Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

UberFacts founder Kris Sanchez has turned his addictive Twitter feed into a wildly lucrative business. But not everyone's buying it.

Today he says he makes about $500,000 a year just from sponsored links. The way this works is that a company called Social Reactor, which pairs social media influencers with advertisers, supplies him with galleries or other web pages that he links to in his Tweets. He gets paid for every click those pages receive. Then there are the branded deals he’s done with companies like Ford and Paramount, wherein a simple tweet, accompanied by a link and a hashtag, becomes a virtual slot machine, gushing out thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.

Plus the apps. The iOS app, which has been downloaded 1.5 million times, is estimated to generate $60,000 a week from advertising, though that has not yet been implemented.Sanchez is a “special breed," according to Scott Jones, the CEO of ChaCha, which owns Social Reactor. "It’s pretty rare to make that much [money]," Jones says.

The reason Sanchez is “on the upper end of the pay scale,” Jones says, is “partially because he has a big follower base, but more importantly, his audience is highly engaged. They stay for an average of more than 14 page views a visit. So if it's a gallery of 10 images, they're going to look at the 10 and then four (pages) of something else."...

What if you got paid to tweet?

No, we’re not talking about handling a company’s social media. We’re talking big bucks, hundreds of thousands of dollars, just for typing a few characters, adding a link, and clicking “send.”

That’s the business 23-year-old Kris Sanchez, who tweets under the account@UberFacts, a Twitter account that tweets — you guessed it — facts, to 7.2 million followers.

Last year, he made $US500,000 for tweeting sponsored links, according to Fast Company. The links, when clicked by his followers, earn him between $US.01-.03/click. Multiply that by a few sponsored links a day, a couple of hundred thousand eager followers, and 365 days in the year, and you’re rolling in money....

As I look at where I am now, more than 18 months into my business, I am amazed. I have awesome clients, I just experienced my busiest month yet in April 2013, I have had the opportunity to inspire thousands of people through speaking engagements, including the 140 Conference in Montreal, which was another opportunity that arose through Twitter. I am producing our third Toronto Impact99 HR Summit, bringing 99 more business leaders together to ignite change in the workplace. I know I couldn’t have done any of it without social media. I also know I’m not alone. I believe that if organizations don’t find ways to engage their talent more successfully, offering purpose, autonomy and impact, they will lose top talent to entrepreneurialism. Twitter is only 140 characters away and there are stories like mine everywhere....

Twitter for business has finally relaunched this past Monday, and aims to be the central resource to help businesses gain traction, fans and income with their Twitter marketing strategies. Twitter is a very large, very prominent social site, but they are also acutely aware that many of the business people on their platform, have no idea how to use it properly. As a result of this inability to adequately market on Twitter – bounce rates are higher, and owners are choosing to market more on the ‘easier’ platforms like Facebook and Pinterest. Twitter for business is their solution to this concern. It will function like the Facebook blog, and Allfacebook.com, which is the total resource site for all things to do with the social network. Business owners will be pleased to find simple-to-use tutorials that provide powerful tips and advice, which will help them gain followings and sell on Twitter....