Monetizing Twitter Marketing | July 9th, 2009
by Kelly Fogarty
Just in time for those people still trying to figure out how Twitter works and whether it is useful for business comes Super Chirp. So now instead of sending tweets to your followers, ‘chirps’ go to those people who have paid to subscribe to you. Yes, you read correctly. Super Chirp allows you to use an existing Twitter account to communicate with people who have paid to read your 140 character messages.
With Super Chirp, you get to set your own subscription fee—a monthly fee from $0.99 to $9.99. And for their trouble of developing this handy service, they charge a 30% commission. But as the publisher, you can charge for your prized content.
So who is Super Chirp intended for? This seems to be a good fit for pop stars and other famous people with Twitter accounts to inform their followers about their important and interesting antics. It might work for sports teams that want to give fans special information unavailable elsewhere. Certainly programs like American Idol could use it to milk their dedicated fan base.
But don’t overlook supporters of non-profits or charitable groups who might wish to subscribe as a way of providing financial support while getting vital and timely information about the organization. Local newspaper and magazines (that already have subscribers) with renowned writers may be able to entice readers to pay for an extra service that gives them premium content unavailable in the publication.
What Super Chirp does not tell you is how to get people to pay you to subscribe. I’m sure someone is already working on that one…to be called ‘Peep Scratch’ I’ll bet.
