Some niche media publishers are charging up to $150 per M for Tweets
While I know many writers, editors and publishers who use their Tweets to promote their own blogs, books, magazines, events and other information products, I was surprised to hear that some publishers are now selling them like banner ads and email blasts.
The going rate for a niche media Tweet seems to be $99 to $150 per M followers.
Here at Mequoda Daily, we have almost 9K Twitter followers, which means we could be charging sponsors (if we had them) $1,350 per Tweet to tell our followers about their products and services.
It occurs to me that someone with a lot of Twitter followers could make some serious change for including a couple of sponsor Tweets in their daily stream.
Ashton Kutcher comes to mind. Now, I don’t hang out with Ashton, but I think he is funny, handsome and currently married to one of the hottest women on the planet. If I did know Ashton, I would tell him to get his agent on this ASAP… time’s a wasting and there is money to be made by adding a little product placement to his Tweets.
[text_ad]
I don’t know what Ashton gets paid for starring in each episode of Two and a Half Men, but if calculated as an hourly wage, I am willing to bet that Tweeting could be more lucrative.
Let’s do the math. Ashton has 8.1 million followers on Twitter. Let’s say he can’t get the niche media rate of $100 per M, but can command a paltry $1 consumer mass market CPM for each of his Tweets. That calculates out at about $8,100 per Ashton Kutcher Tweet (Charlie Sheen, eat your heart out). Assuming 2 sponsor Tweets per day (to maintain exclusivity), Ashton’s Tweets could be generating around $6 million per year. I know a lot of copywriters that would happily Tweet for him for a small percentage of the gross.
If you are Tweeting for cash, tell me about it.
If you see a flaw in my Twitter logic, tell me about it.
And Ashton, if you read this, let me know what you think.
All the best,
Don
Considering that Facebook just launched the “subscribe” button, which lets people subscribe to the feed of their favorite celebrities (as long as the celebrities post things publicly), I don’t see that too far off Jodi. You can already pay people to “like” your posts on sites like Fiverr.com which is a start.
Interesting to say the least. Any comparable things happening on Facebook? Do you have an article about that anywhere, if there is. Thanks!
And all the things we do to build up our email subscribers, can also be tweaked to attract Twitter followers, Facebook fans, RSS subscribers, etc…
Don
Thanks Don, and Amanda. So it appears your $1 CPM for generic lists is pretty close to the market. Very interesting.
Let’s do the math for the niche publisher: $100CPM x 10,000 = $1,000 x 200 days/yr = $200K/yr. Sell 2 tweets/day and you’re at $400K/yr. You may need to pay a sales commission on that but this could easily add hundreds of thousands to your bottom line.
That would pay for some extra efforts to build your Twitter followers (which in turn grows your revenues). Pretty nice.
Hi Don,
I did some research to back up your theory and found that celebrities (and publishers like Time.com) have been accepting sponsored tweets for big bucks using the platform adly: http://adly.com/influencers/influencers-on-ad-ly/
Big brands like Toyota, Bing and NBC are on Adly and pay celebrities like Kim Kardashian about 10k per tweet: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1238285/Is-worth-10-000-tweet-Kim-Kardashian-earns-big-money-using-Twitter-account-advertise-various-products.html
Charlie Sheen too: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/03/06/how-charlie-sheen-and-other-stars-get-paid-to-tweet/