Twitter - A Social Way for Everyone to Make Money

Social Media…..we’re all deeply embedded into it. And seemingly for good reason. It works! And now people are making real money not only using these sites, but selling their audience base for a fee.


Just this morning, I was glancing through my Twitter account and noticed a “tweet” referring me to eBay. The tweet mentioned “get your product out to 380,000+ followers”. I clicked on the link and VOILA!, there was a genuine product for sale on eBay.

For a mere $40, there is a seller who apparently has amassed 380k+ followers and is willing to share his connections for 28 days for a small fee. Now that’s a novel idea.

Not sure whether this is ethical or not. On one hand, it seems to me like they’re basically doing the same thing as selling an email list of contacts. On the other, it is truly taking social media to another level and making use of your personal sphere of influence to make some money. And everyone wants to make money.

If you want to check it out, the seller is “isurf2net” on eBay. There’s also a lower cost model offering re-Tweets to 80k+ followers for 28 days for $10.

It seems inevitable that sites like Twitter and Facebook would evolve into marketing means for small and large businesses alike. There are hundreds of Twitter users out there with millions of followers. As of this writing, Lady Gaga has the largest reach, with over 9.5 million followers. Think of that….if Lady Gaga were to offer her Twitter followers for a fee, what do you think she could charge? If 380k followers are worth $40, would people pay $500 to reach 9.5 million? Not sure, but it’s an interesting thought. Maybe if you pick the right product for the right “follower” audience, we may be onto something here….

I think the bigger question in this topic is will people tolerate being bombarded with solicitations on Twitter and Facebook? I enjoy going through Twitter posts as I find many interesting posts. I question though whether all people will tolerate sales pitches on a personal account level. Could we see a mass “unfollow” on sites that openly sell their follow list or will it become standard practice to gauge your individual advertising power?

If you want to find out your current social media prowess, trying going to http://www.klout.com/ and entering your Twitter name. This is a relatively new site (I found it in a Boston Globe newspaper article on social media a few weeks ago) which will give you a snapshot ranking from 0 to 100 of your social influence. Add your Linkedin and Facebook accounts to it and it will add those into consideration model too.

If you’re looking to get more involved in the social media world and would like to consider adding an experienced team of industry analysts to your social media campaigns to help expand your reach, please drop me a note @DaveHanron on Twitter or at dave@socialstrategy1.com