Blogger Puts Twitter Account Sponsorship on eBay

Twitter is still trying to come up with a revenue model but Ian Schafer thinks he has already come up with a decent one. Ian has placed a sponsorship opportunity on his Twitter account. The winning sponsor will get their company on his Twitter page background, his Twitter avatar and a link on each one of his tweets.

With only 450 followers, the bidding on the Twitter sponsorship eBay auction page is already up to $545 with 3 days remaining. I’m not quite sure if this is a gimmick to try to raise his level of followers but this is a substantial amount of money for a 1-month sponsorship. As far as I can tell this is not against the Twitter Terms of Service so Ian may just end up with an extra few hundred dollars to spend.

I’m sure my followers would get angry at me if I kept putting a sponsored link on every tweet. I already catch slack for promoting my blog via Twitter so promoting someone else in addition would probably be crossing the line. Would you sell sponsorship on your Twitter account? How much would you charge?

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.