Wouldn’t it be great to have 50,000+ followers? Entertaining a large chunk of the Twitteratti following what you do and reading what you read? It’s a unique place to be in and can be quite an ego boost. This particular spot has also piqued the interest of advertisers. More and more, they are seeing that high follower counts can yield large numbers of eyeballs for what they have to market.
There was a recent blog post about a Twitterer making $15,000 in a month, just for tweeting ads. Sure, he has over 70,000 followers due to his proficiency in affiliate marketing but it is a simple way for him to garner an additional revenue stream. The blogger was also quite pleased that his tweets, despite being paid for, were actually pertinent to his business and were also generating some conversation among his followers. Some examples of sites that are mediating these types of ads include Sponsored Tweets and Ad.ly.
I wouldn’t be surprised if more celebrities started participating. Particularly examples like bands who hadn’t had a strong selling album in a number of years or former child actors who have difficulty getting substantial roles. Despite these troubles, artists are usually still able to cull together a strong following of dedicated fans. These followers would probably also be very interested in whichever product/service they might be touting, even though it is a paid ad.
Twitter Corporate should also begin to participate. If they arbitrated between a popular Twitterer and the advertiser, they could negotiate a small percentage of the ad spend for themselves. This would be in exchange for prominent placement of this Twitterer (and, subsequently, the advertiser). Think about it, @ev and @biz.
