Three Ways Twitter Makes Money

Last year there were predictions that Twitter would bring in more than $150 million the following year and as much as $250 million in 2012.  Twitter offers three promoted products that help Twitter perform as well as it does. Here is a brief breakdown of its offerings:-

1. Promoted Accounts:-These consist of cost-per-follower ads that are targeted by keywords depending on what the user discusses or who they follow etc.  This provides the opportunity of being able to build up your follower base, i.e. Twitter friends who choose to receive your tweets.

2. Promoted Tweets:-This was the first type of advertising that Twitter ever used. These are cost-per-click ads that are keyword-targeted. These ads appear in all of the Twitter search results in some of the applications, topics etc. The keywords are bid on in a similar way to Google AdWords and can direct users to any places that a link can go, e.g. landing pages, videos etc. The minimum bid is $0.50 and increases depending on your campaign’s categories and keywords.

3. Promoted Trends:- This is a daily sponsorship which is at a flat-rate. It drives vast numbers of clicks, engagements and impressions. With a large financial commitment a sponsor can receive in excess of 60 million impressions. If you are looking for fast results then high-impression sponsorships can be effective.

In addition, Twitter also supplies advertisers with dashboards in which they can have access to their clicks, impressions, account performance etc.  The site is looking set to make more money in the future as it recently surpassed MySpace to become the third-most popular social media service with 96 million unique visitors. With all things considered, Twitter is very well known and yet so few people actually use it for their advertising. This is surprising considering the real value that Twitter offers with its performance-based products.