In last week’s newsletter I introduced you to an expert marketer and now good friend Ed Walters. I got some great feedback on his Twitter basics article. This week I’m handing back over to Eddie and he’s going to reveal some cool tricks that you can use to start generating an affiliate income without spending a penny. Yes, you too can start making money from Twitter today!
Want to be making money from Twitter? Follow this step-by-step guide
Last week I introduced ‘Twitter’ as a huge potential money making platform. Very powerful if done correctly and many of the big guns (pardon the cliché) are already adding it to their arsenal of internet marketing weaponry.
The good news is you can do exactly the same and today I’m going to show you how. By creating and promoting your own products (which is very easy) through Twitter you can maximise your profits and you don’t need any marketing experience whatsoever. You can even generate an affiliate income without your own web site or product.
Hopefully by now you have set up your twitter account in the best way possible which I explained last week. Once you’ve done that simply following the steps below and you’ll be on your way to your very own long term cash generator.
TOP TIP: One thing to bear in mind during this whole process is that making money from Twitter is both a game of relevance and numbers. Who is “following” you, and how many are “following” you, are the two key factors that will dictate your success.
Step one: Your Twitter profile – make it stand out!
The first thing I want to start with is your Twitter page itself. The most common mistake people make is failing to customise and personalise their Twitter page, which can turn off potential followers and leads.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to build trust with your followers. If your page looks like everyone else’s you just blend in. When really what you want to do is STICK OUT so people will find you interesting.
You can use services like mytweetspace.com and twitbacks.com to create a personalized Twitter background with instructions on how to load it into your Twitter account.
Include personal photos, a short bio, your location, a link to your web page if you have one (where you can also provide your contact details if necessary) and anything else to make you stand out from the millions of other Twitter users.
Step two: Finding your followers
Gathering the right kind of followers is crucial if you want to generate online cash with Twitter marketing. There are many ways to find targeted followers. Last week I mentioned going to the Twitter Friend Finder and searching for people in the niche you are trying to attract. You can search the Twitter network by Tweet Keywords, Profile Data, Location, Followers of Another User, and, by Users Followed by Another User.
By carefully entering your search criteria you should get a good response back. Do make sure your twitter account is setup properly beforehand and others should follow you back with no problem.
So, if, for example, you wanted to promote a product in the multi-billion dollar self help / self improvement niche you would search under keyword terms such as ‘building confidence’, ‘secrets of success’, ‘positive thinking’, etc.
Step three: Maximising and targeting your followers
The more followers you have the more people will read your posted messages and the more money you can make from Twitter. It should, therefore, seem obvious that you need to target what kind of followers you recruit. However, most people who are trying to promote products through social media don’t do this. Most use a shotgun approach which works very poorly in terms of converting followers into paying customers. What you need to do is go to Google and type in “search Twitter”. You will find lots of tools, such as www.twellow.com, that will help you find people who are tweeting about topics relevant to the product or service you are promoting. Simply look for people in your niche market and target them to become your followers.
Another way to help you find relevant followers as quickly and effectively as possible is to use Twitter marketing software, of which there is plenty out there to choose from. www.tweetadder.com, for example, can give you up to five hundred new followers per day. This system also lets you automate twitter, Auto-Follow, Auto-Unfollow, Auto-Tweet & Direct Mail (more on these in step ten).
Basically all you have to do is enter into the software what you are searching for in terms of your prospects. Then each time anyone creates a tweet signifying that they fall into your chosen category, the software will have you follow that person. After you follow someone, most of the time that person will follow back particularly if you target the correct type of audience to start with.
Step four: Make sure your Tweets always answer this question
Twitter is a popular micro-blogging service that asks one question, “What are you doing?” This question is answered, literally, by millions of users throughout the day, every day. Answers must be under one hundred and forty characters in length and can be sent via mobile texting, instant message, or the web. Be sure to keep this in mind when twittering and you’ll do well.
Step five: Your Tweets – provide valuable content and only use subtle marketing
I know that it’s hard to continually think of original things to post, so what you need to do is think of one topic each day to be the focus of your “tweets”. Then break it down to approximately six (or more) tweets and make sure that each tweet personable. For example, if you’re using Twitter to market a self help program you’re first tweet of the day might be, “Good morning everyone! Hope you had a good night. I’m feeling motivated today.” Then later on that day your second tweet might be something like “I’m currently watching a video about ‘building confidence’ and it’s really changed my life [insert link to your product here]”.
TOP TIP: Blasting your followers with direct messages or Tweets like, “hey, check out this link right now” will get your blocked or banned. Direct messages should not be sales-like and should just give a warm welcome to new followers.
Always bare in mind Step four – answer the question, “What are you doing?”
You might lose your followers very quickly if your tweets are too forceful in the way they advertise your product. Just approach the whole trial from a consumer’s perspective and you will be making sales before you know it.
Step six: Keeping your precious followers
Finding your followers takes time enough but keeping them is even more important. To do this here are some simple tips:
* Be consistent with your tweets
* Quality is better than quantity
* If posting links, provide commentary as to why
* Balance self promotion with sharing
* Maintain good Twitter etiquette (see twitter.com)
* Avoid controversial topics
* Interact with your followers (reply, etc)
* Try to tweet on a daily basis
Step seven: Timing your Tweets
The time you tweet is VERY IMPORTANT! Many people forget this and that’s where they fall down. You don’t want to tweet if no one is online reading the tweets, right? If you post your tweets at popular times more people will read your messages.
So, if, for example, you live in the UK and most of your followers are in the US, take into account the time difference when posting your tweets. In the US twitter tends to be busiest during core business hours 9am – 5pm (yep plenty of people love to jump on to Twitter when the boss turns his back – haha beats working!) with a peak around lunchtime.
You could also keep track of which links are followed most from your Tweets over the course of, say, a week in order to evaluate the most effective time to talk to your followers. Then hit them at those times.
Simple but effective!
Step eight: Automate your Tweets
Of course, the more tweets you put out through the day the better off you are. However, tweeting this often can be time consuming so I want to let you in on a little helpful tool that allows you to set up tweets and select the time you want to post them.
There are several services out there to schedule tweets or to set up automated recurring tweets. The most common is probably Google Alert Feeds which is simple to set up.
Another good automatic feed service is www.socialoomph.com
Setting up automatic tweeting is a great way to leverage your time but you have to make sure that you set up plenty of different tweets that revolve so that your account does not get shut down for excessive duplicate tweets. I would recommend setting up at least a hundred tweets and you should change them from time to time. Remember you will still need to reply to tweets to keep your followers so you shouldn’t rely on one hundred per cent automation.
If you are a looking for a way to automatically send messages to your followers you should try www.twitteronlinesystem.com.
There are five ways to automatically send messages to your followers with this system. You can send messages to newest followers first, oldest followers first, users in any order, users added today only, and, users added this week only.
You can customize your messages, choose how many messages to send, set up how fast you want the system to find twitterers online and choose up to five different ways to search for twitterers. There are also many other cool features that come with this system.
Step nine: Make money by advertising on Twitter
Go to http://revtwt.com, click on publisher and sign up to a free account to start making money by publishing relevant adverts to your targeted followers on your twitter page. Set up automated advert posting and you will be able to make money using this cost per click program. It is very similar to Google Adsense because they pay you to advertise on your site or in this case your Twitter account.
Step ten: Accepting payments
Using Twitter you can start to market any product to your followers. Once you develop a loyal and large list of followers you will want to direct customers to your web site where you could sell a number of different products or services. You could also direct customers via an affiliate link to someone else’s web site where you would be paid a commission for any sales you make. But remember, creating and promoting your own products is very easy and will maximise your profits. But before you can receive payment you must set up a suitable payment platform. To start with I would recommend accepting payments via 2checkout.com. I use these and they are very reliable. You could also use other payment platforms such as paypal, AlertPay or Escrow.
Step eleven: Switch on your auto-pilot Twitter profits
Once you have set everything up in the way I have shown you can begin generating profits on Twitter. Your followers will start seeing your regular tweets each time he or she logs in to their Twitter account. So any adverts or promotional links that you post will show up on the follower’s computer every time they go to tweet. They click on your link, buy your product and you profit every single time over and over again. Simple as that! I know you’ll certainly be able to see the potential money you can make from Twitter by now and I hope you’re getting as excited as I am about this. You now know more that most about how to successfully start your Twitter business. You know how to set up your twitter account, how to maximise your targeted followers, how to automate your tweets, how to accept payments and loads more.
That is all you need to do in a nutshell so now it’s time to start making some money using Twitter. Remember the more followers you get the more money you could potentially make so setting up multiple Twitter accounts is a great way to ramp up this simple cash generator.
Go make some money! Good luck, Ed Walters
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Has this article peaked your interest in Twitter?
I’ll be honest, before Ed revealed to me ways you could generate an affiliate income from Twitter without spending a penny I was a little sceptical. But after doing some investigating of my own there is some very cool and realistic ways this can be done. If you enjoyed Ed’s article and want to learn more drop me an email and let me know and I may team up with him and create a truly awesome Twitter product.