…Uhh, start with a big one?
So, it’s been a week or so and I’ve genuinely tried to immerse myself into the Twitter ecosystem (note to self: stop talking like Zuckerberg) and I guess I’ll have to moderate my position from, “What a totally useless timesuck” to something like “Ok, this is kind of fun, but I have to get back to making money now.”
While I mostly agree with SEOBlackhat, Twitter is not completely useless. There are plenty of business models that should engage the service and it definitely plugs into the broader Internet audience strategies of most businesses (yes, I said most businesses). But it’s like Instant Messaging and nobody “got into the IM game” to make money directly.
Actually, that’s not true. I had one friend mass-link-drop his Amazon storefront to his Buddy List back in ‘00. $7 later, he felt like Mark Cuban (MC was actually cool back then) and I had to acknowlege that he indeed could make a buck…or seven…off of IM spamming.
Here’s what I have learned so far:
- There are no direct monetization models that merit spending the time to build a Twitter “power account”. There are, however, some very valid indirect audience and monetization benefits to acknowledging the Twitter userbase.
- I think it was Mike Arrington who mentioned this previously, but things now break on Twitter before they break on the blogs. If you have a brand, you need to be monitoring and/or engaging Twitter. You may be able to put out a public relations fire or better retain your most vocal customers.
- In terms of pushing your content or product, Twitter is basically an inbox or RSS aggregator for a lot of people now. You should treat it as an audience medium/channel as the “open rates” are pretty high and there are downstream links.
- A lot of Twitter users have blogs. Bloggers link. So, get to know more linkers.
- Jason Calacanis is taking his personal branding whorishness to a whole new level. Dude dropped a link on Twitter that was a live cell phone video feed of his dogs running around the pool. That is both amazing and hopefully illegal after Congress passes the Nobody Should Have to Read, Hear, or View Everything You Do on the Internets Act of 2012.
- I have met a dozen or so people who knew me from this blog. So, about half my readers use Twitter.
- I don’t know if this has been done yet, but I’m pretty sure if someone bulit the “Followback Girl” Twitter app, roughly 26 million college kids would use it between the hours of 12am and 3am. This thing was built for booty calls.
- I now know what sports teams the other SEO’s follow and who the degenerate gamblers are.
- As soon as they figure out some sort of revenue model…and it doesn’t even have to generate more than $.50 RPM’s…Twitter is going to sell for a big number. Twitter is big enough that they have enough audience momentum to have marginalized any of the other players who tried to take advantage of the very simple concept. Twitter for the microblogging win.
With that said, I’m going to take my Tweets private. As much as I’ll appreciate another way to interact with some friends and maybe make some new ones, I…unlike Calacanis…am not trying to put on a peep show. Or is that a tweet show?
Update: 101 Ways to Use Twitter by Todd Mintz
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7 Responses to “How To Make A Small Fortune With Twitter”
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Good thinking-man’s insight into the usefulness of Twitter. Most of the discussion I hear about it is from noobs who have never used IRC or IM, who proclaim: “most amazing social experience, EVAR!”
Twitter is new and everybody is wondering about monetisation (even more so than for FriendFeed) butI think the obvious business plan is to flip it to Google or Yahoo.
In the very long term, it make money by partnering with telecoms companies and creaming a few pennies from each incoming SMS but that would probably need a sea-change switch away from the desktop for tweeting.
More and more services are using Twitter to provide infrastructure for them. A killer service might make money but that would leave Twitter cashless.
While I agree with most of what is said in this article, I think there are at least some significant soft dollar returns to be gained by having a presence on Twitter. I have seen several examples of this, the most recent of which was yesterday.
In her blog Sunday afternoon, Web 2.0 columnist Sarah Lacy posted an entry essentially dissing Zappos’s use of tv ads for their business (http://sarahlacy.typepad.com/sarahlacy/2008/04/zappos-is-adver.html). She went on to site this as indicative of the reasoning that would lead her to avoid their stock and to conclude they are perhaps over valued.
The CEO of Zappos, who built a rather large footprint for himself on Twitter, passed the article on to his followers. There was no call to action, he simply pointed it out.
After a flurry of comments to her post, she has acknowledged that she may have been hasty in her judgment and is planning an interview with the CEO (this is, by the way, as much a testament to her objectivity as anything else).
I have to believe there is room in the “goodwill” portion of the balance sheet for this type of investment, and while the dollars may be soft, the net effect it none the less substantial.
Just my two cents
thx, sbj
I like Twitter and think they have done a great job building a community.
I’ve found several great websites and blogs from referrals that I may have never found online otherwise. But it does take some time to sift through the much of the chatter.
My guess is that someone like Google will launch a similar service (or just buy Twitter) and find a way to make money via embedded ads, etc.
After all, Google has all the tools with their cell phone OS, OpenSocial, AdWords, Blogger, BlogSpot, …
A Twitter like platform just makes too much sense for them to pass on, if there is really an opportunity there.
Interesting, Soren. I tried to account for some of that effect in point #2.
Alright I’ll bite: How can I make a small fortune with twitter?
Own it and Flip it to YHOO or GOOG?
It’s an old motorsports saying, Quad. “Want to make a small fortune in racing? Start with a large one.” You are going to lose ton of money.
I’m sure somebody is making a little bit of money on Twitter, but I doubt anyone is making anything noteworthy.
That said, it can be a valuable communication channel for some businesses, as discussed above.