UNI TECH BLOG I

SponsoredTweets.com is an online marketplace that allows you to connect directly with advertisers to engage in sponsored conversations through Twitter. Advertisers compensate you with cash in exchange for a sponsored tweet. Think of it like eBay for tweets.

How it Works

1. Set Your Price

All you need to get started is to set your price, add a category and some keywords then wait for offers to roll in from Advertisers.

2. Choose your offers

As offers come in you can accept or reject them.

3. Receive Payment

If you accept an offer, your account will be credited within 24 hours of your tweet. You can cash out once your account reaches $50.

Ethical Sponsored Tweeting

Everything within our platform is designed with ethics and safety in mind. Tweeters remain in complete control of their accounts at all times. We don’t auto-inject ads; every tweet must be manually reviewed and approved by each tweeter. In addition, we have a strict Code of Ethics, which includes:

• Mandatory Disclosure
• Freedom of Authenticity
• Freedom of Choice
• Transparency of Identity

SponsoredTweets.com is designed to force compliance of the FTC regulations, which state, “When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product which might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement (i.e., the connection is not reasonably expected by the audience) such connection must be fully disclosed.”

Safety and Trust

We realize that Twitter is a very personal medium and the safety of your account is important to you. IZEA, the parent company of Sponsored Tweets, is a venture backed company with ten million dollars invested by leading venture capitalists. We are a  Better Business Bureau Accredited Business and have been operating since 2006.

We’ve implemented the following to provide for your safety:

• We authenticate through Twitter’s OAuth process. We don’t collect or store your password.
• We are a whitelisted Twitter application and have gone through their API approval process.

Ad.ly, is a brand new advertising network only very recently launched that inserts ads once a day on your twitter account. The ad network seeks your approval first so you would basically be “indirectly” tweeting the ad. Its almost as if you’d be “endorsing by approving” their ad. Interesting…

This sort of control is great to have on advertising right? As the publisher so you’re technically deciding very directly what your followers see. This is great in comparison to something like Adsense where the ads are more based on bids than on the content and much less approved by you (what control you do have is choosing who you DON’T want to advertise!).

This could be counted as a win-win for both the advertisers and the users on twitter. On the one hand, ad.ly “enables advertisers to reach the highly sought after Twitter audience by connecting brands with the most influential people in the community”. And on the other hand, the publisher gets to choose which ads they think their followers might actually benefit from! It’s like an affiliate marketing and advertising hybrid!

When you sign up as a publisher you can actually set your required weekly price from the advertiser, which is another great level of control. That being said I would probably go with the recommended amount or a little less, to get maximum benefit from it. It’d be a shame to lose out on advertisers because you set your price too high right!?

On a side note, you can actually donate a part or all of your earnings to a charity of your choice. Excellent! I hope that someone like Bono will use their sea of followers to feed the hungry instead of simply adding to their millions…

Over all ad.ly seems like an excellent addition to the world of Twitter. Who wants to start a bet that Google will buy it!?

By the way, ad.ly is currently holding a competition for who can get the most users to sign up using a custom referral link. The winner gets a Macbook Pro!