A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about the two leading twitter ad networks and the fact that I was going to give them both a test drive. I received an email from Adly today announcing that they added a referral program. My reaction was, its about time, what were you waiting for. Anyway, that email reminded me that I was going to write a follow up to my original post and let you all know how things were going. Well here is my report at 3 weeks using both services. Simply stated, Sponsored Tweets is pretty good and Adly sucks.
Keep in mind, this is only one publishers opinion based on 3 weeks of experience. With Sponsored Tweets I made $16.70 so far. I am not John Chow here who boasts about making thousands a week per this service but I can honestly tell you that you can make real money. I am thinking and hoping that as my Twitter follower count grows and this service catches on and grows that the revenue stream will grow as well. Another cool part about this “expirement” is that I was able to bring 6 people into the program through my affiliate link and will be making 10% of what ever they make for the next ten years. This has only been a couple of bucks so far, but again I am thinking this will grow in time. I am going to stick with Sponsored Tweets as I believe they have already carved out a leadership position in this space and will continue to dominate into the future. As far as Adly is concerned, I am not sure they have any advertisers in their system. If they do, they have certainly found a way to avoid me.
Sponsored Tweets – 3 weeks – $16.70
Adly – 3 weeks – $0
If you are interested in checking out Sponsored Tweets or signing up as a publisher or advertiser, click here to visit their site.
Are you guys making any money with these services yet?
If you are looking for more Twitter followers – I personally recommend TweetAdder – click on the banner below to learn more:
This is the second installment in a new weekly feature here on Tycoon Blogger where I highlight some cool blog contest happening in the blogosphere. If I miss any or you would like to promote your contest, feel free to leave a comment with a link. If you would like to be featured next week, the best way to notify me is via email at tycoonblogger at gmail dot com or through the contact form.
What did I miss? Do you know of any other blog contests going on?
Instead of blogging tips and twitter tips, I will be blogging about something much more important. Today I am blogging for a cause, and the cause is SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy) which is a serious neuromuscular disease. Like most people, I never heard of this disease until it affected a very close lifelong friend of my wife.
Here’s her story :
Sweet Baby Zane from Clair Pruett on Vimeo.
Many people were moved by the story including Christoper Finlan. Christopher has written a novel (his first) which sheds some light on this terrible an under reported disease. I asked Christopher to write a post for me to publish and talk about how this book came to be. Here are his words…
First off, I’d suggest you read about Zane, Hillary, Keith and Avery in Hillary’s foreword, since that’s the biggest reason any of this happened. Spinal Muscular Atrophy is an incredibly underreported condition that children suffer with, and should be given the attention it deserves by the mainstream media. Their story is one that everyone should read, regardless of what you think of the rest of the book.
I do want people to understand going in, the story itself is fiction. It’s a mystery and a love story and a comedy, and just “happens” to have SMA as part of the plot. It’s meant to be a fun read and something anyone can enjoy, so people who happen upon it for any other reason get to learn a little more about this terrible disease without even realizing it. So how did this book come about?
In late May/early June, I was diagnosed with ADD. In fact, the doctor’s exact words were, “You have one of the worst cases of ADD I’ve ever seen. I’m surprised you’re not living under a bridge or something.” Little did he know my wife and I had made an offer on a place under a bridge, but whatever. So when I was I diagnosed with that, I was prescribed medication for it. It was like I was a whole new person. No, I didn’t get hair or chiseled abs, but the change was dramatic. My wife was stunned at the difference, and still is. A book I read described it as getting “glasses” for your brain, or like stumbling around in a semi-lit room your whole life and then someone clicks the light on for you.
Once that happened, a few other things came together. I’d already had this idea for the book, and to be honest, the disease wasn’t SMA when I first had the idea (since I’d never heard of it until Zane). However, as mentioned on the website, once Zane died, I was discussing her death with some friends, and we ended up discussing the book idea I had in the context of just being a parent and what you go through. Well, since the reaction to the idea in the prologue was so positive, I started on it the next day.
The first person I actually told when I got started was Heather. I’d never done this before, and I didn’t want it to be a trainwreck. In fact, if at any point she’d told me “This is a trainwreck.”, I would have stopped and not published it. It wouldn’t make sense to try and raise money for SMA with a bad book, since no one’s buying a bad book once my mom stops buying copies. Anyway, Heather would send me e-mails of encouragement each day so I’d keep at it, and since I thought it was going well, I told Hillary about it. My intention was not to tell Hillary about it until I was done, and then let her know, but having ADD, you’re impatient, and I told her about two weeks or so into it.
I went back and found the original e-mail I wrote to Hillary, in which I wrote the following – “If you are interested and only if you are interested, I would be honored if you would allow me to have a small dedication to Zane either you write or I do before the story begins, or if you’d like to write a preface to be included. I would not only be happy to include it, but truly privileged to do so. Now, you may not want Zane’s name anywhere near this after you read it, and that’s entirely up to you.”
Hillary was very gracious and very excited (and apparently still was after she read it), so I sent her and Heather the manuscript when I finished it in late July. The other person I sent the manuscript to was Sarah McMaster. Why Sarah? Well, when you write a book, or at least when I did, you “cast” people in the various parts. All along, the person I cast as “Sarah Knox” was Sarah McMaster. Who did I cast as Jim in my head? I’m not telling for now, but perhaps the fact a Sarah in the book is being played by a Sarah would give you a hint, and hopefully not scare you off at the frightening lack of creativity I showed in handing out names. Regardless, I wanted to have her involved somehow and possibly do the audio version, since I thought it was important to have that as an option for people to buy to raise more money. She was very gracious and agreed to help out however she could.
Now while Hillary’s foreword is much the same as what she first wrote, that can’t be said about the rest of the book, as it’s undergone six full reviews with the editor, and I’d guess around fifteen to twenty percent of what you’re reading is from that first draft. The characters are still there, and certain scenes are from that first draft, but the vast majority of this came after what they all read. That being said, Heather was so positive about the first draft for someone who hadn’t done this before, suddenly it didn’t seem crazy that this could really make a difference, and that’s what all of us are so grateful to you for.
I’m happy to announce we’ve already raised over $1000 for FSMA just in donations from pre-orders, and that’s for a book from an author who no one had ever heard of on Monday. Thank you so much, and keep doing what you’re doing. You’ve made a difference already, and I thank you, Hillary thanks you, the entire team thanks you.
Thanks Tycoon!
Christopher Finlan
Thank you Christopher, I am happy that I can help spread the word. Please visit Christophers’ website , Not a Fire Exit to learn more about the book and SMA. A portion of the proceeds will be going directly to help fight SMA. You can also help the cause by joining the Facebook fan page, click here to join. We are looking for 200 more fans before the end of today.
Please also consider sending out a tweet to your followers for this good cause.
I know what most of you are thinking, oh no not another twitter follower scheme. I have tried and written about my experiences using various twitter follower services in the past and most of them are all hype.
This new service that I discovered today is different from everything else I have seen and has some potential and I definitely wanted to share it with you all. The service is called Fast Followers and it is a Twitter follower tool that is super easy to use and it is free. Of course, they also have a premium membership if you want to spend a few bucks to boost your twitter follower count.
Before I talk about how this service works, let me first respond to some comments that I know will come from this. I know people will write that they don’t think this is a good way to build their twitter account, and what good are these types of followers, etc.. I can’t say that I disagree with you. However, I will say that when it comes to services like Sponsored Tweets, the amount of followers is what determines how much you should charge. So obviously if you are looking to make money with Twitter, the more followers = more money.
I also want to explain that I have two Twitter accounts. With my @tycoonblogger account, I am very connservative and only follow people I know and have never tried any services with this account. My other account, @followyou2 is my experimental account. I have many more followers and this is where I test various twitter follower management tools and twitter monetization services. If you are weary of trying these types of services you may want to start up another account.
Now that I have taken care of explaining myself, let me explain how this site works. Fast Followers is a credit based system and you receive free credits when you sign up and refer people to the site. People follow you to earn credits. Simple enough, right. Once you get your foot in the door you then have a chance to build a relationship through being a good tweeter. They help you with the initial step of getting followed but it is up to you to keep them.
What do you think? Will this concept take off? Any other similar services you guys are using?
If you are looking for more Twitter followers – I personally recommend TweetAdder – click on the banner below to learn more:
When it comes to blogging, there are 2 basic elements. Write great content and promote your blog. Sounds simple enough, but we all know that it takes a lot of time and effort to do both. On Tycoon Blogger, I write a lot of posts about promoting your blog and new things I am trying out in regards to blog promotion. I have tried dozens of blog marketing ideas and have identified my top 3 most effective blog promotion techniques. Here they are:
I wanted to make this post more about you than me, so please drop a comment and let us know what your top 3 blog promotion techniques are.
