Make Money Online - Up Your Twitter Status!

(Become a Twitter celeb!)

Months ago The Monetizer was a member of Twitter but didn't quite see its value or have much reason to use it. However, the more I read about those who are successfully using Twitter to their advantage, the more it makes sense to "go with the Twitter flow". Let me give you some new ways to look at Twitter and some things to do to increase your Twitter followers, which in turn will help you attract new blog readers, contacts, networking opportunities, site visitors and money spenders!



1) Pimp your profile - Like many say, branding yourself is the way to make the big bucks with a blog. If you've already got an Entrecard logo, great! Use that as your small Twitter icon, or use a really, really good picture of yourself. Try to make it professional or catchy.

Also consider getting yourself a free Twitter theme background, or modifying one/creating your own. If you see someone else's Twitter background you like, do a right click on it and "View image". You can always save theirs and use it as a reference (don't steal!) To upload your new background, simply go to the "Settings" tab on your upper menu for Twitter, then go to "Design", if you scroll down on that page you'll see a button that says "". Click that and you can upload your new background, then click "Save".

Also make sure you have a link to follow you at Twitter somewhere on your site(s) and blog(s).


(Monetizer follows Guy & some of his followers)

2) Follow the followers of top gurus - I picked up this tip at NickMarks.com's blog post, but it has worked well for me so far. Within a day I've been able to move from around 200 followers up towards 500. My goal by month's end is 1,000. Consider following the followers of John Chow, Problogger, Guy Kawasaki and John Reese, just to name a few with a lot of followers who are in similar niches as Moneymakers. Even if you're not in the IM or Moneymaker niche, they can still potentially bring you people so don't discount the followers!

Check out this recent post about 20 Celebs on Twitter. Use them to get followers as they might relate to your niche, or even if they don't!



3) Use these Twitter tools - Twitterfeed, Twittercounter.com, Twitter Karma, TweetDeck, and TweetLater. Twitterfeed allows you to plug in your RSS from your blog so anytime you post a new blog, it will be Tweeted to Twitter for you, with a link to your blog post and a line of intro from your post. TweetLater is a great automator tool where you can set up your Twitter account so that you automatically follow and direct message anyone who follows you. You can also set it so if someone unfollows you, you unfollow them! The Your Twitter Karma site is helpful in that it allows you to import your list of Following and Followers, and then unfollow any of those your following who don't follow you back. Great for management purposes. Tweetdeck will allow you to see what's being said about anything, including you, your blog, product, etc!

4) Check out this insightful blog post by Guy Kawasaki. He details exactly what you need to do with Twitter and why. Great stuff.

5) Follow The Monetizer on Twitter, I follow back :)

Twitter is becoming the "It" tool of the times, so if you're not on "Twit", get on it, and start Tweeting!

Here's to your success!
The Monetizer

PS - Got any cool Twitter tools, tips or stories? Feel free to share em in the comments section below!

20 Celebrities Who Use Twitter

These days if someone asks "What's Twitter?" the other person might ask them what rock they've been living under. Everyone's on Twitter these days from your roommate to your neighbor to Team Obama. The following is a quick list The Monetizer generated over at twittercounter.com. It's a nifty site where you can enter your twitter username and it predicts how many peeps will be following you on Twitter by a certain date. The site also has a top 100 list, which lists Barack Obama at the #1 Spot. There appears to be several celebrities on Twitter who you may be interested in following in addition to our current president. Some of the following include politicians, athletes, internet entrepreneurs, musicians, internet celebs and comedians.

Here's a look at some of the famous people Tweeting:

http://www.twitter.com/kevinrose
http://www.twitter.com/britneyspears
http://www.twitter.com/lancearmstrong
http://www.twitter.com/algore
http://www.twitter.com/The_Real_Shaq
http://www.twitter.com/ijustine
http://www.twitter.com/MCHammer
http://www.twitter.com/jimmyfallon
http://www.twitter.com/JohnCleese
http://www.twitter.com/coldplay
http://www.twitter.com/leolaporte
http://www.twitter.com/rainnwilson
http://www.twitter.com/SenJohnMcCain
http://www.twitter.com/TonyRobbins
http://www.twitter.com/problogger
http://www.twitter.com/DaveJMatthews
http://www.twitter.com/brookeburke
http://www.twitter.com/TinaFey
http://www.twitter.com/StephenColbert
http://www.twitter.com/guykawasaki


Several names might not be of the household variety to everyone so here's some extra info on them... Kevin Rose is the founder of Digg.com, iJustine is a famous video blogging chick who just brought cupcakes to Twitter's office, Leo Laporte hosts technology TV shows, Guy Kawasaki is an entrepreneur and author of enlightening books such as "The Art of the Start". If you don't know someone else on the list, please consult Google.com :)

(Source: TwitterCounter Global top 100)

** UPDATE:

Check out this recent blogger's post about Shaq on Twitter. Yes it's the "Real Shaq"!

Happy Valentine's Day 2009 - Love & Money

Hello lovestruck readers and Happy Valentine's Day 2009! Today's the day when people profess their love for each other or in some cases their love for money. Whichever your situation may be, The Monetizer wants to spread some love on this sweet, sweet holiday...

You may have already noticed that the big G has a red-inspired Google logo theme today, and clicking that theme will take you to Valentine's Day search results. There you can read about the history of Valentine's Day, which many know is based on Saint Valentine and is mainly a holiday for lovers to express their love for one another...

There's also an interesting article within those search results from San Francisco Chronicle regarding Valentine's day and lovers spending less on each other. One individual in the articles notes that he's changed his 2 day Valentine's day holiday into a 1 day celebration. Basically he can't justify buying $100 worth of roses when his neighbor recently lost his job. According to the article V-day spending will drop about 4.8% this year, going down to $28.6 billion. Some of those who will be feeling the tightening budgets will be hotels, restaurants and flower services. Read the full article here at SFGate.com

But you can still share the love this Valentine's day and weekend. The Monetizer has found some cool deals online you may want to utilize. One is the Free Breakfast that IKEA is serving customers from February 13-16th each morning until 10:30AM. It may be too late to take your sweety to a V-Day breakfast, but Sunday and Monday could be your Valentine's day breakfast celebration. There's also several compelling restaurant deals so you can still take your sweetheart to a great meal. One example is TGI Friday's Buy One Get One Free Entree deal, just print the coupon out here. If you have Texas Roadhouse in your vicinity, they are offering a Valentine's Day deal of 2 entrees for $29.99 complete with 2 made-from-scratch sides! The choices include Baby Blossom, BBQ Chicken & Ribs, 12oz. Ribeye Steak and 12oz. Prime Rib. John Chow eat your heart out! (not literally) But nothing says I love you like a good plate of ribs or a nice hunk of steak. Texas Roadhouse's deal extends through Sunday February 15th with details and pictures here.

Now how about some mood music for today's lovefest? Amazon.com is offering Dean Martin Love Songs MP3 Album for just $2.99 today only! Even better, Let's Get It On by Marvin Gaye is FREE!. So you could technically just loop that track all day long if you really want to save money, however The Monetizer doesn't recommend it! You may want to purchase your lover a sweet iPod Nano to go with the music as well...

No matter how you choose to spend Valentine's day whether it be wining and dining your sweetie, watching romantic movies, or counting your money made online, The Monetizer wishes you nothing but love for Valentine's Day 2009!

Domain Purchased & Wordpress Setup

Recently, The Monetizer ran into a bigtime issue (potential scam) with a website called Regfly.com. They supposedly sell domain names with privacy protection included, but after a week and no sign of the domain I purchased in WHOIS, I submitted a dispute to my credit card company. See "Beware of Domain Scams!" for more info on that. That's all pending, but in the meantime I decided to take advantage of the free domain deal offered by BUY.com and GoDaddy, mentioned in my previous post. I bought a cheap DVD and then within 48 hours received my code for a free domain name (free for the first year) from GoDaddy. After some careful consideration, I took the plunge and used my coupon there to get a domain.

Right after my domain purchase, I immediately pointed my DNS (Domain Name Servers) to my Hostgator hosting account. With Hostgator's baby package you can host unlimited domains under one account for $10 a month, which is a great deal. Even cooler, you can set up Wordpress very simply through Hostgator's control panel. For a great tutorial check out Courtney Tuttle's Internet Marketing post: "Finalizing Hosting and Installing WordPress".

So within less than an hour I was able to buy a domain name, have it registered and set up hosting with Wordpress. Now all I have to do is choose my Wordpress theme, install plugins and transfer the Blogger blog stuff to Wordpress. Since I've been a longtime user of Blogger and barely scratched the surface with Wordpress, I'll detail my further adventures in an upcoming post. As mentioned above I recommend, consult Courtney Tuttle's Marketing School for a great video tutorial on setting up all of the above for your blog!