Did you know you can increase your affiliate income by using the Web 2.0 tool named Twitter in your marketing and affiliate efforts? I will come to the "how to make money" part shortly, but first I will tell you a little bit about the phenomenon Twitter, in case you haven't heard about it before or are unsure of exactly what's going on.
Imagine the coffee machine or lunch restaurant at your workplace. The place most people meet up and share both gossip and work discussions. Then you have an understanding of what twitter is about. It's a gathering point for a lot of people online. It's a dialog between people and as you will discover shortly it opens fantastic opportunities both socially and for business. And you don't need a website, blog or marketing funds. It's all free.
So how do you make money from Twitter? As you soon will see links are a big and natural part of the conversations going on in Twitter. People are also much more inclined to click your links in Twitter than for example in email marketing, links on websites or blogs. And it will also take you very little time to write your Twitter messages. I spend about a minute to write a twitter message.
So, I just told you why you can make money. Now let's look at the how...
Step 1, sign up to twitter. Go to twitter.com and create a new account. This will take you a couple of seconds.
Step 2, sign up to a bunch of twitters. You find Twitters in twitter. The process is very simple and you will understand it as soon as you have tried. The easiest way to find interesting Twitters are through people that are already authorities in your marketplace and other interest areas. Authors, bloggers and so on.
Twitters you may find interesting to follow: @gillberg, @colligan, @SoftwareGuide (this is an example of a business twitter with messages related to software).
My initial tests suggest you can get a ratio about one to 5, e.g. for every 5 people you follow one will follow you. And if you follow me, I will follow you ;-)
Step 3, after signing up and subscribing to a few Twitters it's time to set up your account. For people to sign up to follow you it's important that you have a short bio and if you have a website or blog, include a link too.
This should help you get a higher ratio of followers and the followers will also be more targeted. Say you are interested in affiliate marketing. If likeminded people see you in Twitter and check out your bio they are more likely to subscribe to your Twitter messages.
When setting up the account I recommend you use a picture of yourself. This will make you more trustworthy and human.
Step 4, listen to the communication. Twittering is pretty straight forward process, but it's good to get a feel for the general communication.
And finally, step 5 -- time to start twittering.
Some Twitter tips.
* Be personal. Tell people a little bit about yourself, this will make you more human and trustworthy.
* Use mystique to get the click. For example; Check this out: [link], Wow, this is cool: [link] and so on. I think you get the picture.
* When it's appropriate, interact with other Twitters using the reply button.
* Share valuable information, if you spam you will end up without anyone reading your posts pretty soon.
* Don't talk about yourself too much.
* Use tracking for your links. Use klikdeal (klikdeal.com) for example to set up your twitter links. This will pretty soon give you an overview of what is being clicked and what's not. Avoid tinyurl as this doesn't give you tracking capabilities.
Looking forward to see your Twitters and click your affiliate links. A big thanks goes out to Paul Colligan for introducing me to twitter.
Peter Gillberg is a Software Marketing veteran running the blog http://www.softwaremarketingsecrets.com/ you can hear his twitter at http://twitter.com/gillberg
