I'm going to let you in on a little secret - I love Twitter.
I love it like "ten thousand tweets and counting" love it. I love it for the conversation, for the amazing things I learn, and for the community of friends that I've built.
I was shocked when I went on Magpie recently and learned that my main Twitter account could make me an estimated $250 per month, just by inserting ads into my timeline. That's not bad for doing something I'd be doing anyway.
And Magpie isn't the only service, either. Both TweetBucks and Sponsored Tweets offer similar services. TweetBucks is basically a one-stop shop for affiliate links for a whole bunch of merchants. You shorten and tweet a link from one of those merchants, and you'll get a commission on the sale. Sponsored Tweets is more on the Magpie model, with straight-up ads from merchants and companies trying to get the word out.
There are two quick ways to make yourself attractive to these services. First, if you are passionate about a particular topic or cluster of topics, you can start a Twitter account that is specific to that topic. (Starting an account about how much you love the Donald Trump MLM does not count!) Then, you can select some merchants that you're going to talk about that fit with your interests. As people follow you (because they're interested in what you're interested in), they will click on both your commercial and noncommercial links with relatively equal frequency. You can disclose when a link makes you money (and you should do this), and so long as the number of "ads" doesn't seem ridiculous, you will not lose followers. Then, when you've got a decent following and an established track record of tweeting about your topic, you can register for Magpie or Sponsored Tweets (or both) and have a good chance of attracting ads in your interest area. Now, if your interest area is "stuff that Proust ate besides cookies," you might not attract many advertisers. But if you're interested in things that other consumers are interested in, you'll probably find some matches.
The other way to make Twitter ad networks interested is to grow an organic base of followers who are just interested in you and your opinions. This is less attractive to advertisers, because if you're like me, you tweet about a lot of different stuff (the channel is not narrowly focused, so advertisers aren't sure what they're getting). But, if you have a nice base of followers and you tweet with sufficient frequency, you can still make the most of seasonal shopping and other events that happen for everyone. And, like my example shows, there's still a chance to make some decent money with just a boring old Twitter account.
