Today in the morning I was pinged by one of my Facebook friends with some cute news: a start-up called Magpie (aff link) offers you to monetize your Twitter account and earn money for Tweeting the ads.
My instant reaction was “Nah…” The whole idea of earning money from friends sounds somewhat not good. But curiosity won, I went ahead and signed up. You can estimate how much you will be earning by clicking the “Start” tab.
So far I have no real data to share as I spread 0 Tweets and thus can’t see any statistics but here’s what the service looks like both from outside and inside:
What the service promises
- Magpie (aff link) promises to give you full control over your Tweets: you can set the ad frequency, stop it any time and even pre-approve each ad before it will be tweeted on your behalf.
- You can add a disclaimer before or after the advertisement text before the ad goes live to warn your friends that the Tweet is sponsored;
- Advertisements are served based on the person’s general networks (so the service appears to classify the whole Twitterati into groups by interests);
- You can spend the earned credits to advertise your own product or site (this one looks pretty cool by the way).
- You can also earn money for any new Advertiser who signs up through your personal referral link, you will earn a 30% commission of our transaction fees.
- Payment is made via PayPal as soon as you earn at least ā¬50.00
Why I am in a doubt:
- Even with disclaimer and pre-approval, won’t this result in my following loss?
- CPM model: will those ads be ever clicked? Will they devalue Twitter: “in order to raise your revenue, all you need is to multiply your tweets or to increase your followers. And their site promotes these two facts for every low revenue account” (as my friend Rishi Lakhani points out);
- While the design is pretty sleek and clear, why would anyone trust the guys? Where are people I refer listed? How all my stats will look like?
- How is Twitter going to react? They have been expected to monetize themselves for a year now – will they bear with someone monetizing their network prior to them?
Anyway, I am curious to see how this will evolve. I definitely see the potential (for both parts: publishers and advertisers). I’ve never been paid for participating in social media communities and it might be a cool opportunity to combine business with pleasure.
So what do you think? Would you join? Would you pay for advertisements? Would you click the advertisements?
Latest posts by Ann Smarty (see all)
- Semantic Research + AI = Win - May 15, 2023
- Visual Quotes. HOW TO: Quote Using Text-to-Image Tools (and Go Viral) - Aug 9, 2022
- Digital Marketing Tools: Best New SEO Software I Use - Apr 5, 2022
I’ve made it a point to unfollow magpie users. (almost all anyway)
I’d prefer an ad section in twitter to random links spammed by people that I’m trying to learn from. It may just be may, but I’m not a fan.
Yeah, besides Magpie does not pay that much. Right now I would get at tops 1.70 dollars each month :
I have known about Magpie for quite some time. I addressed the issue my post from January 10 Twitter Commandments I suppose it partly depends on ones purpose for using Twitter is. Personally I use Twitter as a networking and brand building tool. Therefore I find it kind of cheesy and think it does devalue ones professional Twitter profile.
Hi Ann … š
MagPie’s a really parasitic model if you ask me .. .
Steve Spalding of HowToSplitAnAtom did a fantastic post on his site about
Twitter Magpie and Counterpoint
FWIW … His posts are a must read for ahead-of-the-game info …
Best
If you haven’t signed up for useqwitter.com yet you should to see if the ads are costing you any followers. How would you balance the value of lost followers vs the Magpie revenue?
Offer person payment for using his email account to send spam. Reply would be pretty ugly.
But on twitter same is suddenly ok for some? š
While I find the concept of Magpie intriguing, I personally cannot bring myself to use it. I feel it would devalue my Twitter stream and it would result in a loss of followers (which, of course, would mean less potential income for me/Magpie, meaning that it’s a lose-lose situation).
So far, I haven’t noticed anyone in my network using it, but I would likely unfollow anyone who did, unless they were providing me with a HUGE amount of valuable information to balance out the annoyance of being spammed by Magpie.
Nice blog on twitter. Is it really true that one can earn money from it ??
sounds like a good way to cut your followers in half (not literally of course)
I have to agree with the comments of the others, magpie sounds like a losing business model. A couple of days ago I wrote how twitter could make money on “the exit” of twitter. There are two companies (afaik) that offer a “money making scheme” like that. Whether it’s a viable businessmodel or even if it would make you any real money? I’m not sure š
Uh oh… sounds like another spam tool being built as this comment is being typed. I saw this coming a mile back. š
I’m interested to see where this service is within the next few months. While I agree with the concept of being able to monetize Twitter, I’m not sure this is the way to do it. Let me know if you find otherwise!
I can’t imagine this sort of thing gaining traction without some of the super users starting to do it. I can only imagine the massive list of unfollows that would ensue with these ads. I also haven’t even seen one tweet with anyone using the service, and I couldn’t imagine clicking on the ad. Bad for the advertisers as well as the users.
If the ad is useful its good content. If its not the user will consider it spam. Magpie to me seems just like when people started putting in Google and other text ads into their RSS feeds. It was really annoying and led me to unsubscribe to those feeds.
IMO Twitter and other social media sites like Facebook should be used to promote your main site rather than be a monetization engine themselves. Perhaps there are some folks out there that only use FB or Twitter and don’t have a web site and these kinds of solutions might be useful to them.
A good one for those who wants to generate revenu by PPC.
The important question you asked is, how will Twitter react since they are still figuring out how to monetize themselves? With the recent surge of Twitter in the media I can only assume would want to slap this type of spam down. I certainly wouldn’t click a link like that.
I think it’s a very dangerous ground.
Rather say – sinking sand. As for me personally, I’d never sign up on such invitation. Twitter is fine, but when ADs will overload system – it’s will loose it’s power and confidance from people.
From the other side – yes, good strategy on how to monetize any own account – is worth to be reviewed.
thanks!You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog.
Thanks though, iām glad some people share good stuff like this! It will greatly help me in my SEO activities.
I think I’ll hold off until it’s more well known and has bigger payoffs, lol. I don’t want to annoy my followers for nothing :p
I signed up with magpie a couple of weeks ago but up until now I haven’t had a single earnings.
I am going to give them a chance! š
twitter is going downhill. I’ve been watching their stats. it’s terrible. Great research on your end though.
This is how i look at twitter. You don’t get way good links from them, and no one is going to go to twitter first, then go buy something from that company.
Hey I know this is off topic but I was wondering if you knew of any widgets I could add to my blog that automatically tweet my newest twitter updates. I’ve been looking for a plug-in like this for quite some time and was hoping maybe you would have some experience with something like this. Please let me know if you run into anything. I truly enjoy reading your blog and I look forward to your new updates.
Earning money from Twitter, especially if you have a strong account, has never been easier. The information that is provided here could be helpful if you are looking to monetize your account and drive extra income.