How Businesses can Make Money on Twitter
While Twitter as a company is not making any money, entrepreneurs and businesses can make money on Twitter in number of ways. Twitter is a very valuable tool to promote your brand, build relationships with clients and eventually make money by selling your products and services.
So, how your business can make money on Twitter? Here are some of my thoughts.
1. Promoting Products and Services
One of the most elementary methods to make money on Twitter is to promote your products and services. Deals and Contests are two techniques that you can use to promote your products on Twitter. Make sure that you do not over use these techniques. If you tweet about product deals very frequently your followers will probably ignore you.
2. Turn Followers into Marketers
This is a very powerful technique where you can turn your followers into marketers who are willing to sell your products. For example, you could pay your followers a referral fee for every product they sell for you. Alternatively you can reward your followers with a point system where they can earn points for referring products that can be later redeemed for something valuable.
3. Turn Followers into Creators and Helpers
If you are developing a product and want to get the best ideas, you can turn your followers into creators or helpers to deliver that product. For example, let us assume that you have developed a new software and want people to perform usability testing. People who follow your company on Twitter are probably interested in your software too. With in no time you will have many people willing to test your product and provide their feedback.
4. Reaching out to Clients in Different Geographic Locations
Twitter can be used as a broadcasting tool to reach new clients in different geographic locations. Let us assume that you conduct seminars and workshops on Personal Development. You travel the country city by city holding these workshops. You can tweet your workshop details and location information when you are in a city. This allows you to get new clients from that area.
5. Lead Generation
Using Twitter you can get new leads and convert them to loyal clients. The best way to do this is by adding value. For example, if you are a real estate agent you can use Twitter to provide various information relating to real estate. For example, mortgage advice, home staging tips, market trends etc. When you provide value, people are more likely to notice you. By adding value you become a trusted and credible source in your industry. When people view you or your business as the expert in the field, they are more likely to do business with you.
The above points are some ideas that came to my mind. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list. If you have other ideas and methods to make money on Twitter please feel free to share them below.
Photo Credit: luc legay’s photostream

Wow! Turning followers into marketers is such a powerful idea! Twitter gives such an opportunity to make something go viral and if you have a good platform to kick it off (with followers who will be your marketers), the sky really is the limit.
Hmmm… making money on twitter… now this is new!