A Review of Twitter Advertising Networks – Paid Tweeting

As you may have seen, I’ve been testing out some of the popular Twitter Advertising Networks lately. I have mixed feelings about them. I don’t like sending out paid tweets, however, I don’t really care if other people I follow do. No one I follow sends out an excessive amount.

Let’s face it, blogging isn’t going to send most people into retirement, and a lot of people who blog aren’t doing it for income anyway. However, unless you’re on Blogger there are hosting fees and possible design fees that you might want to cover. Maybe you want to earn money to attend that blogging conference. Or maybe you need to justify to your spouse why you do this to begin with, and have a little cash to show for it.

If you don’t fall into any of these categories, some of these advertising networks will allow you to donate your Twitter earnings to charity. This is pretty awesome, I think.  Here’s some info on four that I tried.

Magpie: I’m not sure how I stumbled upon Magpie but shortly after I did, I read a post by mom blogger/twitterer Jessica Gottlieb who recommends Magpie. Before you sign up, they will lure you in by telling you how much you can potentially earn on Magpie. At the time, I was just shy of 4000 Twitter followers. My “earning potential” was about $700 a month. Huh? Where’s the catch? I signed up immediately.

From what I can see, to make money on Magpie your followers would actually have to click through and buy something. I’m an online shopper extraordinaire and I have never, ever done that. Have you? When I’m on Twitter, I’m talking to someone or catching up on something. I’m not likely to get distracted enough to immediately go book an airline flight from London to Saudi Arabia. Yes, I tweeted a British Midlands deal on accident. I hit the approve link instead of decline. I actually know what BMI (British Midlands Airlines) is since I lived in London, but how many of my readers are really booking flights on BMI to Saudi Arabia? Supposedly, Magpie has a lot of Etsy sellers who advertise through them. I’m all in favor of Etsy. I’ve not been presented with an Etsy tweet yet.  If so, I’d totally tweet it.

Now I have sent out some pretty lame tweets (I try not to, but sometimes I look back and think what the @#$%) with links that always get clicked on. I measure with bitly. I sent one rare pay per click Magpie tweet that apparently got zero clicks. I’m a little suspicious about that. I received a pay per click tweet for Audi that I accepted, because I drive an Audi and I love it. It said that it would pay $4.99 per click. That wasn’t the case, I was paid a flat $4.99. I have received a few more pay per click offers but I don’t like that the amount you can earn isn’t always specified.
www.be-a-magpie-com

Tweet ROI: I tried to use this service. They lay out the available tweets and how much you’ll get paid to tweet them. It’s never very much, but you can pick what you like. I got frustrated with them, because the tweets I liked could only be sent during certain times of the day and I’m just not that organized.  They also very rarely have anything that fits my following.  I took a screen shot of everything that’s available to me at the moment.  It’s not great.  The minimum withdrawal amount is $20.

www.tweetroi.com

Sponsored Tweets: I like Sponsored Tweets. You can set your price, but they will suggest a price based on how many followers you have. Then they will pair you with advertisers. When there’s an opportunity, they’ll send you a DM. You can take the opportunity or decline it. Sometimes the tweet is prewritten and sometimes you can write or rewrite it. When you write it, they’ll approve it, and auto tweet. They pay your per tweet set price and when you’re ready you can withdraw earnings via PayPal. The minimum withdrawal amount is $50.

Here’s the catch:  at 4000 followers, my recommended price is $5.00 per tweet roughly. I haven’t had a tweet matched with me in about a month. When I was down around $2-3, I was declining them left and right because they were proposing more than I was comfortable tweeting (which is really a few times a week, max). It might be the time of year too though. I noticed a slow down over Christmas. I think I’ve tweeted one from them since.

You may also place a Sponsored Tweets “Hire Me” button on your blog. That means anyone that’s reading your blog can hit that link and hire you (for your set per tweet amount) to send out a tweet on their behalf.

www.sponsoredtweets.com

MyLikes:   My Likes allows you to donate your earnings to 12 different charities such as FEED the Children, American Cancer Society, Mayo Clinic and more.  I’m a fan of this new website actually.  You can choose to “like” almost anything you want along with Sponsored Likes.  For instance, I wrote non paid reviews for a few cookbooks I use and places I love in Hong Kong.  I also wrote, tweeted and blogged a Sponsored Like for these cute wine coaster gift tags.  You are paid if anyone clicks on the links you Tweet or provide in a blog post.  The pay per click amount is generous from about $.20-$.50 which, as you know, is better than Google in a lot of cases.  You can build a community of friends on MyLikes and see what other people “like”.  It’s kind of addicting. 

As far as the Sponsored Likes are concerned, there are far more relevant opportunities for me on MyLikes.  I like that I can choose what fits my following and tweet it out at any time.  MyLikes gives you more control than the other advertising sites.  It’s also very easy for you to sign up as an advertiser and set your own budget.  I believe you can put the MyLikes money you earn toward advertising.  Any amount you’ve earned over $2 will be sent to your PayPal account automatically every Friday, if you provide them with the paypal information.  I haven’t done that yet.

I have the MyLikes blog widget on my site, but I’ve noticed that it auto generates the sponsored Likes. I don’t like that it cuts off the descriptions sometimes and think that looks sloppy. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep it up.

www.mylikes.com

I haven’t withdrawn money from any of my Twitter advertising accounts yet because I’m not sure what to do with it. Some I’ll put to charity and some possibly toward another project I’m working on (details soon).  Some of these Twitter advertisers require you to complete tax information.  Yes, people you are most definitely supposed to declare this on your tax returns.  

I will continue to use Sponsored Tweets and MyLikes.  BTW, some of the links above are affiliate links should you sign up.

What do you think about paid tweeting? Do you do it? What services do you like?

Tagged as: Magpie, MyLikes, Sponsored Tweets, Twitter, Twitter Advertising Networks