While Twitter toils away on creating premium services to generate revenue, there’s a growing number of players looking to make money from Twitter’s 30 million or users. Some of them are blatant such as pay-per-Tweet, while others are selling third-party services that enhance Twitter’s functionality.
A new player within Twitter monetization landscape is Tweetbucks, which comes out of Toronto-based Chango, a start-up that “lets bloggers and Web publishers to effortlessly monetize their text”.
The concept behind Tweetbucks is fairly simple: If you want to create a link to a product such as a book or a CD, you can use Tweetbucks to shorten the URL and participate in affiliate programs for any of the online retailers part of the TweetBucks ecosystem.
For example, I created a URL for Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae. After finding the link on Amazon, I logged into Tweetbucks, shortened the URL:
Then, I pasted the URL into a Twitter update.
If one of my followers clicks on the link and purchases Meatball Sundae, I’ll get 70% of the commission while Tweetbucks would take 30%. For anyone looking to make a few bucks from their presence on Twitter, Tweetbucks looks like a pretty easy proposition.
Of course, Twitter is a different kind of beast when it comes to monetization. There was a huge fuss about pay-per-Tweet, many people are adamant about not wanting to see advertisements within their Twitter streams; and anyone who looks to be doing spam is tarred and feathered.
So, the question is whether Tweetbucks will attract the same kind of backlash because it could encourage people to use Twitter as a way to blatantly make money as opposed to sharing value-added content, and building relationships and goodwill.
Chris Sukornyk, Chango’s CEO, said he doesn’t believe that Tweetbucks and other monetization players are trying to change the nature of Twitter. He said people are happy to live with blogs that have AdSense ads if the content is useful and valuable.
“Ads allow you to have an entrepreneur and content producers produce more valuable content and actually get compensated for it,” he said. “I hope the same thing will apply to Twitter. It’s a new medium and people can concentrate on being really good at the niche content they produce.”
A key issue for Tweetbucks will be disclosure. It’s one thing to provide followers with useful content and links, it’s another to be offering links that could make you money. If you are using Tweetbucks, how do continually let people know that some of the links you provide are affiliate links. That’s a huge challenge.
All in all, I’m not against the concept of Tweetbucks. I think there can be a lot of risk involved if your followers start to think you’re more interested in making money. But if the links you do provide serve a purpose other than making money, there might be a place for them once in awhile.
For more, check out TechCrunch, which did an extensive review on Tweetbucks earlier today. Sukornyk told TC that people can make about $1 to $2 per thousand clicks, which doesn’t seem like much of a return.
This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.
TweetBucks: A New Way to Monetize Twitter
While Twitter toils away on creating premium services to generate revenue, there’s a growing number of players looking to make money from Twitter’s 30 million or users. Some of them are blatant such as pay-per-Tweet, while others are selling third-party services that enhance Twitter’s functionality.
A new player within Twitter monetization landscape is Tweetbucks, which comes out of Toronto-based Chango, a start-up that “lets bloggers and Web publishers to effortlessly monetize their text”.
The concept behind Tweetbucks is fairly simple: If you want to create a link to a product such as a book or a CD, you can use Tweetbucks to shorten the URL and participate in affiliate programs for any of the online retailers part of the TweetBucks ecosystem.
For example, I created a URL for Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae. After finding the link on Amazon, I logged into Tweetbucks, shortened the URL:
Then, I pasted the URL into a Twitter update.
If one of my followers clicks on the link and purchases Meatball Sundae, I’ll get 70% of the commission while Tweetbucks would take 30%. For anyone looking to make a few bucks from their presence on Twitter, Tweetbucks looks like a pretty easy proposition.
Of course, Twitter is a different kind of beast when it comes to monetization. There was a huge fuss about pay-per-Tweet, many people are adamant about not wanting to see advertisements within their Twitter streams; and anyone who looks to be doing spam is tarred and feathered.
So, the question is whether Tweetbucks will attract the same kind of backlash because it could encourage people to use Twitter as a way to blatantly make money as opposed to sharing value-added content, and building relationships and goodwill.
Chris Sukornyk, Chango’s CEO, said he doesn’t believe that Tweetbucks and other monetization players are trying to change the nature of Twitter. He said people are happy to live with blogs that have AdSense ads if the content is useful and valuable.
“Ads allow you to have an entrepreneur and content producers produce more valuable content and actually get compensated for it,” he said. “I hope the same thing will apply to Twitter. It’s a new medium and people can concentrate on being really good at the niche content they produce.”
A key issue for Tweetbucks will be disclosure. It’s one thing to provide followers with useful content and links, it’s another to be offering links that could make you money. If you are using Tweetbucks, how do continually let people know that some of the links you provide are affiliate links. That’s a huge challenge.
All in all, I’m not against the concept of Tweetbucks. I think there can be a lot of risk involved if your followers start to think you’re more interested in making money. But if the links you do provide serve a purpose other than making money, there might be a place for them once in awhile.
For more, check out TechCrunch, which did an extensive review on Tweetbucks earlier today. Sukornyk told TC that people can make about $1 to $2 per thousand clicks, which doesn’t seem like much of a return.
Technorati Tags: tweetbucks, twitter