The Twitter Game
On any given day I receive about 30 new followers on twitter. This would add up to about 900 new followers over the past month and yet when I check my twitter account the real number has only increased by about 60.
The reason why is that I don’t follow back unless I know the person. You know what I mean – somebody follows you and then you are supposed to follow them back. Ultimately everybody then brags of the fact that they have 30,000 followers.
I am aware that many of my readers are playing the Twitter game and I don’t want to dump in your cornflakes unfairly but would any of you like to tell me what the point is? Are any of you actually seeing results either monetarily or some other way. I’m trying to keep an open mind and would really like to know if I am missing the boat here.
I posted about Monster Energy Drinks on my other blog a few days ago in order to help a friend rank in the serp’s for Monster Energy Drinks, also to show that SEO really is just “getting targeted anchored keyword backlinks”, that you don’t have to post on topic, backlinks don’t have to be from relevant sites to help and finally to check out what effect twitter and facebook would have on getting attention to what was clearly a social type post.
Twitter Stats for Griz
Given I have 800 followers I assumed then that the post would be read and perhaps re-tweeted by 800 followers… Ok – maybe a FEW would be washing their cat and miss the tweet but that would still leave 750 ish to get the word out… OK maybe a few more don’t actually see twits (like me) because they (like me) have no way of knowing if a friend has just twitted something… and they (like me) couldn’t find an instruction manual on twitter explaining exactly how we are supposed to know when a friend has twitted something as earth shattering as my post was… and they (like me) refuse to actually spend more than 2 seconds trying to find an answer to this problem… so that would still leave about 2 people who do read my twits because they are brilliant and/or just happened to be on twitter when my twit popped up and they promptly re-twitted it to their 30,000 followers who were washing their cats and that is about where it died a most un-viral death.
So that’s my take on the Twitter thing. It is useful for searching for stuff though and if they get their act together they could cause Google some grief and I did find it useful for letting Blogger know last week that Blogspot.com was down in my region and unbelievably 1) Google/Blogger didn’t know it till I twitted them, 2) They promptly fixed the problem, 3) A Google/Blogger employee actually got back to me on Twitter lickety split – YES WAY! When has anybody from G ever responded to anyone ever?
So twitter has some uses but just wondering if any of you are making coin from it or are you just using it to spam crap to thousands of followers who are busy washing cats? Like this guy…
Yet another piece of drivel...
Please share – I really would like to know without spending more than 2 seconds trying to learn on my own. 
Cheers,
Griz
Btw – how come every time I want to twit something as important as this post – (I know my 800 followers are waiting for it on the edge of their seats) I get this…
Just because they are losing money is no reason not to lose more and buy more bandwidth - sheesh
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Twitter is good for one thing. Customer Service. I had major problems with Bank of America because a direct deposit didn’t go through while I was on vacation. It ended causing tons of fee and the customer support and service phone lines pretty much said too F’in bad!
So I decided to twit 2 things, one was that BoA was evil and never to do business with them, the second was the BoA twitter page. The next day I got a call from the BoA CEO’s office (some secretary not the CEO calling) and they told me that all fines had been refunded.
Twitter saved my $$$.
I agree re: customer service. It got Google/Blogger’s attention pretty darn fast and I can see businesses paying attention to what people say about them on twitter – they have to appear concerned in public.
Just not sure what use it has for making money online though…
Btw – you were in the Akismet penalty box – best to ask them to let you out. Someone played the spam button on ya’
How do you know when you are in the akismet box and where do you request a removal from there? I know some of my emails are in but don’t know how get them out.
Akismet is strictly a comment spam filter program that many of us use on our sites. Has nothing to do with emails (as far as I know). If you leave a comment on a blog and the owner thinks your comment is spam he tells the program to mark you as spam. In future if you leave a comment on another site using the Akismet program your comment will automatically be removed and placed in the spam folder. You will have to ask Akismet to re-instate you on their site to get removed from the spam filter.
The other way is to leave comments on a friendly blog and ask the author to de-spam your comment. It only takes a few of these to get back on the Akismet good books
Good tip Paul B – hadn’t thought of that. Approve comments on other blogs to be pulled from the Akismet blacklist. If one controls a number of blogs this should be a cinch…
Ya i think it does it when I use this Name in conjunction with the Domain. I figured I was in there because alot of the time when I go to comment I get a blank white screen on submit… oh well. The thing is it doesn’t throw me in there if I use a different name.
So akismet just penalizes for Name + Domains that get flagged alot. Or maybe the word Free throws a flag.
Either way I do not recommend paying for mass blog commenting because this is what happens
hey Griz,
The folks from big G actually monitor Twitter pretty well. You know, its all about monitoring trends.
Speaking of trends, if you do things like blog about trends… you can get a heads up on an upcoming trend sometimes as much as two hours before it shows up on G trends.
Now that G and Y!/MS+B are drinking from the Twitter firehose, tweets are being indexed and are starting to show up in SERPS. and with the implementation of G’s search wiki, users can filter their serp to social results and/or by time. Therefore, if you tweet about a new trend or keyword, you could see some juice from that.
(BTW, with all the work G’s been doing to the SERP and the demise of PR, its gonna take something like this to maintain ranking dominance.)
But mostly for me, I use it to replace email. Upwards of 80% of my communication is short burst type traffic, Twitter works great for that.
Oh, and you have to give up on the website. it sucks. TweetDeck is the do-all, end-all if you don’t mind installing a desktop client. If you’d rather stay in the cloud, go with Hootsuite.
With both of those applications, I’ve setup filtered streams that only show me tweets from selected users (like a certain grizzly ole fella from up north).
I don’t get all bent out of shape following folks or watching my count. A lot of it is spammy now anyway… it is what it is.
So there, that’s my brilliant and somewhat humble (no? maybe just a little?) opinion.
Hows the firewood stack coming? All stocked up?
Thom
It’s sad that it takes some hip technology to get great customer service.
I for one don’t see what the hype is either. I twit my blog posts, and it creates some traffic, but no clickers.
Today’s expectations are tomorrow resentments…
Sorry I was busy washing the cat, but she has a hard time cleaning herself after getting out of the litter. This means we have to wash her literally 5-10 times per day which leaves very little time for twitter. Sorry about that.
As for the over capacity thing you see, its obvious. Just look at the picture.. Whales are heavy aren’t they?… Well there you go!
So are white elephants…
Hey Chewie – what do you think. I used Dragon Speaking to write the post. Only took 5 minutes to write and an hour to correct all the mistakes manually. I think it needs more training or I just mumble too much.
You must be making other noises it doesn’t recognize when you are using it. But seriously! It took you that long to correct the mistakes? I may have 1 or 2 mistakes in mine, and I fix them as I speak.
The thing probably needs more training. Also do you know how to train it specific words? That might be the key as well.
Ugg – you mean I am going to have to read the instructions? Damn I hate it when I have to do that – I just tried yelling names at it… it spelled those wrong too.
There is this thing called skype and it works really well. DOH!
I find it humorous after reading all your 3 year old blogspot blogs, and now reading your newer post style after being on social media. Your starting to sound like a angry tween. Ha ha jk bud
Ha – busted!
Actually I just needed a topic to try out this “speaking” software I just got. Plus I was totally disappointed that the entire World didn’t retweet my Energy Drink post… c’mon what’s up with that!
Did you notice that all the world just didn’t get it from the start? That post just confused most people of the world
Okay, there were some fellows who post their comments (your friends?), but most of those who got confused just didn’t dare to ask for clarifications.
I was thinking about investing in Dragon Speak for this very purpose. Thanks for testing it for me. You’re alright Grizz
Griz I re-tweeted your energy drink post!
I’d liek to think it was because I’m brilliant – but I think maybe I just happened to be looking at twitter at the time…
I played with Dragon last year – didn’t seem too bad actually… Love to hear more about how you get on with this – at the time I was fantasizing I could write whole books in a single day!
If only I could train that dragon…
Thanks to twitter; I was able to read your post so fast.You are right about the no of followers.I don’t think people will gain much by following a lot of people. I find it difficult to keep up with all the tweets even with a very few following and followers.Sometimes it becomes a total mess where you need to dive deep to get the relevant tweets.
Pruning the following list once in a while, protecting your tweets to avoid spammers( people who are serious about you will request to follow you)are things that I implement.
Sometimes we need to learn to unfollow certain people who just help to add to the clutter. Sometimes following someone is a fashion statement; we need to unlearn this habit.
I agree – Twitter is a heck of a lot faster than feedburner – in fact, why can’t feedburner alert people when a post is published. If twitter is instant then why can’t the brains at Google figure this out?
I have so much expectations from Google Wave; still waiting to get an invitation. Hope Google will come up with some new ideas to keep up with Twitter
Are you into network theory, specifically social network analysis?
I think the types of people who mass follow and try to pump up their follower counts wind up in isolated cesspools. No account with a real person behind it is going to follow a bot or someone trying peddle crap for long, if at all.
Twitter has never made me a dime.
I moved to where I am now about a year ago, and twitter was how I made some pretty powerful initial connections. The whole thing goes to another level when you approach it from a local focus. At least, it did for me.
The only thing spreading news faster than twitter in my area are police scanners. And I think even they’re being beat. I’ve seen near real time photos of accidents and switched my route to avoid them. Local events have become a lot more interesting, because of random meet ups that occur by finding other people tweeting at the event.
I wonder if the service is like this in every local area, or just a few like mine. What it really comes down to is a core group of active users who have come together to make good use of the service.
But no. I’ve never made a dime off twitter. And I will never try.
Griz, I could go on a rant for hours on end about Twitter and what a colossal waste of time it is. It’s umm addicting too, but still a complete waste of time.
Sure, some twitter twits are making money on Twitter, if you call Magpie and other sponsored tweet b.s. to be legit money making practices. Oh, and if you’re someone like who is pictured in your post and get noobs to spend money on ebooks and stuff.
I’m about to go on a major mass unfollow rampage of twitter twits who do nothing but send me stupid dm “vote for me” messages out of the blue, who have never so much as said hello. Twitter is loaded with stupid robot “followers” who suddenly appear out of nowhere because you use a specific “keyword” in a tweet or even in a post title. ARGH!!!!
Twitter = Waste of time, mostly.
What exactly is a “DM” ?? – seen it mentioned and feel like I am missing out on so much in my ignorance…
Direct Message… And no you aren’t missing out. Almost every DM I get is pure spam in disguise.
aaaah – Thanks Trent. I guess PM was already trademarked then? lol
John Chow is making money on Twitter and says I can too! Who are you to say I can’t? Anyway being on top of the serps is no way to earn money. You need a loyal following…everyone knows that! Sheesh…
Damn. John Chow uses Twitter? And makes money with it? And says we can make money too? Does he sell dinner reviews on it then? I really should follow him but my bullshit meter goes hyperactive every time I get near his site…
You can tell that to the newbies. I followed John Chow for months. He even visited my blog once, but what did I make out of it, zero dollar
I didn’t need to follow Grizzly, neither did he visit my blog, but I earned my first google cheque after reading his OLD post on how to make money online which was pasted on an ugly blogspot free website.
If John Chow is making any money on twitter, it is because some noobs are busy following his words as if he is a guru. So, he makes money online out of their IGNORANCE while they make nothing from the mumbo jumbo theories they get from him.
I’ve been there, I know better and I have better result to show for it.
Thanks Grizzly for not selling craps to newbies. I would have followed you on twitter, but like you pointed out, it is just all sham. I only check my twitter account once a while (like once in 2weeks)
I prefer doing keyword research and build backlink so that my google adsense income will grow.
I figure out that it is a better way to make money online without selling crap to my innocent folks. Cheers 
You nailed it Griz and you did it in a nice way. I could go on and on about Twitter to no avail. It has it uses and purpose but is only 90% of what most people want you to think. 99% of all users use it in such a way that they are dumbasses, plain and simple. You can’t follow 30K people. You can’t interact but with a handful. In real life, most people have a very small circle of friends. When someone rings my doorbell at home, I peak around the corner to see if I want to answer the door. Not very social huh? Twitter is mostly a fad because it has limits. 140 characters. I don’t want limits on my Socialization. Facebook is better and when Google Wave hits, you may kiss Twitter goodbye.
Steve Steve Steve… peak around the corner? Pssshaw man – just never answer the door period. Peaking is a time waster.
Funny that G doesn’t just buy Twitter instead of doing the wave and then figure out a way to append an ad on every tweet – 140 characters with a click here button on the end.
For some reason my “followers” and “following” on my personal Twitter account are always even with each other, or close to it. That’s not on purpose either. Sometimes I will get a bunch of new followers and feel all warm and fuzzy inside only to find the number back to even next time I log in.
I used to have like 300 more followers than following and they all disappeared out of nowhere. I could understand it if people were unfollowing me or deleting their accounts or whatever, and I was just losing followers, but it seems odd to me that my numbers are always basically even. I swear they delete my followers and keep it even on purpose. Oh no Twitter is out to get me!
Anyway, I personally think Twitter is a massive waste of time. I have two accounts totally about 5000 followers and I have yet to see anything useful come out of it. And it seems like everyone I know who uses Twitter on a regular basis says the same thing.
Even the people who claim to get a lot of traffic from Twitter will usually admit that it doesn’t convert into anything, so it’s basically useless.
I see it losing popularity and going down the shitter sooner rather than later. People will eventually figure out they are just wasting time on it.
True Trent – Even I get twitter traffic and guess what? Not a cent extra earned after they have left. This follow/unfollow thing has me stumped though. Just checked and 12 more people have followed me this morning (according to the email notice) and yet the total hasn’t changed. Did they all unfollow me 10 minutes later when they realized that I wasn’t following them back?
Do people get a notice when someone unfollows them or doesn’t follow back when you follow them? I don’t. The math is so confusing.
So many important questions and so little time to figure it all out…
I never get an email when someone follows me, unfollows me, DM’s me, or anything else. There’s probably a way to adjust the email settings to get notifications but I really don’t give a sh*t about Twitter so I don’t care to do it.
Griz,
Twitter often runs a blitz on spammer followers and deletes those accounts, which could possibly be the reason why you suddenly had a quick drop in followers. And yes, there are Twitter twits who will follow (often in mass numbers with software) and then do a quick unfollow so their numbers make them look special and important.
I’ve found that some new followers have a legit-looking profile initially (nice, normal picture, tweet history etc) and then BOOM they suddenly switch to being all about P._._.N and/or spam/virus links in tweets.
Thanks Lin – That would explain much of what I see. Scary. You are both a Facebook AND Twitter go to Gal… We need to get you out of the house more.
Oh I just remembered, I registered the domain http://www.makemoneytweeting.com a while back when Twitter really started taking off. Almost completely forgot about that. I thought maybe I could come up with some way to actually make money on Twitter but that never happened so the domain has just been parked.
Twitting is a total waste of time agreed! What is not a waste of time at least I hope it will not be is the Dragon Speak….. I was considering picking this up as well and was wondering how well it worked with wordpress. I will be curious to hear what you think of it in a few weeks after you have “trained it”. Are you using it for the comment replies as well?
Thanks Griz
Gotta go wash my cat
Hey Dave – a little slow this week.
Dragon Natural Speaking is taking a little getting used to – it would help if we all spoke like a newscaster but Chewie just provided me with some tips for training it and I am showing less mistakes already.
I foresee great things with it – 20,000 word posts to drive you all crazy and my 7 year old thinks this is just the coolest thing she has ever seen. Words just popping up all by themselves!
PS – I used it to write this comment. (and a few manual fixes but not many…)
I have found that the Dragon works best in its own Dragon Pad. When finished dictating, just copy and paste into wordpress or whatever. It really makes a difference, speeds things up.
Diane
Thanks Diane – I have noticed it does seem to have more problems when trying to use blog editors etc. I will try your suggestion.
Dragon Naturally Speaking is perfect for anyone satisfied with less than 100% accuracy in their writing.
With a few hours of training, you can get close to 100%. So, it is not that different from typing and then quickly editing your writing. I get about 120 wpm with DNS and about 45 WPM typing. I can now complete a good quality 1000 word article in about 10 minutes. The tricky part is training yourself to think/speak in article format. A few notes and practice. It’s definitely a great tool for us typing-challenged types.
I have to admit that I made quite a bit of money from Twitter related products. I test them, write reviews and then use seo to rank for them. Those just like any other affiliate program you do that with will pay nicely. Eventually, people sent me all sorts of programs to try and review because of past reviews. So I neither use the products daily, paid for them and sit and collect the commissions. I even ran an awesome ppc campaign on one program because I couldn’t lose. But pure and simple tweeting hasn’t paid shit nor did I ever expect it to. I cashed in on some paid for tweets to “try” it and review it but that’s not my style. About 6 months ago twitter was quite the hotbed of self promotion and spam but as people clued in that has dropped significantly. Mostly I use it for half hearted banter and trying to reach those people I might not otherwise reach through normal means.
Thanks Josh – that’s what I wanted to hear. Nicely done – that’s my kind of internet marketing. Sell it – don’t use it!
What do you know about these “paid to tweet” programs that Shoemoney et al are pimping?
Those programs are pretty worthless now because people can buy any number of programs now to gain huge amounts of followers that don’t click on links. Unless you are a “brand” then it becomes more and more unlikely people will use your account to advertise on. Shoemoney can charge and make what he does because of his brand not the number of twitter followers. I don’t have any problem with these services just doesn’t make people much money. I made a couple hundred but the people I signed up haven’t made crap (1-tier affiliate program). Now that Chow and Shoe have been pimping these services advertising has dropped way off. Like Entrecard to many people fighting for to little pie. The money is in reviews and ranking.
Josh has the right idea. If you can use it to make money from other people, hell yes. Herd the sheep in a corral and then shave them.
Agreed about the Twitter wasteland. I get new followers everyday by merely existing as a twitter user. I rarely tweet. It’s all about the ego for bloggers who love twitter. They can brag that they have more followers not reading the tweets they write than I have followers not reading the tweets I don’t write.
I like your style ToughMoney. That was nicely put – I might have to steal that.
Griz,
You are completely wrong about Twitter. I am making a killing on it, along with Facebook, MySpace, StumbleUpon and all the others.
You see, I bought a couple of ebooks that told me the secrets to use them to make a shit load of money.
It just keeps running in!
It has also helped me tackle those tough markets that you said couldn’t be done and are to tough to compete in. I’m first for credit cards now…
…well, at least first in how much I am spending to drive traffic to my site….
…well, at least I got 3 clicks for $.29 today!!!!
See it works!!!!
lmao…..
Ya’ almost had me there Elliot – just about had to format a shock and awe attack that I only use on ProBlogger ass kissers. lol
29 cents – excellent. Another 6 months and you can pay for a month of ProBlogger.com’s Forum.
I never did really understand the whole twitter thing. Last year I left a comment about what a waste of time it was and the A-lister said “Oh no just wait and see.” Well I signed up and didn’t get anything.
I still get people following me even though I have never tweetered or whatever it’s called. At first I thought I was really interesting because people wanted to hear what I had to say but that feeling didn’t last long. My wife reminded me I am boring and the followers probably think I am someone else.
Enough time wasted on twitting. When I was a kid a Twit was someone who didn’t have a clue, maybe we were right after all.
I still use that definition of a twit Agrande. Hate to say it – you were in the Akismet dog house too. Did you poop in someone’s cornflakes? Ask them to remove you from the spam list. I’ll vouch for you.
Thanks for the heads up Griz, I’ll see if I can get on their good side again.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Anthony Mogilin and Ravitaki Kadavu, Tweeter Rocket. Tweeter Rocket said: The Twitter Game | Make Money Online: True Trent – Even I get twitter traffic and guess what? Not a cent extra .. http://tinyurl.com/ygvyw9u [...]
I love Twitter!
I can get notifications so much quicker than I can from Feedburner or email. I do not tweet much on it but I get all sorts of current info quickly.
I mainly use twitter for search. I can target my local areas and see exactly what is going on in different communities before it is sent to the media. This really helps to scoop the news. I get pretty decent rankings for current news.
Do I make money Twitting? No! But I have not dug into niche specific areas yet.
This is one of the few good ways to use Twitter. I do the same sometimes. Sometimes I do get a lead on a story or person who helps me in my hyperlocal blogging effort.
LOL. I’m in Twitter cos everyone is there. That’s the only reason. I have a plugin that tweets my post everytime I update and I almost never have anything funny or useful that can be said in 140 words.
Said someting about this topic a couple of months ago. We think too much alike. LOL.
http://blogigs.com/are-your-tweeter-followers-real/
I have a Twitter account but rarely ever use it. I have thought from the beginning that Twitter is over-hyped.
I have also noticed that people tell me they are following me so I follow them just to find out they have deleted me. There goes my 15 minutes of fame.
I even added Griz to my friends list. He never added me. So now I don’t know when Griz gets a glass of water, thinks about eating a bag of potato chips, or if it is time to wash his car.
I would not be too suprised to wake up in 10 years and find out that Twitter went the way of the Edsel.
Something is amiss Potato Chef – I distinctly remember adding you. I always add the folks I know – and you I know. Not too many potato heads running about online.
Not sure how to check to see if you are still added – hey Lin any advice?
I am so busy washing my non-existent cat I don’t even check twitter on a monthly basis…but I am amazed someone from google actually responded to you.
Chelle – I was shocked to say the least.
Very interesting…just before this post showed up in my in box I tried a little experiment with my 12,000 twitter followers. I asked them to follow BlueToolCrew tonight to help me win a bet about social media. I got 5 to follow.
I know if I asked this bunch to do the same thing I would get many more.
Yes, Twitter is worthless for making money, but it is great for winning bets.
I guess this is a little late to help but a link would have made it easier – btw – who/what is a BlueToolCrew and please don’t tell me they are the new “Beatles” or something… I do live under a rock.
I think twitter may be of some use who are are actually running a busienss with real customers and everything – but otherwise complete waste of space – you can’t say anything useful in 140 characters.
I did try to tweet you yesterday – but twitter was taking a nap !
Would that have been your yesterday and my today or your today and my tomorrow… er damn timezones…
Just remember I’m always ahead of you and you won’t be too far wrong…
@lissie
lol, Since the timezone seems confusing to Grizzly, I suggest you help him remember the difference by sending him an automated TWEET direct message. Someone must have writing something like that. Automated Timezone Difference Reminder
conan o’ brien reported that youtube twitter and facebook are going to merge for yet another extremely time wasting site called youtwitface. LOL. funny stuff.
I don’t bother with twitter at all. Very few businesses would need such a platform. Say if you’re in the forex signals business and you want your signals to get to your recipients quickly (though you could do with ym). Otherwise, what the heck is the point?
Griz, is it just me or your niche support page just got lobotomized. I’m not seeing the comments that used to be there!
Best regards.
s
Sherwin – stay tuned. We are about to unveil a brand new niche support page that is – yes you won’t believe it – automated! Ta Da!
Details coming shortly and it is free unless I can convince everyone to send me money for it…
Griz,
I signed up to see who was in my local area, but I think i have maybe 6-7 followers. I have probably spent one hr on twitter total ever. Never having tweeted, i guess you could say I’m a twitter virgin.
I’m sure Yaro or Chow or Rowse must have a 31 Day comprehensive Twitter course for the price of a small compact that can break in a Virgin Twit user – go slow at first and then build momentum and… and…
Okay mister. Where’s the butt ugly blog I grew to love? You’re cracking me up over here. What is a twit? I thought birds tweeted. Or are you calling yourself a twit or maybe we are twits for using Twitter.
Okay, I have to say that at the beginning I was addicted to Twitter for about a week until I realized it was a real time waster. Then I stopped using it. Now I’m back using it but I have it automated so whatever I post to my blog goes to Twitter automatically and I don’t even actually have to use it. Occasionally I have to go and check to see if someone responded but most times I have it set up to email me if that happens.
Value? Why yes. I am now mentoring other bloggers. Yes, passing on what I have learned to the unlearned. I used it and Facebook last night to send one of my newbie bloggers some much needed newbie traffic. Success! Some of these visitors actually made her money by clicking on ads while other Retweeted what I had written to their “twits” and still others signed up to be readers on her site. While she is waiting for search engine traffic she is making money from what I send her. $5 a day for a two week old blog through social traffic is pretty darn good. Oh, and yes, I am teaching her how to write for search engine traffic so don’t think I didn’t learn my lessons well from the ole’ bear.
Another way I have seen value is in just what you mention. I had a problem with eBags the other day for something I was promoting on one of my blogs and I mentioned it to them on Twitter and got an IMMEDIATE response and answer. Not only that, they fixed a page on their site because of my problem. I would have had to wait a week if I had emailed them. It’s like going directly to the source. At least for now companies are paying attention and you will get that response. In the future when Twitter has become a fad maybe not so much.
So, yes, well, I have found value in Twitter. And I think with any of these tools you have to find whatever value works for you and don’t spend a lot of time beyond that. I don’t spend timing actually using Twitter or Facebook but they work for me so to speak.
And, I think these tools are more for the social blogger than anything else. Blogs that are bringing in search engine traffic won’t need to use Twitter I don’t think.
Hi Wendy – it seems we all agree that it is great for search and for getting the attention of the business community. It lacks something in the IM arena unfortunately but as you said – it’s really for social bloggers (yea Gawds).
I’ll probably be in the poop with Askimet, too. Really frustrating. I’ve stayed away from Twitter and from the looks of it, I haven’t lost anything by doing so.
CD Rates – Yup – Akismet doesn’t like you either – maybe twitter them and ask for forgiveness
What are you talking about? Of course you can make money with Twitter. Just sell a bunch of ‘how to make money with Twitter’ ebooks to noobs.
Or better yet put it on Clickbank and let other affiliates sell it to noobs.
There .. collect your commission – money made.
Now if only MySpace, Twitter and Facebook would all join up we could all be members of MyTwitFace.com
Tracey
Geeshsh. What is this Twitter thing? Looks like it is useful. I have been too busy building backlinks that I am missing out on some real way to make money online.
Seriously? I think you bought dragon naturally speaking, because you are writing that notorius e-book. This post is aimed to target keywords whis attract the crowd and you are – as you speak – trying to decide which island to buy.
Twitter has some definite benefits, IMHO. Just not for internet marketers.
I’ve made several good friends through Twitter.
I got to watch my technologically challenged mother giggle like a kid at Christmas while watching for people to respond to her very first tweet (sent from my account).
Several of my freelance writing friends gained clients through networking on Twitter.
It’s also a great way for companies to keep track of what people are saying about them in real time.
Not so great for marketing.
As for people following- I was still getting 3-5 follows a day even when I hadn’t tweeted in several months. Most of them aren’t even trying to build up their follower numbers anymore, but just hoping that you’ll click through to their profile and click a link before they get banned.
I no longer follow ANYONE that I don’t recognize unless they send me a personal message or respond to one of my tweets first. It’s just a waste of time to keep following people that you have no interest in.
I tried Twitter for about a month (maybe longer) but the only thing I’ve done in the last 7 months is log in to see if my account is still there.
Maybe I’ll use my code monkeyism prowess to create a private twitter clone, just for all the Grizzites (yes, I just trademarked that, so hands off or I’ll sue for using the word “Grizz”).
Speaking of suits… You really need to check out the front page at Rock Art Brewery.
Just checked the Rock Art Brewery site as you mentioned RT, and I must say that is AWESOME! I am so happy that the “regular people” were victorious over the huge corporation! I never did get around to putting up my post about the whole thing so I can’t take much credit but I did vote it up in some social sites so I guess I helped a little. I know many of the “Grizzites” were much more helpful by posting on their blogs about it, so I want to congratulate you all on your victory!
Hi Griz,
Let me ask you: do you make money through answering all your comments? Do others here make money from commenting here? Not directly, but it’s built a community that will link to you and help each other out.
Twitter could be used for the same thing – if all of the people here got together and followed each other on Twitter, then used it to help each other out, it would be wild!
Twitter’s no use for directly making money (neither is commenting).
Personally, I use it for other reasons. As well as finding a steady stream of useful information, it helps me ‘brand’ myself in case I want to apply for another job (that’s right, a day job – one day I may be able to live the Grizzly life, but not for a while yet!).
[...] and the Grizz got in on the act as well – but I am not linking to him cause he thinks the twitter game is pointless so how will I ever make a zillion dollars flogging a get rich quick twitter book now [...]
Twitter? Never heard of it. Is that a sort of a new hangout for birds with lots of time in their hands… errr… wings?
Hey Griz:
I concur with you and the majority opinion that the twitter game is just that — a game… Other than providing me “1″ do follow keyword anchored back link, it really serves me no constructive purpose whatsoever! And most importantly it does not help me in the SERPS. My tweets pretty much go unnoticed by the search engines, but I still tweet occasionally. What the hell, right?
Further, what I do know is that when I create a new article at eHow I will immediately submit it to Propeller and Yahoo Buzz just to get it out there, and in most cases Propeller will have me on the first page of the SERPS (for the keyword string/title) even before eHow does.
I would like to share that I do know that Propeller (www dot propeller dot com/) does very well in the SERPS and as a bonus it provides me 2 “do follow” keyword anchored back links — maybe more but I haven’t spent much time trying to figuring that out yet
Nevertheless, as mentioned above twitter can be a resourceful tool, but as far as its use to make money online I have yet to discover that benefit — and I’m not going to invest in some book(s) to teach me how. I try not to spend too much time reading when I could be pounding out some good content! Speaking of which, I’ve got some work to do! See ya in the SERPS…
~Scooter
Sayyy… I’m not following you on Twitter…I am, however, stalking you here as well as your other blog
*stalk stalk*
If I have to follow you on Twitter, I might have to leave the Internet.
I don’t care if it makes me money online or not, sometimes you have to draw the line.
I’ll just stick to those nice anchored backlinks and John Chow can have Chitter, chatter, twatter, twitter.. w/evertf it’s called.
While I use Twitter to update useful tutorials/links/etc. I find online, as well as my own community, I find the ‘Good morning/afternoon/evening chats’ to be the best benefit.
It’s nice to touch base with folks with whom you interact.
I have a Twitter account because in today’s online world, you have to. It’s like having a belly button. I don’t find any use for it, but if i didn’t have one, the chicks wouldn’t accept me into their…well, ya know.
I don’t think Twitter has any use at all for niche bloggers or for making money.
I do think it helps establish credibility (fake cred anyway) if you want to become a social blogger like I hope to become with my next project.
AL
speaking of next project, when is that going to be up and running?
waiting on the music to be done (having a buddy write it, draft one done already) and then we are good.
I am actually taping 2 episodes this weekend to get ahead… it is just so much torture taping these episodes, LOL
Yeah, it is good for faking credibility. There’s a local realtor who has used auto-follow spam techniques to pump her follower count into the tens of thousands, and she gets so much adulation for it. But she follows just as many.
When people talk to her in public, they act like she’s something of a celebrity, but she’s just another peddler of houses.
Hard to believe that one of the most watered down forms of online communication has somehow become a platform for people to build a celebrity status for themselves.
But at least I know the market of people who will click my ads will never dwindle.
The real question is the new thing with Google where they are going to display Twitter tweets for your search results. I think this is a bad thing for those of us who make money from generic searches. You can read about it here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/rt-google-tweets-and-updates-and-search.html
Kenneth, it’s time for everyone to start using Twitterfeed. Make sure your keywords are in the post title and have at it.
RT – Can’t wait to see this in action. I see you have had the same initial thoughts as me. If they think spam was a problem before just wait till the tweets start flying now. 1 every minute to keep on top for Viagra et al… should be interesting.
I just went over to Twitter, posted a quick tweet to say why I was back and then went to Twitterfeed to add two blogs.
A thought just occurred to me (and boy, did it hurt). If the description is picked up from the meta description or the first 140 characters of the post, 140 characters (- the bit.ly URL) isn’t a whole lot to work with.
Sorry, what is Twitterfeed?
It’s kind of like FeedBurner, but for Twitter. It fetches the post title and a few characters after it and publishes it to your account on Twitter.
You can do it manually but it takes time, especially if you have multiple posts to feed to it.
I have almost a thousand follows on twitter and only know a few of them personaly, mostly friends and family. I tried sparking conversations with others but it seems everyone is only interested in what they are talking about.
In my oppinion twitter is like being in a room with thousands of people and everyone is trying to talk over the other person.
The only thing I have found great on twitter is using the RSS function. For example if I would create a search on a specfic topic on twitter I could then have those tweets delivered directly to my RSS reader.
So I guess their is some use to it.
Believe it or not Griz, I actually make money almost every day with Twitter. I’m not going to say how I do it here but if you email me I’ll tell you exactly what I do.
It is completely automated and made me over $100 last month.
Oh well, all good things must end. The powers that be finally caught me.
I did actually end up making about a grand before it was over though
oops! Used wrong email addy in the last reply so my gravatar didn’t show ;P
I follow back only when:
- person has a small number of following
- tweets are relevant to me (and not overwhelming in volume)
One interesting ratio:
Followers / Following
The higher, the more attention the person gets from me (but still not enough reason to follow)
Bilal Ojjeh
Careernomics.com
FYI — your system refused my entry of my other email bilal@careernomics.com.
Hey Grizz,
I can’t understand how anyone can really make BIG money through twitter, every day I see countless Tweets with links pointing to get rich with twitter programs. They’ve become somewhat commercial like, my mind is automatically programmed to ignore them and I imagine many others experience the same.
I think Twitter is fun but not serious for business. I do read the twits that are on the first few pages when I log in and I do tweet now and then for my blogs. But so far I have not gotten more subscribers to my newsletters, even when I tweet about contests or other giftees if they do.. and I have put the link on there tons of times. I have not seen more folk driven to my blog because most of them followed me back and follow like a thousand people or they came over from the blog to begin with. If somebody can figure out how to convert all these people it would be great. But, for now, like Facebook, Twitter is just fun. Although my Facebook page is helpful in connecting me with my readers, who are slowly becoming “fans”. But it doesn’t get a dime out of anyone’s pockets.. and that’s where I’m headed these days. I just read your post on anchored backlinks and went to one of the links in the post and found what I consider to be a step by step “bible”. I’ll let you know how it works on the site I will build once I find a keyword that isn’t swamped.
Hey Grizz.. luv to read your stuff, Been learning alot from what you have to sayI reallly do appreciate the free info.. I recently posted a short post about Twitter.. after reading yours..I’m with you on it being a waste of valuable time.. Never in my life have I seen so many philosophers about life..wisdom, expectations,inspirational quotes,you’d think they were all descendants of Plato , Socrates and Edgar Allan Poe. Do you think these folks missed out on literature or philosophy classes..
Like everyone else I find Twitter to be just another venue for contact. If your lucky someone may pick up one of your links. In essence, we live in an impersonal world and Twitter symbolizes that. The more users the less personal its going to get. Do grade school students really get anything out of attending giant size classrooms. Not really!
Yes, I’ve gotten real, tangible returns from Twitter. That being said, most people probably will not be able to do what I’ve done.
I’m so glad you posted this.
I was always slightly confused by this whole twitter thing. I wasn’t sure if I just didn’t “get it”.
It’s nice to see a Grizzly confirm my suspicion that “following” someone on twitter generally amounts to ignoring them along with the other gazillion people you’re following.
Damn – I don’t spend enough time reading blogs, otherwise I woulda responded sooner. I’ve made a little cash off twitter….basically affiliate marketing a twitter method to other twitter users. Nothing spectacular in terms of income, but there you go.
As a lot of people have noted, most DMs tend to be a little bit on the spammy side.
Griz, did you do any testing on google caffeine? Is it still the same:
“SEO really is just “getting targeted anchored keyword backlinks”, that you don’t have to post on topic, backlinks don’t have to be from relevant sites to help” ?
They closed sandbox before I found time to play with it :/
Although I have twitter acc, I also don’t see what’s the point with it
Hi Griz
Recently I have noticed it seems Google has changed how they recognize keywords related site. I.e. A few sites listed in the top ten for a specific keyword; if you check their back links and anchor text don’t have that keyword included but in some cases may have related keywords. E.g. hypothetically a keyword might be “Green Italian Sport Cars” you might find the top ten sites may have back links such as the domain name, URL, Italian cars, Blue Italian Sports cars etc, however nothing of Green Italian Sports Cars. Yet I know for a fact there are sites with content and back links specific for this keyword. Is there a change in how Google select sites for the top ten?
I’m old fashioned guy
. I don’t use twitter cause I don’t see how twitter could help me in promotion . I’m glad there are more people who thinks similar.