Make Money with Social Media
Make Money with Twitter
What, in 140 characters or fewer, is Twitter?
Well, it's a money-losing website made up of very short messages (like this one) where your kids (and C-list celebrities) waste time.
It's also a popular new medium—tens of millions of users and counting—that businesses use to build brands (and sometimes destroy them).
All this you know. Or you should. But Twitter isn't just about buzz: Some companies have figured out how to use it for old-fashioned things.
Like, you know, making money. Here are five strategies. Click on each of the bubbles, below, to learn more about them. And Please Retweet.
Turn Followers Into Creators
The company: SkinnyCorp, which owns online T-shirt retailer Threadless. Based in Chicago and founded in 2000, Threadless sells an estimated $30 million worth of graphic T-shirts a year by soliciting designs from a community of hundreds of thousands of amateur designers, who then vote on their favorites. Threadless bases production on the shirts that get the most votes and pays the winning designers $2,000.
The idea: Threadless CEO Tom Ryan and founder Jake Nickell thought that Twitter messages, because they are pithy, might work well as T-shirt slogans. In May, Threadless created a website that made it easy for the company's Twitter followers -- at the time, there were 490,000 of them -- to turn their favorite tweets into shirts. Users log on to a Threadless website,enter their Twitter username and password, and then submit tweets for consideration or vote on other people's tweets. The winning slogans get printed on T-shirts and sold for $18 each. "We figured if we built something on top of Twitter, we'd drive participation really quickly," Nickell says.
The result: Nickell was right. In its first five months, the Twitter experiment attracted 100,000 submissions and 3.5 million votes. So far, the company has printed and sold 23 designs -- "I'm huge on Twitter" and "Iowa: Cooler than California Since 2009" are the two most popular -- resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional revenue in the first five months. The promotion also helped Threadless add one million Twitter followers. "That's not bad for a brand-new product," says Ryan, adding that the Twitter Tees program also provided a revenue boost to Threadless's core business, as Twitter followers often stick around to buy other shirts.
How to get retweeted, Part I: Ask your followers for help -- and give them prizes when they comply. Nickell says one of the company's most successful tweets came when it offered Twitter followers a chance to win $100 if they passed along the news of a $9-per-T-shirt sale to their friends. The contest became one of the most popular topics on Twitter that day.
Sell Products on Twitter
The company: Woot, a $164 million online retailer based in Carrollton, Texas. The company operates six online shops that sell deeply discounted products -- say, a cheap GPS device or a case of wine. Each Woot shop sells only one product at a time, for one day only.
The idea: One of the first retailers on Twitter, Woot uses the service to tell its customers what is on sale that day. Tweets go out at midnight to the company's 1.5 million followers. "We used to say that there's a ton of people who'd visit Woot every day if they thought about it," saysDave Rutledge, who helped his brother Matt start Woot in 2004 and who now runs its creative efforts. "Twitter can help trigger that." Once Woot has sold 90 percent of its inventory for a particular product, which can often happen in just a matter of hours, Rutledge sends a follow-up tweet to alert potential buyers who may be sitting on the fence that time is running out. "That shows people that the item has been approved by the community," he says.
The result: Tens of thousands of people click on Woot's Twitter links every day, and during the company's rapid-fire sales, or Woot Offs, Rutledge estimates the number is in the hundreds of thousands. Conversion rates -- that is, the percentage of users who go on to buy something -- are substantially better than the site's average. Since Rutledge introduced the Twitter stream in January 2007, annual revenue has more than doubled.
How to get retweeted, Part II: Keep messages short. Twitter limits messages to 140 characters, but if you want to get people to tell their friends, it helps if you give them room to add a brief comment of their own. One recent example: "RT @woot: $19.99 : Samsung Bluetooth Headset WITH $20 mail in REBATE!!!!! http://www.woot.com < pretty awesome, just pay 5 bucks shipping!!" For Rutledge, the magic number to ensure lots of retweets is 110 characters or fewer.
Look for Leads on Twitter
The company: Rose Associates, an 80-year-old real estate marketing and management company based inNew York City. Rose has 200 employees and manages some 20,000 luxury apartment units.
The idea: Bob Scaglion, Rose's senior managing director of residential marketing, uses Twitter's search function for lead generation, which works well, because people often send messages about apartment hunting travails. "Our clientele is young and upwardly mobile," he says. "Twitter is where they are." The easiest way to find customers who are looking for what you sell is to go to search.twitter.com and start typing in keywords. Rose uses 10 key terms, like New York City apartments, moving to New York City, and no fee rentals. When a person uses one of these phrases, someone in the company's marketing department sends a reply message like the one above with a link to Rose's apartment listings. Unsolicited messages from strangers might sound creepy, but such is life on Twitter.
The result: No followers? No problem! Rose has only 200 followers on its Twitter account but generates 100 leads a month by sending a few targeted replies every day. Scaglion says roughly half of those leads convert to actual rentals, which is pretty good, given that the program costs almost nothing.
How to find leads faster: There are dozens of Twitter applications that can continuously search Twitter and alert you when a keyword is used. Scaglion's company uses an application called TweetDeck and a Web service called DemandSpot, both of which are free.
Sell Products for Twitter
The company: Atebits, a Philadelphia-based software start-up that makes a $2.99 iPhone application called Tweetie
The idea: Twitter doesn't charge users to send and receive messages, but that doesn't mean people won't pay for an app that makes it easy to use on the go. Atebits's 25-year-old founder, Loren Brichter, set out to build aMicrosoft Outlook for the 140-character set. "Twitter is like e-mail," Brichter says. "The vast majority of people use it for superficial crap, but a small percentage use it for something useful and powerful." Brichter put the first version of Tweetie up for sale in November 2008. To promote it, he sent a message to his friends on -- you guessed it -- Twitter.
The result: Tweetie is the most successful iPhone app for Twitter and has been purchased by 12.7 percent of all Twitter users, according to Twitstat.com. When Brichter released the most recent version, it hit the top of Apple's bestseller list within 36 hours, ahead of popular titles such as Electronic Arts's Madden 2010 and CNN's iPhone app.
How Twitter applications work: Twitter allows anyone to create and sell software that incorporates, organizes, and rearranges tweets in real time -- for instance, by collecting messages written by professional athletes (an app called Twackle) or translating tweets into the language of the high seas (an app called Post Like a Pirate). So far, Twitter has stayed out of the app business, preferring to let software developers and entrepreneurs add functions as they see fit.
Find Customers Anywhere
The company: Kogi Korean BBQ, a year-old Los Angeles start-up that operates four roving food carts. The grub is Korean-style meat served in Mexican-style flatbread. Dishes include Korean short ribs tacos ($2) and spicy pork quesadillas ($7).
The idea: Kogi uses Twitter to tell customers where its trucks are. Except for a few regular spots—like LittleTokyo on Thursday nights—the trucks move every couple of weeks, and managers will sometimes make a last-minute change if the trucks can't find a good spot to park or if the location seems deserted. The idea is to cater to a larger customer base than would be possible with a few regular locations. "We realized that if we wanted to move around a lot, we needed something like Twitter," says co-founder Alice Shin. Customers—some 50,000 so far—sign up to follow Kogi's Twitter feed and get updates about locations, as well as specials and random jokes from Shin.
The result: Extremely rapid growth. Kogi now employs 60 people, up from just four a year ago. "We've gone from selling 30 pounds of meat a day to 1,000," Shin says. At any given time, about 10 percent of the customers learned about the location of the truck from Twitter. The rest, Shin says, "see the line and assume it's good." And if nobody seems to be interested in buying, the truck can always go somewhere else.
How to get retweeted, Part I: Don't shill, and don't spam—or your followers will revolt and stop following. Companies sometimes hire Kogi's trucks for promotional events and then ask Shin to fire off an advertising message to Kogi's followers. Her policy is to decline these requests. "If you spam people with advertising, it'll backfire in the end," she says.
Make Money with Facebook
5 Money Making Opportunities on Facebook
With the release of its new platform, Facebook’s recent endeavor in social media presents a unique opportunity for marketers, developers and businesses to tap into the social network’s young, active, and viral crowd.
However, over the past few weeks there has been a rising concern among developers to uncover ways to monetize their Facebook applications. The curse of instant online success is that you can no longer sustain expensive servers to support hundreds and thousands (or even millions) of Facebook users. The question: how can the developers of Facebook apps actually make money? We don’t have all the answers yet, but here are 5 suggestions:
1. SELL. Develop applications solely for the purpose of selling them to interested parties. Several applications have already been acquired in this fashion; the most recent example is that of Mozes’ purchase of TextMe.
2. DEVELOP. An indirect source of funds: develop applications under contract for third parties. A number of companies have been posting contract jobs over at the Facebook’s developer forums. There exists a large gap in the supply and demand of available Facebook application developers; as a result, finding potential clients to charge reasonable rates should not be a hassle.
3. ADVERTISING. Use advertisements, cross-promotion schemes and affiliate marketing. It is not feasible to use Google Adsense for this since Facebook does not allow JavaScript embedding. Adsense may be embedded through iFrames, which despite being popular among Facebook developers, is against Google’s TOS. Affiliate marketing is a great alternative to advertisements; my own source of income on Facebook is generated through Amazon’s affiliate marketing.
4. MICROPAYMENTS. Sell services within Facebook through micro-payment transactions. PayPal payments made for accessing premium services could potentially yield reasonable income depending on the application’s purpose, size, and prospective users.
5. GET INVESTMENT. If you think you have something big on your hands and lack the funds to scale it, apply for investment through Bay Partners and others who have expressed interest in funding Facebook apps. This would be the likely course of action for a startup with plans to expand globally within and beyond Facebook.
Due to the pace of innovation over the web, it is imperative that companies jump on opportunities like these as they turn up. LinkedIn and Bebo are expected to release their own set of developer APIs as well; I personally cannot wait to be among the first to tap into that opportunity. I advise others to start planning as well.
Make money from Blog.
Having thought through whether you should blog for money it is now worth taking a look at some of the different models for doing so.
I tend to break the different models that bloggers are using to make money from blogging into two areas – Direct and Indirect methods.
Direct Income Earning Methods - these methods are where a blogger earns an income directly FROM their blog.
Indirect Income Earning Methods – these methods are where a blogger earns an income BECAUSE of their blog.
Most blogs tend to fall into one or the other of these methods – although there is nothing to stop bloggers experimenting with elements of both
In this post I’ll look at 8 direct income earning methods and in the next post of this series I’ll explore indirect methods. Please note that on occasion in the following post there will be few affiliate links to services that I use and have had some success with. These will be marked with (aff) after them.
Advertising
There are many ways of selling advertising space on a blog (this could almost be a series of it’s own) but some of the different advertising options that I see bloggers experimenting with include:
- Contextual Advertising – Programs like AdSense and YPN (beta) are very popular with bloggers and are probably the most common income stream being used by them today (MSN are developing one too). In short – these programs scan the content of your blog to assertion what it’s topic is and attempt to put contextually relevant ads (text and image) onto your blog. They are generally simple to use and involve pasting some code into your blog’s templates. Payment is on a ‘per click’ basis (referred to as CPC or ‘cost per click’ ads). Contextual ads suit blogs that have a particular niche topic, especially if it has some sort of commercial angle (ie it has products and services associated with it). They are not so good with ‘general’ type blogs (ie many topics) and/or political/spiritual blogs which argue just one side of a case (this confuses AdSense). I write much more extensively on how to use AdSense on your blog here.
- Other CPC Advertising – There are a variety of other ad systems that pay on a per click basis which are not contextual in nature (which is important as systems like AdSense do not allow you to run contextual ads on the same page view as them). These systems include Chitika’s eMiniMalls(aff) which I reviewed here.
- Impression Based Ads – Impression based ads pay a small amount for every person who views the advertisement. The amount that they pays varies from program to program (and ad to ad) and is generally a fraction of a cent. There are a variety of ad systems around like this includingFastclick (aff) which I reviewed here and Tribal Fusion. Impression based ads won’t earn you much if you don’t have a lot of traffic but can be great if you do.
- Blog Ads – BlogAds have become something of an institution when it comes to advertising on blogs. They traditionally have had a focus upon monetizing political blogs but are expanding their focus lately. The beauty of them is that bloggers set their own rates and can accept or reject advertisers that apply to them to be featured on their blogs. These ads put the control of what ads show and how much they earn into the hands of the blogger. The downside is that if you price them too high you could never have any ads showing at all. They can also be difficult to be accepted into as a publisher as these days they only accept people into the system if they have a someone who is already in ‘sponsor’ or recommend the new publisher.
- Text Ads – Another increasingly popular way to sell ads on your blog is to look into text links. The beauty of these are that they don’t take up much room and that depending upon the system you choose to run them you can have control over which advertisers you accept and reject. AdBrite(aff) is one such system that gives you control in a similar way to BlogAds in that you set your own prices and approve all ads. They also other other formats of ads. Text Link Ads (aff) is another text link seller that more and more bloggers are using. The beauty of both of these systems is that they have a pool of advertisers already so you don’t have to go looking for your own advertisers. Their systems are also both very automated and are just a matter of pasting some code onto your blog. I use them both and while they don’t earn anywhere near as much as AdSense or Chitika for me they add up over the year and have done well for me. Bidvertiser and Adzaar are other system that I know are popular with some (we’ve used them quite successfully on b5media although I have little personal experience with them).
- RSS Ads – An increasingly popular way for people to read blogs is via RSS. As a result publishers and ad providers have been keen to find ways to place ads in feeds. These attempts have been met with a variety of success levels. I’m yet to hear of too many people making big dollars with RSS ads yet but the ad systems seem to be improving. AdSense offers RSS ads to some of it’s publishers (you have to have a certain number of impressions first) as does YPN. Feedburner is a tool I’ve used to help monetise my own feeds – they give publishers three options (1. AdSense if you’ve been approved by them, 2. Amazon affiliate program and 3. if you have a lot of subscribers (over 500) they have an Ad Network). Pheedo is another system that you might like to try (although I’ve not had much experience with it).
- Other Ads Systems – In addition to the above systems (most of which I’ve used myself) are many other advertising options which I’ve not had experience with and so won’t personally recommend. I’m sure they are worth experimenting with however as I see many of them being used by bloggers every day. Here they are in no particular order:
- AdGenta, CrispAds, Clicksor, Intelli Txt, Peak Click, Double Click, Industry Brains, AdHearUs,Kanoodle, AVN, Pheedo, Adknowledge, YesAdvertising, RevenuePilotTextAds, SearchFeed,Target Point, OneMonkey, and TextAds. Feel free to add your own and tell us how you’ve gone with them in comments below.
make money on YouTube
A handful of internet stars turn video views into pay cheques.
Gayathri Vantillu (44) is a homemaker who likes to cook. But unlike others she put her passion for cooking to use. She began uploading home videos of her cooking – shot on a handycam – on video streaming site YouTube. Later, her neighbour’s son also helped her sign up as a partner on YouTube. Three years, 290 videos, 2,000 subscribers and over five million views later, today, Vantillu earns about Rs 40,000 a month from her online cookery channel.
Vantillu could earn money from her videos because she chose to sign up for Google YouTube’s partner programme, which allows content owners to monetise the content via online ads. The now famous Kolaveri video, which got more than four million hits in just about 10 days, did not earn any advertising revenues as the content owner (Sony Music) was not a YouTube Partner.
To sign up for partner programme, content owner needs to contact YouTube and once approved, they can start a small enterprise right on their computers.
| QUICK BUCKS FROM ORIGINAL VIDEOS |
| * YouTube can be used as a publishing platform for original videos that provide entertainment across age groups |
| * There are two ways of making videos on YouTube. One is by using a real video camera and recording things around you. If you do not want to or if you do not own a camera to record videos, then you could focus on doing things on your computer. This could be anything from how-to videos teaching people how to use programs like Photoshop and so on. These videos are always popular since people find it easy to search for help videos on YouTube if they are stuck with a problem. |
| * Once the content is ready, you have to drive traffic to your video and that can be done by sharing the video on social networks or asking viewers to share their reviews. |
| * The site has its own advertising programme, which can be used to monetise videos but content owners need to first become partners. Once accepted as a partner, you will be able to earn money through Google’s AdSense. The minimum payout with AdSense is $100. You will get to use overlay ads at the bottom of the video while it’s running, banner ads next to the video and ads that run before your video does. If you constantly upload videos and get more subscribers, you will create a residual income from all of your videos. |
YouTube has been the starting ground for many internet stars, but only a few have been able to turn the video views into pay cheques. With 23 million unique users landing on YouTube, as per comscore data, it’s a huge market place to sell original content.
Another cooking enthusiast, Veena Nair started her channel on YouTube to help bachelors, professionals craving for homemade food or newly-married women across globe. She recently won the “Next Chef” contest on YouTube, bagged $15,000 as prize money, along with professional film-making and editing equipment and a 12-week course that to enhance her cooking and style her video clips.
Online content sharing has been the buzz for quite some time now. Pop artistes and celebrities have been using the medium to interact with fans, and monetise their content through advertisements that appear on the same page. The trend, however, is just emerging in India.
Nair points that from being able to make only instant noodles as a new bride to now teaching people the finer aspects of cooking Italian, continental, Chinese, Thai and Indian cuisine, she has come a long way in the last 18 months. “I wanted to feel confident in the kitchen. Once I picked up tips from friends and family, I thought of helping others in a similar predicament. YouTube provided me with the perfect platform,” notes Nair.
YouTube has broadened its partnership opportunities to include individual video owners along with professional content producers like YashRaj films, UTV, Shemaroo and many more. As a partner, YouTube allows creators to monetise the video and share revenue earned from it. What’s the catch? YouTube partners must create original videos suitable for online streaming, regularly upload content, and give permission to use and monetise all audio and video content uploaded.
The knowledge sharing could be about anything. While cooking and fitness top the list, make-up and style tips, music and video blogging about films and current events are also popular. Basic research, good presentation skills, and regular uploading of content ensures not only subscribers, channel views and strong advertising revenues, but also, sometimes, rewards and recognition.
Raghav Pande, fitness trainer, nutrition specialist and winner of YouTube’s “Next Trainer” contest says, “YouTube as a medium allows me to attract and interact with a wider audience, which was my aim in taking to the internet.” He now has clients from all over the world who visit his website and keep in touch with him for their fitness and nutrition requirements.” His channel on YouTube has garnered more than 2,40,000 views and over 1,200 subscribers in the last couple of years.
It doesn’t take much effort on Pande’s part to maintain the channel. A non-professional cameraman helps him shoot the video over a day or two, which then takes three to four hours to edit. The final clip, running up to 3.5 minutes is then given to YouTube to upload.
If one does not wish to be burdened with the task of production or managing a channel online, there are companies like YoBoHo, which has collaborated with musicians, fitness experts, video bloggers, amateur cooks, among many others to produce content with them and then monetise it. The payment for a single clip can range from anywhere between Rs 300-Rs 1,000 or even more, depending on the channel’s subscriber base, the potential to attract channel views, thereby increasing the advertising revenues.
Hitendra Merchant, CEO of YoBoHo, says understanding the target audience for the video clip is essential. “Building a dedicated subscriber base, providing them with a steady stream of creative, original and communicative content, and keeping them updated about new videos is the key to make it successful here.”
Singer and songwriter, Neha Bhasin who has over 1.2 million views since her channel’s inception in September 2010, ensures that her channel’s home page is an extension of her personality and the brand of music she produces. “Internet audience is very different from TV audience.” On her channel, subscribers know expect more than the regular Bollywood fare, she adds.
Regular uploads of new content is also important in keeping subscribers happy.
Yoga teacher Devidatta Sukhatankar uploads anywhere between one video a day to at least three videos a week on his channel. Maintaining the frequency of uploads has ensured his channel 1.6 million views in the last one year, building his real world clientele as well.
Anuradha Anand Lunavat, a freelance media professional, also attributes the success of her channel to making a lot of videos and keeping the quality of content and production high. “The clip should be short to keep the attention of the viewer from wavering,” she says. “People new to this must have patience and diligently continue to post videos. It takes time to build a fan base, but if your content is good, it will pay off.”
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