Does Any Average Blogger Make Money with Tweets that are Sponsored?
January 29th, 2010 | 
Author: Are you an “A” blogger or just an average kinda blogger? It is a possibility that it makes a very BIG difference as to whether or not you can make money on Twitter with tweets that are sponsored by advertisers.
You have heard several A bloggers proclaim the virtues of this fabulous method of making serious money online. You sign up with an advertising company as an affiliate Twitter advertiser and you input your Twitter name and real quick they will tell you how much advertisers will be willing to pay for you just tweeting their ads.
Of course the program explains that your number of Twitter followers makes a difference in the payment per tweet amount. So I signed up, after all I have about 10,000 followers and that’s nothing to sneeze at. Holy smokes they say that advertisers will be willing to pay about twenty bucks per tweet, do I want to activate my account? Hell yes!
So I gave them my name, address, contacts and social security number, after all I will have to report my hundreds of thousands of dollars of income from this new program right? All I would have to do is sit back, relax and wait for the advertising offers to come rolling in.
Chirp, chirp, chirp, not even a peep to tweet. So I’m thinking maybe $20 is too much, lets lower it to $18, silence, lower to $15, nothing, lower to $9 per tweet.
The pins dropping around here are deafening.
Okay, so lower it right down to five bucks and lets get this sucker moving, right?
Nothing, no offers. I could become a lot more famous by putting my hat on sideways and pants on the floor.
So I took the banner ads down. I never promote anything that I do not believe in, and then I notice that this big time advertising company is running a massive campaign to sign up more affiliate publishers and they seem to be giving away just about every major computer toy that anyone would ever want, for just signing up with them as a Twitter advertiser.
Now this got me to thinking. Who told me about this in the first place? Well as I recall it was John Chow, certainly an A blogger, and I signed up under his affiliate link. I believe John when he tells how much money he is making with this program. After all he and the other A bloggers are the very best word of mouth promoters aren’t they?
Looking back, I have some thoughts that came to mind, lets see what you think.
Suppose an advertising company could sign up millions of affiliate tweeters, and suppose that company could build a gigantic database of names, contacts, and “Social Security Numbers”! Would that database have value?
I seem to recall once on one of the credit card company affiliate programs I looked in to, but did not sign up for, that they considered the full name, address, contact and SS numbers as being worth $35.00 each. Now I am not saying that this is an ulterior motive for this particular advertising company, but it does come to mind.
Lets hear it from all of you satisfied tweeters out there. All of you average Joes, and mommy bloggers, and hobbyists, that tweet for sponsored ads. Please share with our readers as to whether or not you have made a ton of money with this program, or if in fact you have made “any” money with this program.
I have a feeling that it will be primarily the big names in the blogging world that are seeing any cash flow. I know that advertising on Twitter does work and that people do make money with Twitter ads. For instance, Leo LaPorte, the tech guy, told on a recent podcast that just before he left for the CES show in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago that Ford offered him $10,000 for just one retweet of a Ford ad. Leo being the most ethical guy that I know of on the internet turned the offer down.
Please let us know your thoughts.
Posted in affiliate advetising | 
Tags: A blogger, address, contacts, Does Any Average Blogger Make Money with Tweets that are Sponsored?, I never promote anything that I do not believe in, Leo LaPorte, making serious money online, name, retweet, social security number, sponsored ads, the tech guy, tweets sponsored, twitter, Twitter followers
16 Responses to “Does Any Average Blogger Make Money with Tweets that are Sponsored?”
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I am a homemaker and a mother of a 10 months child. I am trying to make money online from past 5 months and i have not earned a single dollar until now. I have joined many affiliate programs and put in many dollars in that, but all gone waste.
I found your blog while surfing; i think i could get an answer here. Do you really think that people make money through these affiliate programs? It is always lucrative to read stories of success through these programs, but is it the reality or just another marketing technique?
Hi Teresa,
You ask a great question. You can make some money online with affiliate advertising, but it is not easy. Just sticking a banner ad on your website and expecting people to click and buy is not the way to do it though. Here is my description of the “best” way to make money online.
Create your own product and sell it directly with a very narrow niche domain name website. Build a mail list with your site by making free offers of valuable information, video or a go-with product, and then offer your own product to the list. Keep all the profits.
Once that venue has been created and is functional, just build the list larger. With a great list you can then offer additional affiliate products to willing buyers. Oh and of course offer your own product to the super salesmen of the world through clickbank or some other affiliate program and take a small percentage of their profit.
Thanks very much for commenting.
Rich Hill
Actually I have red regarding sponsored tweets. You could monetize tweets but I don’t know how they pay and it runs on tweets.
This is actually new but still learning on it and don’t trust everything that they say you could earn this amount and that. It is easy to say but some is just wasting your time on it. All of us want to earn with the use of the web so be keen on choosing what you think you could earn on it.
You said it right on the money.
“don’t trust everything that they say”
Thank you for leaving a comment.
Rich
Are you familiar with Shoemoney or John Chow? They both put out great blogposts regarding making money with Twitter.
I have a business and personal Twitter account, but I don’t use either of them. (So I’m out of the running I guess!)
Yes, of course on both.
They are highly successful.
Agreed. I would only dream of making $50,000 in a single month just from blogging.
To be honest, I don’t even try for that. I’m not sure if that’s a flaw in my design in being short-sighted or just that I grew out of my 12-year old aspirations
Actually those types of numbers certainly are achievable but it is only with extreme hard work and constant attention to every detail, oh and a little bit of luck is good too.
A more realistic amount is maybe $1,000 to $2,000 per month, and even that does not come easy.
Not at all. I only make enough to pay my server bill- about $200/month.
But that’s all from adsense. I really should start looking into other forms of income. (looks like your website might be a good place to start looking)
What if we look at it from the other side as well?
How many people really listen to someone who simply posts advertisement after advertisement? I’ve read over and over about how important it is to communicate with people and not just send out spam, but there a lot of people that don’t follow that practice.
I really like the idea of using self promotion on roughly 1 out of every 10 tweets.
It’s the 80/20 rule, I guess. 80% of the income goes to the top 20% of the marketers. So, in this case, all the big guys will be earning that 80% (or 99%??) of this Tweeter revenue. The rest of us will just have to share out that smallish 20%!!
You just might have something there. Although the rule might more easily fit the 99-1 in this case. I have yet to hear from Joe Average blogger that is not a well known IM star that he has made dollar one.
Thanks for the comment.
Rich
Wow! I didn’t know that you could be making serious bucks on twitter! Very interesting post.
I bought advertising with a Twitter advertising company recently. I paid about 12 cents a click and I sent the traffic to a zip submit ‘free’ offer that paid $1.40 per submission. I spent about $50 on the campaign and I made about $50.
Barely breaking even isn’t going to cut it so it’s no wonder many advertisers aren’t willing to pay for Twitter traffic. I would have made more buying Google Adwords or another search/content based pay-per-click system.
Frank,
That is excellent feedback, thanks for it.
I had not even considered this from the advertiser’s point of view and it makes the whole program seem even more distasteful.
I just can not get out of my mind that this big advertising company might take advantage of a very few well known bloggers and let them make huge sums of money and of course new affiliates would scurry to get on board, all the while giving up personal security information that could be harvested for other purposes, and in the meant time the little guys that fall for this would make absolutely zero dollars, or close to it.
Not sure how you spell Ponzee but it might fit here.
People paying Twitter to sponsor their tweets is feasible. As it is one of the most effective medium in internet marketing, companies or individuals will be willing to release money as they think it will be worth all the marketing they will get.