Already on Twitter? Follow me. Not on Twitter yet, then join the conversation.

It does not take long looking at people’s tweets trying to sell bad informational products and how to turn Twitter into a traffic machine that people are trying hard to make money using Twitter. Affiliate marketing is not new to Twitter, and has now gotten easier for the regular Twitter user. If people were not used to the world of affiliate marketing then getting started in affiliate marketing using Twitter is a lot of work. You need to find products to promote, sign up for programs, get accepted all the while building your following on Twitter so you have someone to promote your affiliate programs too. With Tweetbucks the average Twitter user no longer has to work quite so hard to start promoting affiliate products using Twitter.

The process is simple really. Tweetbucks has partnered with thousands of affiliate programs already. When you are browsing an ecommerce site, like TigerDirect for example, and you find a product you are thinking of getting or want to promote you simply copy the URL into Tweetbucks and it will search for an affiliate relationship and create a shortened Bit.ly link for you to use on Twitter. For example I was recently looking at 24″ LCD monitors. One of the monitors I like is the Viewsonic 24″ LCD. I copy the URL into Tweetbucks, and it creates an affiliate link for me to use on Twitter.

Tweetbucks pays using PayPal with a minimum payout of only $25.00. How long it takes you to reach the payout will depend on how many people actually buy something when you click through your link. If you have a huge following it might not be hard. They are even giving new sign ups $5.00 to start you off so you only need to make an extra $20.00 to get your first payout.

There is a cost to using Tweetbucks though, you do not make 100% of the affiliate commission. For every sale you make 70% of the commission and Tweetbucks keeps 30%. Not a bad commission for them considering they have to maintain the relationships with the affiliate partners. It could make a few extra dollars in your pocket every month.

Tweetbucks makes it easy for anyone using Twitter to start adding affiliate links to their tweets. If you occasionally tweet a product that you want or that you bought it might make you a few dollars. If you are continually spamming Twitter with affiliate links you will quickly lose followers and not make much. I know that some people will be up in arms about the fact that people would use affiliate links on Twitter. There is a difference between people spamming Twitter with their affiliate links and those that are genuine about the products and services they use. I have used the occasional affiliate link on Twitter and it can be an effective way of creating more sales, but again I use it sparingly.

What do you think? Would you use Tweetbucks to let your followers know about products and services you use?

by Robert Scoble

Everyday there is more talk about Twitter. The media is certainly getting into Twitter with Ashton Kutcher breaking the 1 million followers, and Oprah joining not long ago and already approaching the 1 million follower mark. The number of ways that people use Twitter everyday is growing and changing. I can’t help but wonder if with all of the attention Twitter is getting are we Twittering our lives away?

I joined Twitter for a number of reasons, one was to connect with new people. Working from home one of the things I miss about working in an office is the ability to hang out at the water cooler and chat with my coworkers. Twitter has been a great way to have conversations with people that have similar interests as myself.

I also joined Twitter as a way to help promote my business by tweeting out the latest blog posts. Shoemoney recently made a short blog post showing the amount of referral traffic that he gets from Twitter. I don’t get quite that amount but referral traffic from Twitter did come in fourth for referral traffic. More and more the conversations that I am having on Twitter is bringing in new people to read and take part here. This regularly leads to new work. Twitter has improved my online business be helping me connect with new clients.

How much tweeting is too much? Is there a limit? Do people tweet instead of taking the time to write a new blog post? Is Twitter taking you away from the work that you should be doing? Twitter has only started to change how we communicate but are we Twittering our lives away?

by byrion

I hate doing things twice. There are not many things that bug me but doing things twice has always been one of my pet peeves. Like many people I use Google Reader to read RSS feeds and as TechCrunch pointed out Google Readers social features are lacking. I was often reading posts in Google Reader and then tweeting them out to my followers but that meant visiting the original blog post, then tweeting it out. There had to be an easier, faster way for me to tweet the blog posts that I thought were interesting and might interest my followers?

Google Reader does offer a simple method to share posts that you like. Simply click the Share link at the bottom of a post and Google Reader shares the post with your friends on Google. Those shared items are placed on a new web page that you can find by clicking the Shared items under your stuff on the Google Reader menu in the top left. For example here is my shared items page. Google creates an RSS/Atom feed for this page so people can subscribe to it and follow what stories you are sharing.

Since Google Reader creates an RSS feed of your shared posts all it takes is a way to take that RSS feed and have it tweeted out on Twitter. The easiest way to publish an RSS feed to Twitter is to use Twitterfeed. Once you login to Twitterfeed you just need to setup a new feed that uses the RSS feed URL of your Google Reader shared items. Twitterfeed even allows you to prefix each tweet with some text. I simply added “Reading – ” to mine. Now everytime I share an item on Google Reader it is automatically tweeted out to my followers on Twitter.

Now you do not have to do things twice to tweet an interesting post you read in Google Reader. There is also the added benefit that if you read an interesting post on your mobile device, you can share it and have it tweeted out without leaving Google Reader mobile. I imagine you can do with with other web based feed readers. Give it a try with your favourite feed reader and leave a comment about how you share your favourite blog posts from your reader.

While I don’t always agree with Guy Kawasaki, and I find it rather funny that roughly a year after I talked about AllTop and some ways to improve it those features showed up on AllTop. Guy Kawasaki, does have some interesting ideas about how to use Twitter as a marketing tool and I enjoyed watching this video of his talk in Vancouver on Twitter.

Some alternatives to the services he mentioned in the video.

Tweet Later – Tweet Later is similar to SocialToo, except it offers more options. Even the free version of Tweet Later is more feature rich allowing you to schedule your tweets, manage mutiple Twitter accounts. You can use Tweet Later to automatically follow people that follow you and unfollow those that stop following you. Not to mention the guys that run Tweet Later are from Canada so there is a good reason to use them right there.

Bit.ly – I prefer to use bit.ly for my URL shortener. It gives you some basic stats. No worry about ads. If you add your Twitter account you can tweet right from it. If you want to schedule a tweet you would need to copy the shortened URL into Tweet Later that can schedule tweets.

PeopleBrowsr – I like Tweet Deck, but I tend to like web browser based apps over stand along applications. When I discovered PeopleBrowsr I knew I had found my favourite Twitter client. It is not for everyone, but if you like Tweet Deck then you should give PeopleBrowsr a try. All you will need as a decent browser, like Firefox, Safari or Chrome.

TwitterFeed – He talks about Twitterfeed, which is a great service to automatically tweet your latest blog posts, the professional version of Tweet Later offers a similar service. You can use Twitterfeed to automatically tweet more than just your blog posts, you can set it up to automatically tweet any RSS feed. Every Twitter account creates an RSS feed, so in theory you could automatically retweet tweets from other Twitter users very easily. If you want to get a little more sophisticated run the Twitter feeds through Yahoo Pipes remove tweets you know you don’t want like @ replies and you can in theory automatically retweet as many users as you want on Twitter. Some people might be offended at this idea, so use with caution. I can only see the possibility. It could be useful if you go on hiolidays and actually want to get away from the computer. Sort of like an vacation auto responder.

There are lots of ways to use Twitter to market your website. I know some people will be offended by how Guy Kawasaki uses it, but I can see how some of these methods are worth trying. I think the trick is to actually be available to people when they do tweet you so your Twitter account is not just a mindless robot. There needs to be a person still behind the account no matter how you use Twitter.

Let the games begin! Do you think Guy Kawasaki’s use of Twitter is over the top? Spammy? Wrong? Right? What do you think?

If you are like me, you have accounts at many of the different social media sites like Digg and StumbleUpon and of course you have a Twitter account . Wouldn’t it be great if you could show visitors to your various user profiles your latest tweet, only problem is that the official Twitter badges are flash and javascript so you can’t just add them to most profile pages. That is where TwitterTag comes in handy.

I was recently updating my Digg and StumbleUpon and thought it would be great to let people know that they can also follow me on Twitter. Sure links to my Twitter profile are great but I wanted to show people what my latest tweet was. Just by chance I thought I would try adding a TwitterTag to my profile pages and see what happened. Sure enough I saved my profiles and the TwitterTag image instantly appeared showing my latest tweet to all that visit my Digg and StumbleUpon profiles.

If you want to add your latest tweet to Digg and StumbleUpon simply visit TwitterTag, enter your Twitter username, set the colors and the size of TwitterTag you want to create and create Generate. Copy the HTML link and image code that is displayed. Go to your Digg and StumbleUpon profiles and paste the code in the About You sections to update your profile and save. Magically the TwitterTag will appear and show your latest tweets when you tweet. There might be a slight delay in the updating because TwitterTag caches your latest tweet for a little while.

There might be other social media profiles that you can do this with as well, but these are the two that I have recently updated and tried. If you know of others leave a comment and a link so we can all add our latest tweets to them as well. Using TwitterTag to help promote your Twitter profile on your other social media profiles is an excellent way to let people know about your Twitter account and to gain more followers.

I got a good laugh out of this today, and ironically I found it on Twitter. Love the fail whale that tries to eat all of them.

Japanish by fabbio on Flickr.

As you get more and more followers and follow more people on Twitter the problem that many users start to face is the level of noise from all of the tweets that they have coming at them. If you have started to reach a level on Twitter where the noise is starting to get to you here are some things I have found that have been helpful.

• You don’t read every tweet by everyone that you follow. Check once in a while and if you see something that interests you then you can reply.
• Use a Twitter client, like Tweetdeck. I started on Twitter using the web interface, and TwitterFox, and I still like to use those interfaces, but Tweetdeck does a couple of things that makes managing the noise easier. You can create groups and add your followers into groups so you can still keep track of the people you want to follow more closely. FOr example I have a friends and family group so I can see tweets from my friends and family at a glance.
  Update: There is also a Twitter client called PeopleBrowsr that is similar to Tweetdeck but web based. Impressed with it so far.
• Turn it off. You don’t need to be on Twitter all day long having conversations with people. I would get very little done if I did that.

Twitter is like a giant party room and as you walk through the room you will have conversations with certain people. You don’t need to hear all of the conversations going on and you don’t need to talk with every person there all at once. Just come and enjoy the party, and you are always welcome to chat with me when you are there.

If you are already on Twitter, what do you use to manage the noise?

Who’s job is it to police Twitter? Twitter? The users? Lately there has been a trend calling for the end of automatic direct messages. By using a service, such as Tweet Later, people can setup their account to automatically send a direct message to new followers. While I do not personally use the automatic direct message feature of Tweet Later, I can understand why people would use it. It could be a huge time saver for those that are on Twitter that have huge followings.

The campaign to end automatic direct messages is being lead by SocialToo, who up until February 28th was one of the main services doing automatic direct messages. I will not get into the debate whether automatic direct messages are right or wrong. They exist and are a part of Twitter. I do not mind the direct messages that I receive when I follow a new person. Some contain interesting links, some are friendly hello’s and yes some are blatant sales pitches. The problem with the campaign that is being lead by SocialToo is the way they they are going about it.

They have setup a new Twitter account, endautodms, that people can send a message to @endautodms with the name of the person they think are doing automatic direct messages. Endautodms will then follow that person and they are placed on “the list”. A tweet to endautodms would then look like the following:

This method to police automatic direct messages turns into nothing but a witch hunt. They are welcome to create a blacklist if they want but making is a visible social blacklist can damage people and companies reputations. Automatic direct messages might have problems but shaming people into stopping seems to be more suitable to high school.

So who should be policing Twitter and automatic direct messages? SocialToo seems to think they should, what do you think?

It seems like everyone is talking about Twitter. It appears that Twitter is becoming more mainstream. You can even find CBC News on Twitter. Have you ever wondered how some of those people manage to have 10,000 plus followers and how did they follow that many people in return? Well one of the ways to follow and be followed by so many people is to automate the process by using a website called Tweet Later.

Now some people might consider the use Tweet Later as cheating. After all isn’t the point of Twitter to connect with people and have conversations with them? That might be true, but I can see how Tweet Later does provide a useful service that can help save you time if you use Twitter. Just because you sign up for Tweet Later does not mean that you have to use all of the features that it provides. You can set it to automate only the things that you really want to have happen.

For example, you might like to automatically unfollow any one that stops following you. This can take time to fiquire out who has stopped following you and then unfollow them. With Tweet Later you can set it to automatically unfollow people that unfollow you. No longer do you have to sift through your followers to see who is no longer following you.

Of course there are other features that might appeal more to those that are using Twitter to broadcast themselves to a wider audience. You can set Tweet Later to automatically follow people that follow you, to send automatic direct messages to new followers, and as the website name implies, you can have Tweet Later tweet for you while you are away.

Aside from automating some of the regular Twitter tasks that people do you can do all of your tweeting and replying right from inside of Tweet Later. You can see who has replied to you, reply back to them, send a new tweet, retweet, and manage multiple Twitter accounts, in the event that you tweet for more than one organization. All that and it is free!

For those that do use Twitter more than just for personal reasons Tweet Later also offers a professional version that costs $29.97/month that allows you to do everything above plus things like integrate with Ping.fm, schedule direct message, replies, recurring tweets, and use it to help monitor topics that you are interested in.

I enjoy Twitter as a tool to connect with people, to learn about things that are going on in the world and to help others with their web problems. What I don’t like about Twitter is the time it takes to follow and unfollow people. I like to tweet and connect and I can see how Tweet Later helps people do that. It can also be useful for those that are looking at using Twitter to broadcast their message to a wider audience. Twitter can bring a significant number of visitors to a website and Tweet Later can help people manage that aspect of their website promotion.

If you are on Twitter you might want to give Tweet Later a try. They offer a free version and it does not take long to create an account. By automating some tasks on Twitter you can focus on just tweeting!

Don’t forget you can always follow me on Twitter if you want to know what I am up too.