Twitter, while free, does offer an online marketer a way to make money. And it's probably not as difficult as you might think. But, you do have to go about it a certain way.
First, you need to take the time to understand Twitter and what it's purpose is. Using it the wrong way to just tweet message after message about some money making opportunity will not earn you the income you're looking for.
Twitter, as you may know, let's people write timely messages that are only 140 characters long. These status messages can be anything from "I'm heading off to the gym" to "Find out how to get website traffic for free. Visit (some URL)".
But perhaps the most important thing to remember about Twitter is that you get back what you give. In other words, once you begin using Twitter and making status updates, you want to give as much as you can first before asking for something in return.
For instance, let's say you ran a website about tennis shoes and had tennis shoes for sale on this website. When you make your status updates, you'd first want to start by giving advice about what kinds of shoes to buy for a certain kind of activity. What shoes are important for running? Or how an arch in the shoe may help or hurt your feet and legs.
At first it may be difficult to come up with ideas to send your followers, but one way to make sure that you stay on top of the latest trends for your market is to simply find some related websites, subscribe to them using a feed reader such as Google's and then make a daily visit to these feeds to see what's being posted. As you come across information that you think may be helpful to your followers, post a link and a short update about what the story is about.
Every so often you can then recommend one of your products. For instance, if there were a story about a certain kind of running shoe that has been getting rave reviews, mention that you can get this shoe at your website.
Another key to using Twitter effectively is to make sure you're updating often. You don't want folks to forget who you are or why they chose to follow you in the first place.
Oftentimes it isn't possible to visit Twitter on a consistent basis throughout the day so you can use a service such as SocialOomph.com which will allow you to schedule your tweets; a fantastic time-saver.
The key with Twitter is to not market to everyone all of the time. Those people who make the most money using Twitter first strive to earn the trust of their followers and then market to them once in a while.
That said, the amount of money you do make from Twitter will vary greatly based upon the number of followers you have. So actively strive to follow people each and every day. In the marketing world, a conversion rate, or in other words, the number of buyers there are based upon the number of people who see a message, is usually around 1%.
At Twitter, it's usually less because not everyone will actually see your message. Oftentimes you'll find that those who you follow also have hundreds if not thousands of other people that they're following and if you fall into this statistic you'll know just how difficult it is to keep up with everyone's tweets.
The point is, the more followers you have, the more likely you are to make more sales.
So update your status often, make sure you're giving helpful information to your followers, and then only market to them every so often.
