How to Make Money Tweeting with Ad.ly

First impressions count. And when I first visit a lot of “make money from Twitter” sites, I don’t stick around or sign up.

If these guys can’t even afford to create an attractive, trustworthy looking site, why should I believe their moneymaking claims? If it looks like a fly-by-night operation, and acts like… well, you know the drill.

So far I’ve only signed up with two of the big “make money from Twitter” enterprises out there. Ad.ly is one of them.

I’ll admit it: Ad.ly makes a great first impression, with their cleanly designed site and no-brainer, no-surprises interface.

Ad.ly isn’t shy about posting pictures of the big names they’ve already signed up to run their clients’ ads, like Dr. Drew and Stephen Colbert. And those advertising clients include Sony Pictures and Microsoft.

After I signed up, Ad.ly automatically calculated my listed price per tweet at $15. I’ve got over 5000 Twitter followers, so that’s part of their calculation.

(However, I hear Ad.ly can tell if those are real followers or just bots, and rates you according to that as well. They’re looking for quality _and_ quantity.)

Soon enough, I got an email asking me if I wanted to accept a campaign. I agreed, and Ad.ly automatically sent the sponsor’s tweets to my followers. The volume was very low: only one tweet per day, over the course of three days in a row.

And every tweet includes the disclaimer “Ad by http://Ad.ly,” so your followers know it’s an ad.

And that’s how I made $45 without doing anything.

(People with huge numbers of Twitter followers say they’ve already made thousands of dollars through Ad.ly.)

With Ad.ly, you can set your own per-tweet fee, as well as reject ads you don’t want. You’re in control. You can even donate part of your earnings to charity.

Plus I’ve signed up some of my followers for the Ad.ly referral program. This means I’ll make 12% of what THEY make.

The only downside is if Ad.ly gets bought by some mega corporation that proceeds to mess it all up. Or Ad.ly goes out of business overnight and people lose their unpaid earnings.

Speaking of “overnight”: don’t expect to get rich with Ad.ly. But if you’re interested in making a bit of extra, easy money via Twitter, Ad.ly is one of the best alternatives around.

~ Kathy Shaidle (@kshaidle)