Wow! I was going to write an article on one way that I found to make money with twitter that I felt was responsible, reliable, and ethical, while not being spammy. I knew about two different services, Magpie & Sponsored Tweets. I like Sponsored Tweets and didn’t like Magpie…. or so I thought.

I realized that I hadn’t actually been on Magpie since it first came out and I wanted to make sure that my opinions were still founded in facts and that I had them all straight. So I went to Magpie’s website and had a look around. One of the things that I previously didn’t like about the service was the lack of control that the Twitterer had over how often the tweets went out and what they had to say. I’m guessing I wasn’t the only one who had a problem with that, because they have solved that issue. Maybe a little late though, since they have a bad reputation based on how they started out. Once I realized that some of my original problems with Magpie had been resolved, I decided to take a look at what other services had to offer for making money on Twitter. I was kind of surprised at how much I found online…. or maybe I wasn’t so surprised, more overwhelmed with the amount of it all. But this is what I’ve found so far and how I personally feel about the whole thing.

First let me explain some of the issues that a lot of people on twitter have with advertising via Twitter. There are a lot of people who feel that if you are paid for a post/tweet that your opinion is suddenly invalidated because of being paid. Some feel that social media, especially places like Twitter, should be more personalized and not have any advertising through personal twitter streams. Adam Ostrow wrote an article on Mashable all about his opinion about advertising through Twitter. One of the things Adam worries about is ” Ultimately, I think the issue will be less about your Twitter stream getting polluted with ads – because you can control that – and rather, seeing which users are willing to risk their reputation in pursuit of a few dollars.” He ads that at leas ton Twitter you can “simply unfollow anyone you see using a #spon hashtag if you find this form of advertising particularly offensive.” But is this really a problem? Do people generally hate the idea of passing along information and getting paid for it so much?

My personal opinion is completely different… as long as it’s not “spammy”, I think it’s find. Of course what defines “spammy” is dependant on the person who is defining it (kinda sounds like the definition of “reasonable”: That which is deemed reasonable by reasonable men). My definition of spammy is continuous unwanted advertising. On twitter the spammers, at least by my definition, are the ones who are constantly tweeting “Do you want 15,000 followers?” or “Learn how this mom lost 69 lbs in two weeks” or anything similar. First, I don’t want 15000 followers, I have plenty as it is, and it’s hard enough to keep up with the ones I have now. Secondly, if I really wanted that many followers or to lose that much weight that fast, I’d go to google! If I was going to use my twitter stream to find something out, I’d send out a tweet saying something like “need help losing a few bounds, anyone have a recomendation?” Of course with a tweet like that, I’d be getting about 15000 followers of spammers! But I think you get the idea.

So where does all that fit in with Sponsored Tweets, Magpie and those services? Well, as long as they give the twitter user the ultimate control over how many tweets are sent out, what the content of the tweet is, and the disclaimers, then I think they can be a great way to make a little money on the side. I recently got paid for sending out a tweet for KMart. It was a simple tweet that told my followers about a special going on and gave a little link that sent them to KMart’s Twitter Account. Since I have done this sort of thing for NUMEROUS other companies, blogs, people, websites, I felt like the tweet was very appropriate for me and my followers. I sent out two tweets of this type for KMart a few days apart from each other. So far, I haven’t heard any negative feedback from anyone about those tweets. I also didn’t see an influx of people unfollowing me either. So I feel like it was a success so far!

Here are some of the services that will pay you for tweets and a little bit about each of them.

Sponsored Tweets is my personal favorite so far. You have the most control over your account and what is sent to your twitter stream. You set your price per tweet and price per click. You set the keywords for advertising, the category of tweets, and how you approve the tweets. When you get a sponsor a message is sent to you, either via DM (direct message) or email. Then you take a look at the sponsored tweet and either approve it or reject it. Then depending on what type of tweet it is, you’ll either send it out to your stream as is, or write your own tweet. Then you’ll either get paid for the single tweet or for the clicks that come from that tweet. They have just now started a referral program that you can sign up for as well. When a tweeter signs up using one of your links or badges you will receive 10% of SponsoredTweets portion of revenue for each successful transaction that Tweeter makes. So there are a few ways to make money using this service. Here is a screen shot of my personal account on Sponsored Tweets.

Magpie is one of the first twitter advertising services that was available. In the beginning they were more spam than anything else. Luckily they have changed some of the problems but I just don’t know if it’s too little too late or not. One of the things they’ve changed is the auto-approval of tweets being sent out. Now instead of Magpie just sending out ads, you get to approve them or reject them. Which means nothing is sent out that you don’t feel comfortable with. However, once you approve an ad it will be sent out automatically per a set ratio of ads/tweet. I have mine set at 1 ad after 50 tweets. I don’t tweet all THAT often, so this could take several days to ad up. Their default ratio is 1 ad for every 10 tweets, but you can set it for the maximum which is 1 ad for every 200 tweets. How you set up the ratio depends entirely on how much you tweet. Personally I don’t like the idea of a tweet being sent out more than once unless I REALLY like it. So I doubt I’ll be using this service.

RevTwt is another advertising service that I signed up for, but I haven’t used it yet, so I don’t know if I’m going to use it or not. From what I’ve seen so far of the various ads being sent out from other users it seems that this service is the most spammy. I’ve seen more people with just tweets about “Stop paying for Teeth Whitening” or “Lose 50 lbs in 3 weeks” and they are all part of RevTwt. I’ve unfollowed a lot of people just based on those tweets alone. I’m really quite tired of getting spam tweets like that in my stream. Although I think it’s more of HOW people are using the service than just the service alone. Because you can set up your account to NOT have auto post enabled, so you control when the posts go out and which ones go out. Just like with any other tool, it’s the user who can either make it useful or dangerous. And it seems that most of the people who use RevTwt like to be annoying!

Then there is Twittad. Twittad lets you use your Twitter account background as an advertising spot. You sell your background on your twitter account and you get paid by the hour for the length of time that ad is on your account. They have two ways to use their service. The first way is for advertisers to find you based on keywords, locale, and number of followers. When you accept a sponsor, a tweet is sent out to your stream, and your background is changed in your account. The length of advertising term is determined before you accept the sponsor. Then at the end of the term another tweet is sent out. The second way you can use their service is as an “Opt in”. You search for the various advertising campaigns and then request those advertisers. Once the terms are accepted, the rest of the service is run the same as above.

I hope that at the very least this article will help you to decide how you want to monetize your twitter stream, if you decide you want to at all. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with getting paid to tweet or post if it’s done properly, appropriately and ethically and with full transparency! As long as you keep true to yourself and don’t go overboard in sending things out constantly that have nothing to do with you and your life, then you should do fine and make a little money. Don’t expect to get rich with these various advertising services. You may make a few dollars extra a month, but all of them have a $50 minimum in your account to withdraw funds. The higher the minimum the longer it usually takes to reach that minimum… or so that’s what I’ve found for the most part. Whatever you decide, good luck and keep it real!