140Char

The background of your Twitter profile seems to be a fertile place for people experimenting with making money from microblogging. I’ve previously written about individuals auctioning their Twitter profiles for charity and raising $1002, and also advertising service Twittad, which allows advertisers to place adverts on your Twitter profile (I’m currently testing the service - Twittad itself is advertising on my profile at $44).

Now a very different service is seeking to make money from Twitter profiles. TwitterImage.com offers custom images for your Twitter profile. At the moment there’s a special offer running with a free design if you have 2000+ followers and allow a small credit line for the service in your background. If you’ve got less than 2000 followers, then there’s a 25% off the normal price of $100. For your $75 you get a custom background, and one minor revision. Or you can pay the full price of $100 if you think you’ll need more than one design or revision.

For example:

Problogger's custom Twitter design by Twitter Images

I wish them well with the service, but I have to admit to having my doubts about the viability of it. While I understand that designers need to be reimbursed for their talents, how many Twitter users would value their background enough to spend $75 or $100 on it?

Obviously you can insert your contact and bio details into the image - but there is a link for an about page on your site etc. And experimenting with your own imagery costs nothing if you use an open source image editor like Gimp, and have the time to play around with it, plus you still need to supply any imagery you want to be used.

And then there’s the issue that you’d be paying more to have a custom Twitter background than I’m aware of any advertiser paying - so if they’re not seeing the value yet, do you think there’s a huge advantage in having a custom made Twitter background? And are you valuing it at $75-$100?