I often see people asking the question, “Can I make money on Twitter?”

Well initially I have to say that I did not create my Twitter accounts with a view to making money from them directly.  I was more concerned with attracting people to my blogs and web sites. The money-making would take place there.

However, as time passed I decided to try something a little more direct. My first experiment was on a highly specialised Twitter account on which at the time I had only 65 followers. I tweeted a simple statement that Amazon were offering a DVD boxed set on a subject relevant to this group of followers, at 50% discount … and one was sold within ten minutes! A simple experiment. It worked, so I continued to do similar things on this and other accounts.

I’m not now going to claim that it has made me rich, but I do know from experience that it can be done – although I’m keeping ads down to a minority of my tweets as I don’t want to be viewed as commercially over-aggressive by my painstakingly built lists of followers.

In the past few days, though, I’ve been experimenting with other forms of Twitter advertising. In particular I’m testing out several advertising services which say they’ll pay me for carrying their adverts, and in one case will reward me on a pay-per-click basis.

No, I’m not going to promote them here – at least, not yet. When I have something to say about them I’ll write again.

There’s a new free Social Networking community that posts your tweets on Sokule, Twitter and other top sites instantly – and what’s more you can EARN from it!

Sokule is rather like Twitter, but with far more functionality. It truly is “So KULE for Business!” SOKULE is like Twitter but MONETIZED.  Sokule’s innovative Affiliate Program provides for 20% to 50% commissions.

Features include:

• Your “squeeks” can be posted on Sokule, Twitter, and (eventually 40) other TOP Social Networking sites INSTANTLY!
• Paid members are NOT limited to short tweets, your squeeks can be up to 500 characters, enough space to really say something important!
• You can include LIVE clickable LINKS on your profile page!
• You can share up to 5 of your photos in your profile!
• Schedule posts to go out at specific future times, even while you’re on vacation.
• Sokule lets you instantly invite all your Twitter followers to join you on SOKULE!
• Sokule has upgrade options, and that means you EARN CASH when your followers upgrade

I joined recently and am impressed. Take a close look at Sokule.

Twitter began as a fun and innovative way to achieve social networking but has quickly become an easy and helpful tool for promoting businesses, both large and small.

If you are already using Twitter for your business, then you will no doubt be looking for ways to improve your Twitter productivity.

But how can you increase productivity on a site that allows you to type only one hundred and forty characters? Here are 5 ways suggested by David Perdew of “My Twitter Toolbox“ to improve your time on the Twitterverse.

1. Sort out your followers. You can find applications that will allow you to separate the people you follow and tweet to into separate groups. This way, you can have a group for your friends, your family, business connections, and more. With these separate groups, you can focus your business related tweets on the right people.

2. Tweet and tweet often. You cannot be very productive with Twitter if you do not dedicate time to it. One way to get many followers is to tweet as often as you possibly can. By doing this, you will have more of a chance of people noticing you and following you.

3. Send useful tweets. Tweeting often does not mean sending the same messages over and over. If potential followers see that you never post anything new, then they may not follow you. While you want to tweet as quickly as possible, make sure you are tweeting something worth reading.

4. Include links, but make them short. There are plenty of applications that will allow you to shorten your links to save a great deal of room. Make sure that you always use a link-shortening tool to make the most of every tweet you send.

5. Know when to step away. You do not need to spend all of your time on Twitter. You do not need to neglect the other parts of your business. Make sure that you devote enough time to the full scope of your business activities.

To see a video introduction of the top 20 Twitter tools, visit “My Twitter Toolbox“.

Happy tweeting,

- David Murray -