Exclusive Interview with Co-Founder of TweetROI

Today Protwit is talking with Brian Carter, the cofounder of TweetROI.

ProTwit: Tell us about TweetROI?

Brian: TweetROI is a pay-per-tweet service modeled a bit after Google AdWords; it provides a lot of power and control to both twitterers and marketers. Fundamentally, it’s about letting twitterers make money on their influence and letting marketers and PR folks leverage the influence of twitterers by paying them. But we wanted it to be proportional- if you have more influence, you should get paid more for your tweets. And that same proportionality means marketers can get better ROI- they pay more for more influence, but that should get them more business results too.  We do that with our UserRank system- we rate every twitterer in terms of their reach, talkativness, conversationality, and virality. (editors note 3 invented words there:)

ProTwit: What got you interested in creating a make money on twitter product?

Brian: I saw the negative reaction Magpie got… but I work at an Internet marketing agency and I wanted a solution for the middle sized businesses that don’t have the time or expertise to build a 20,000 follower Twitter profile. One day I thought, why not a pay-per-tweet service that gives twitterers more control- they should be able to write the tweets in their own words and control what goes into their stream. I had spent a LOT of time tweeting in 2008 and I wanted to create a pay-per-tweet solution that better fit the Twitter ethos. So control and authenticity were the essence of the original vision.

ProTwit: How does TweetROI differ from Rvtwt and Be-A-Magpie?

Brian: Several ways- first, we try to make all three groups happy: twitterers, marketers, and followers. Twitterers get control and payment, marketers get influence and results, followers get quality tweets with disclosure. Also, the UserRank system is the heart of the ROI part of TweetROI- we call it “return on influence”- the money is proportional to the influence and vice versa.

ProTwit: Are you worried about spammers using your product?

Brian: We are constantly watching and working to prevent spam. However, I notice that spammers don’t have great ConversationRank or ViralRank. They’re easy to spot with UserRanks. Marketers can disapprove spammy tweets or tweets from spammy users. They can also prevent TweetROI twitterers from even seeing their campaign if their UserRank isn’t high enough.

ProTwit: Why should a marketer use TweetROI?

Brian: Number one, you can accelerate positive word of mouth about your offering on Twitter. Number two, you pay proportional to influence, so you’ll get better ROI. Number three, you have a huge amount of control.

ProTwit: Tell us about your customized discourse method using AD and SP?

Brian: The FTC and many social media proponents want paid tweet disclosure. We’ve discussed the best way to do that with industry experts including Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, Ted Murphy, Stowe Boyd, and others. Our plan, coming in the next few weeks, is to allow marketers to restrict tweets to their marketing copy only- that means they could let the twitterer recommend in their own words, or not. If the TweetROI campaign doesn’t allow customization by the twitterer, we will put AD at the end of the tweet. If it’s written in the twitterer’s words, it will be SP.  That differentiates ads from sponsored tweets. And if it’s a PR campaign, it will say PR.

ProTwit: Which big brands have done Twitter marketing or advertising on any platform that you are aware of?

Brian: Well many big brands are on Twitter, including Dell, Starbucks, JetBlue, and so on. But as for those using a pay per tweet service like TweetROI?  I think the big brands are still just starting to hear about this new advertising channel.

ProTwit: How much money can someone make off twitter with your service?
Brian: If marketers go according to our recommendations, some twitterers stand to make $50 or more per tweet. One a day, and that’s $1500 a month. But your average twitterer probably will make a few dollars per tweet. If they did three a day, they could take care of their monthly car payment with that. It’s better to think of TweetROI as a supplemental income for people who value authentic tweeting and mainly use Twitter for other purposes.

What are you waiting for?  Sign up for TweetROI and make some money on Twitter!

Note* I’ve started testing this for ProTwit and the although the numbers look small so far, there is some potential.  I was under the initial impression they were CPC ads, and they are actually pay per tweet.

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Stay tuned for full Review coming soon…