twitter, too? And is this opportunity open to everybody, even an average guy, or is the real earning potential on the network reserved just for celebrities with millions of followers?

More importantly: does even attempting to make money on Twitter risk jeopardising your network and the trusted relationship with your followers that you have built over many months, or even years?

In this article, I’ll have a look at the different ways individuals are using Twitter to make money, weighing up the pros and cons along the way, as well as outlining my own experiences where relevant.

The Problem Of Free

Nobody that matters really objects to anybody earning a living, but there’s an expectation within social media (and even the internet) that everything should and needs to be given away freely, irrespective of the work involved or the quality of information and assistance received.

This is, of course, highly unfair, and there’s a valid argument to be made that if everybody was forced to give away all of their services and time for free then everything would just fall apart. Google can only price most of their tools at zero because Adwords, their flagship product, accounts for 99% of their revenue. Without their advertising income, they simply couldn’t afford to spend the time and resources – and give away – everything else.

But there’s an invisibility about Adwords that makes it easy for people to ignore. If you don’t use the service (or Adsense) and either turn a blind eye or use a blocker plugin to remove the bulk of online advertising from your browsing experience then you’ll likely go about your day with nary a thought towards web-based ads.

Pay-Per-Tweet

But what about tweet-based advertising? Two controversial websites have already had some success with this model – Magpie and Sponsored Tweets. Both provide Twitterers with the facility to earn a monthly income by inserting ads into their Twitter stream.

I’ve had a look at what’s involved and both sites make a big deal about ethics and give the user quite a lot of control about how much damage advertising is done within your account, and Sponsored Tweets in particular has picked up quite a few well-known faces, including such luminaries as Carrot Top and Traci Lords, as well as the inevitable John Chow. But they’ve also lured respectable folk like Chris Brogan, which I have to say both surprised and disappointed me.

Read the rest of this entry

I like Twitter.com for its speed, lack of API call worries and because it’s still the easiest way to follow (and unfollow) somebody, but it doesn’t support columns, nor does it provide me with a one-click way to retweet (in the style I prefer) or send a direct message.

I like HootSuite a lot (it might actually be the closest thing we have to perfect), but it defaults to ow.ly URL shortening, which lots of readers don’t like, and doesn’t let you change this to anything else, like bit.ly. Which means when I want to use bit.ly, I have to go to bit.ly. Which takes me away from HootSuite.

I like Seesmic Desktop – or rather, I did – but the latest build defaults to Twitter’s style of retweet and they’ve removed the buttons from the account pane (which I loved).

I like TweetDeck on the iPhone, but unless you’ve got a strong 3G signal (or access to wireless) it runs super-slowly (if at all), and loading new tweets can take forever.

I used to like TweetDeck on my PC, but it started to have fits when you followed a large amount of people and was prone to ignoring the tweets of some of my network altogether. And while I like the audible notification, I really, really hate the sound it makes.

The thing is, nothing is perfect. We’ve still yet to see the ultimate Twitter client. There is always, without fail, some kind of compromise. You find the software that does most of the things you like well and either ignore or put up with the rest. And this is why whenever a brand new client comes out and gets some hype, many of us will install and try it out. We have some loyalties to our existing software, but they only go so far. If a competitor’s client has what we have now plus one, we’re very likely to abandon ship.

This is why I really believe that a plugin-supportive Twitter client is absolutely the way forward. If you want function X, then you install it. If you don’t want function Y, then you uninstall. Reality check: no Twitter client will ever be perfect for everybody. But with plugins, it could very easily be perfect for you.

I’m going to make an assumption here, and that is that you’ve taken the time to ensure your Twitter network is optimised, that you regularly engage with it, and because of this the people within that network are folks that you trust.

If not, I suggest you start over.

I’m not a huge fan of Twitter’s internal retweet mechanism, and probably ninety per cent of the time I still do my retweets the good, old-fashioned way, but the feature is slowly beginning to grow on me. In particular, I like to spend a few minutes each day in the retweets by others folder, as this is a fantastic way to find new people to follow.

I just browse through the list of retweets by members of my network, and where something strikes me as funny, interesting, informative or just plain weird, I’ll check that person out. If it’s a good example of the kinds of things they regularly tweet about, I’ll follow them.

The psychological effect of seeing lots of avatars (as opposed to one) below a given retweet certainly aids in the ‘check out’ process, but we’re only human. And I’m not sure that’s any less indicative of quality.

Moreover, this can also assist in downsizing your network, too, as from time to time you will find somebody you thought you liked retweeting lots of stuff that you definitely do not. Swings and roundabouts.

There’s purpose here, and it’s worth making it a part of your Twitter day. It’s not all gold, of course, and on some occasions you won’t find anybody to follow. On others, it might simply be that you discover one or two inspiring statements which you feel compelled to share with your network. And that too has a lot of value.

I can make all the observations I want about how the top celebrity accounts on Twitter aren’t really all that much, but here’s the real killer: we can snuff them out any time we like.

Don’t worry Ashton: I don’t mean in the Mafia sense. And I’m also definitely not talking about the royal ‘we’, either. I’m talking about us. You, me, and everybody else.

I’m talking about the collective.

If we, as a unit, all decided to unfollow Ashton Kutcher on Twitter, there would be no more Ashton Kutcher on Twitter. Sure, he’d still have his spammers and his no-tweet wonders, and that and a token will get him on the subway.

Likewise, if we did the exact same thing to all the celebrities in Twitter’s top one per cent, then all those celebrities would move to Twitter’s bottom one per cent. Like magic.

Heck, if we, the collective, the team, decided to all block Biz Stone at once, I think Twitter would be forced to investigate exactly what was going on there. And they might even ask him to step down. I mean, if somebody who co-runs Twitter is that unpopular, then somebody else will need to make an executive decision. After all, there will be shareholders to consider, soon enough.

And if everybody unfollowed everybody else, and we then deleted each and every tweet we’d ever made, there would be no Twitter. Just a blank, empty space, where nobody knew (or cared) what was happening. Ever.

Here’s the thing: if enough of you don’t like something on any social network – or, for that matter, the world – then all it really takes is for you to rally the troops. Do it through a hashtag. Get some power-bloggers involved. Get your MP involved. Get Ashton himself involved. (Although don’t bother with Kim Kardashian – she’s far too expensive.)

Granted, it takes some work, and it takes some dedication, but that doesn’t mean it cannot happen. Be creative. Go crazy. And make it count. It’s amazing how quickly that ‘you’ can become an ‘us’.

Ashton Kutcher has almost four-and-a-half million followers on Twitter.

Who cares? You? No, me neither, but lots of people clearly do, as the media and citizens of Twitter itself have long focused on this metric as something of importance, when, bragging rights aside, it’s actually pretty worthless.

For example, if you take a moment to scroll through Kutcher’s list of followers, you’ll see a large percentage of them don’t even have an avatar. Many have never submitted even a single tweet. And a huge, huge amount are spammers.

So, looking at Ashton’s follower count as a way to measure his status on Twitter, and certainly his influence, is absolutely flawed. While it’s certainly true that celebrities like Kutcher, as well as the similarly well-followed P. Diddy, Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest and others on the network will always have a reasonable amount of sway (and command substantial pay-per-tweet perks) simply because they are already well-known to a great many, fame is not, and never should be the same thing as clout. At least, not in the credible sense.

And this, of course, is where mass follow/unfollowing completely fails as a way to build a network. Who cares if you have boatloads of followers if nobody is paying you any attention? Better to have 50 followers hanging on your every word than 50,000 who couldn’t pick your avatar out of a Twitter lineup.

There are many analytical tools that allow me to measure where I rank on Twitter (and you of course take that output with the usual hefty pinch), but what I’d love to see is a tool that ignores me and focuses entirely on my network. That is, the people I’m following, and the people I’m being followed by. Numbers would be crunched, and I would then have access to data such as:

• Who breaks news the fastest
• Who retweets the most
• Who has the ear of those with the most clout
• Who I have the most conversations with
• How often I reply against how often my network replies to me
• How often I answer questions sent to me

And so on. It would also reveal how many of the accounts in this network were real, how many were obviously spammers (it’s easy enough even for a script to work this out), the average followers/following in each account, how many never updated, etc, and the network – my network – would be downgraded accordingly.

(If we could find a way to simply strip out the fake from the real followers on all networks, that alone would have considerable value.)

In-depth analysis could then be calculated that would tally all these measurements within the entire network. That is, how well the network engaged and connected with itself.

The report could also highlight any hidden gems within my network, as well as those people with considerable clout, and others who expressed interests and behavioural patterns similar to my own (that then warranted greater attention).

This may take 24 hours to process, but that doesn’t matter. In fact, I’d rather it took the time to do this properly and produce a report of some value. Because, assuming it was done right (and as usual we’d likely be waiting for several generations), what you’d get is a number, or more likely a series of numbers, that could be properly assessed.

(At least inasmuch as anything that is more science-than-art can be.)

Maybe Ashton Kutcher’s network, with all its spammers, duplicates and one-hit wonders, and a lack of overall engagement, would rate a lowly 46, despite the vast numbers. Maybe your three hundred followers, who you consistently interact and connect with – as do they in their respective networks, too – would rate a 99.

And when we’re looking at value, and at community, I know which one I’d rather be a part of.