In the meantime….

(Source: icanhascheezburger.com)

First of all, we pay our Twitter Publishers through PayPal. If you don’t already have a PayPal account set-up then visit http://paypal.com right now and get that done. You may not need it today but you will eventually. Go ahead…we’ll wait for you!

OK, now that you’ve got your PayPal all taken care of, let’s move on to your Sponsored Tweets account. Sign-in to your account using you Twitter handle (we do not store this information; we connect with the Twitter API*.) Once you’ve successfully signed-in, in the top righthand of your account you should see a “Withdraw” button that looks like this (using my account as an example):

As you can see, I have $11.04 sitting in my account. “But I thought I had to have earned at least $50 before I could cash out?” you might be asking yourself. Well, that’s no longer true! About two weeks ago we started offering “early” cash-out, with a $2 fee attached. So now you can take money any time you want!

If you’re ready, go ahead and click on that “Withdraw” button, and you should then see a screen like this:

At this point, just fill-out all the requested information on this screen and the next…and you’re on your way!

The last screen you’ll see is the one confirming payment. Congrats! Now you’ve got some extra cash in your pocket: buy some ice cream, catch a Lady Gaga show, or put it away for that European trip you’ve been saving for!

Be sure to let us know if you have any questions about cashing-out. For other tips you can check-out our Support Forums.

* If you’re not familiar with what an API is, click here.

So…how do you get a larger audience? One of the best things to do is to market yourself, of course. “How do I do that?” you’re probably asking yourself?

Digital Marketing

Well, first of all you should let it be known you’re on Twitter in as many places as you can. This might be in your e-mail signature (even work, if allowed), on your blog (if you have one), any place you might be sending a message through the Internet. Maybe you even want to create a newsletter that you send family, friends, and colleagues. Get creative – the ideas are limitless!

Events

Another thing you can do is promote yourself offline. Yup, you’re gonna have to get out there and meet some folks…talk to them. Know of any Meetups or Tweetups in your area? Why not plan on attending one, and network with other people who are there? This is the perfect opportunity to connect with people who are active in the social media space, and to promote yourself and your Twitter handle. You might even have some business cards created, as an additional means for people to remember you after the event.

Engagement

Yet another way you can grow your audience, and this is the most time-consuming, is by connecting with other Tweeters who talk about the same things you do. Do you talk about entertainment alot in your Tweets? Movies? The hottest TV show? Your favorite actor? Then find other people who are talking about the same thing, and engage in conversation with them. One of the easiest ways of doing this is using a Twitter search engine. There are several you can choose from but one of my favorites is Search.Twitter.com. The site’s interface is clean and easy to use, and there are many different search options available to the user.

Twitter Search Homepage:

If you are a Tweeter who talks about movies often, and want to find out what other Tweeters are saying about the film “Inception,” for example, then you would type inception into the search field. You can also be very specific about keywords, locations (of the Tweeters), dates, and more by selecting the “Advanced” option at the top of the page.

Once you’re finished defining your query, hit the “Search” button and here’s what you’ll see:

Read over the Tweets being published, and if someone’s saying something interesting, or making a comment you want to respond to, simply hit the “reply” link and an “@” will open-up automatically in your Twitter profile. And BAM…you’re starting a dialogue!

Of course, if you have other areas of interest then you’ll want to do the same thing with those topics.

Success!

Once you start involving yourself in conversation with people who have like-minded interests, you’ll find yourself gaining more Followers in no time. Why? Because you’ll be developing authentic relationships…what social media is all about!

If you have any other great ideas about growing your Twitter audience, or have done things that’ve worked for you, we’d love to hear about it!

So I thought perhaps a short overview of the “keywords” feature might help Tweeters get better–and more–offers, and also clear-up any confusion there might be. I’ll provide my personal Sponsored Tweets profile as an example.

First, you want to sign-in to your account. NOTE: Once you sign-in, the “Opportunities” tab will be defaulted open, so click on the “My Account” tab to view the details of your account:

Once in the “My Account” tab, you should see something similar to this:

They keywords are in the very bottom field, highlighted in green. Obviously your keywords will look different than mine, because it’s highly likely you don’t Tweet about the same exact things I do. So, consider some of the topics you regularly Tweet about, and enter in those keywords to your profile. The numbers listed beside each keyword refer to the other Tweeters in the system who are using the same keyword(s).

You can only include 10 keywords, so think carefully about the subjects you talk about. And make sure these keywords are ones that are going to be relevant to your audience. I often talk about food, entertainment, Orlando, music, and humor (at least things I think are funny!), so my keywords reflect that.) Remember, the sponsored Tweets should be about things that are going to add value to your Followers. After all, you want them to be interested in your Tweets, and this will in-turn provide the most value to the Advertiser hiring you (and return for you, particularly if the Tweet is a Cost Per Click Opp).

I strongly urge you to sign-in to your Sponsored Tweets account as soon as you can, and make sure that you not only have keywords in place, but that the keywords are terms you regularly Tweet about and are relevant to both you and your audience. It could mean causing you to miss Opportunities if you don’t.

Once you have input keywords into your profile you’re increasing your chances of receiving Opportunities by far!

I hope this has been helpful! Please let us know if you have any questions.

Early Cashout!

Since the beginning, you’ve needed to earn $50.00 in order to cashout to Paypal from SponsoredTweets. This makes more sense on some of other sites like SocialSpark where each transaction is larger. With the smaller transactions on SponsoredTweets it’s been tough to make it to that threshold. We’re still considering other options, but for now we’ve implemented the ability to cashout under $50 with a $2 early withdrawal fee. So long as you have more than $2 in your account, you can cashout anytime when the limit would have stopped you.

Notifo Notifications!

One of the biggest reasons that Tweeters miss offers is that they’re not in front of their computer to check. Maybe they don’t check their email, or don’t check their Twitter direct mentions in time, and they end up expiring. We’re hoping Notifo helps to solve this for people with iPhones (and later other devices). If you have an iPhone, and want instant alerts from SponsoredTweets, check out Notifo. Notifo is a notification application, currently only for iPhone, that pushes messages to your phone. We have added Notifo as a new method of receiving notifications for advertisers and Tweeters. It is easily the fastest way to get messages from SponsoredTweets, and should be delivered a few seconds after we send them. For more information on setting up Notifo and tying it into your SponsoredTweets account, ready about Notifo in our Glossary.

Higher pay for CPC Offers!

When CPC launched on SponsoredTweets, Tweeters started to be overwhelmed by offers paying $0.02 each. We received a lot of feedback on this point and have decided to raise the minimum up to a minimum of $0.10/click for Tweeters (note: this is how much Tweeters get paid; advertisers will pay more per click). If you’re an advertiser and you already have CPC Opportunities in the system, you’ll be grandfathered in at your current price. You’ll still be able to refill your Opportunities and change who can take it, but any new Opportunities that are created will need to abide by the new minimum.

In addition to the Tweeter purge we are also making some adjustments to create higher quality offers for the remaining Tweeters. We will soon be increasing the minimum cost per click for advertisers. Advertisers with existing offers at a lower price will be grandfathered in.

Update: It looks like Twitter is back up and accepting logins and new accounts now. If you’re still having any trouble getting in, please comment below and let us know. For now we’ve disabled auto-refuse, the process which automatically refuses offers for Tweeters if they don’t respond in 3 days. You’ll have a little extra time due to this major login issue. Thanks for sticking with us!

If you live in the Bay Area and are a social media enthusiast and/or Twitter addict, you don’t want to miss this special event next Wednesday, July 21st.

Join fellow enthusiasts for the one-year anniversary of the Sillicon Valley Tweetup in downtown San Jose (just a few blocks from San Jose State University) to talk about all things Social Media!

Here are the location details:

Fahrenheit Restaurant & Lounge
99 East San Fernando Street
San Jose, CA 95113
6:00pm – 9:00pm

PLEASE NOTE: There is a requested $10 donation at the door, to benefit the FAIR Fund International Organization.

Additional info and RSVP for the Tweetup can be found on the Facebook Event Page.

Thanks to all who attended – glad you had a good turnout!

If you would like to have Sponsored Tweets sponsor an event in your area, click here to find out how to qualify.

* photos courtesy of BenSpark

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