Why I’m no longer a Magpie
Jul 3, 2009 Advertising, Product Review, Twitter
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It’s true, I’d like to make money
I’ve never hidden the fact that I want to make money with my blogs. There’s no reason to be coy about it. My time is worth money, and if this is what I’m doing with my time, I want it to be worth money. I guess that’s what sets it apart from a hobby. But I do try to find a good balance between the ads not being too obnoxious and the ads being effective. For example, I don’t use ads that have sound, or ads that pop out of nowhere and hide my content, or ads that make you look at them for ten seconds before you even get to my site. I get annoyed by those when I see them on other sites, so why would I inflict them upon my readers? And if you’re a regular reader of either of my blogs, there are ads that you never even see.
The Magpie confusion problem
When I first heard about Magpie, an ad network for Twitter, I signed up. And while I didn’t for a second believe the astronomical number they claimed I could make, I did expect to make something. $50 a month would have made me happy. Setting up Magpie was easy enough. I chose how often I wanted the ads to tweet (I chose one ad for every ten tweets – seemed reasonable). Then I chose what I wanted to put before or after the tweet to make it clear that it was an ad. At first, I just set this as “Ad:” but quickly changed it to “Advert:” when a few of my friends didn’t realize that it wasn’t me tweeting. I should have realized right then and there that there was going to be a problem.
See, most of the ads are written to sound like I’m writing them. They start off saying things like “Cool!” or “So I’m in vacation planning mode…” And I don’t get to control that. I can reject any ad I want, but most of them are written like that. And I don’t like tricking people into thinking that I’m recommending something when I’m not. I looked at each ad and only accepted ones I thought I’d use myself, but since I hadn’t actually tried any of them out, the way that the ads were written really bothered me.
Did I make money?
Now, all that having been said, if I had been making money off of them, then it all would have been OK. After all, I had done everything I could reasonably do within the confines of the program to make it clear the ads were not coming from me. But I wasn’t making money. Not one penny. Most of the ads only paid a percentage of sales. So 2,000 people could see an ad for a website, and the name could stick in their heads. But if they didn’t go to the site directly from my tweet, I got nothing. It really didn’t seem fair. It’s why I don’t run adsense or other ad networks that are pay-per-click or pay-per-sale. I do link to Amazon pages that pay me a percentage of the sales, but only for products or subjects I’m already talking about on my blog. And I’m making some money from it. And it’s clearly spelled out on my disclosure page, so I sleep just fine at night.
So, let’s recap: after using Magpie for several weeks, I’ve given free advertising to a dozen or so websites, fooled a few of my followers, annoyed the rest of them, no doubt lost a few due directly to the ads, and made a grand total of zero dollars. So, I just deactivated my account.
So who does make money with Magpie?
Somebody’s making money off of the ads besides Magpie. I’m guessing it’s the people who aren’t making it as obvious as I was that the tweets are ads. It’s just too easy in 140 characters, without disclosure pages and end-of-post explanations, to fool someone into clicking and thinking that you’re really endorsing the product or site. And if someone calls you on it, you can use the “140 Defense”: Sorry, I just didn’t have enough room in the tweet to make it clear that it was an ad. Sorry!
What about other Twitter ads?
I’ve recently been checking out Twittad. It’s a site that places ads on your Twitter background. Frankly, I’m not sure why that’s worth anything. I go so rarely to someone’s actual Twitter page. But if someone’s willing to pay me for it, then I’m willing to rent it out. But so far I haven’t found an ad that doesn’t involves some tweets as well, and after my Magpie experience, it’s going to take a lot before I let anybody use my account for auto tweets. But since I’d be paid upfront, if the money’s there, I’ll consider it.
So what about sponsored tweets, written by me about a product with help and input from the company or website? Sure. But it has to be clear that it’s a sponsored tweet. And it has to be for something that I would actually endorse. I’m not holding my breath. What I really want to endorse are Amazing Race, Hershey’s chocolate, and Hawaiian vacations. But what’s out there advertising on Twitter seems to be, shall we say, less established.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Advertising, Be-A-Magpie, Magpie, make money online, make money with twitter, Tweets, Twitad, Twittad, Twitter
