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?

Back in June 2008, Ian Schaefer auctioned his Twitter profile page background for charity. Fast forward to September 2008, and there’s now a way for you to find advertisers willing to pay to display their commercial imagery on your page with Twittad.com. As their tagline says, ‘Let you ad meet Tweets’.

When I blogged about Ian Schaefer’s charity auction, I wondered if it was possible to judge interest in monetisation in this way by doing it for a good cause - something far more likely to lead to high bidding from charitable souls. Now, we can really see whether there is gold in them, thar, backgrounds.

My guess is that it’s unlikely to be sustainable as a business model, but I’m open to being convinced. My theory is based on three  things:

1. It’s going to be almost impossible for advertisers to work out the Return on Investment for placing an advert. Prices are set by users, and at the time of writing, the accounts with advertising booked range from $5 to $30, with a maximum of 351 followers. Assuming a company wants coverage (and at the moment the only ad I’ve seen is the one in their example, for Film Fitt), they’re going to want to know what effect it’s had. It can’t be from click-throughs or page views, because there is no way to measure it. The number of followers is inefficient, because there’s no guarantee any amount of followers will visit the profile page hosting the advertisement. And you could measure an increase above average for the Twitter feed of the company, but that’s fairly inaccurate and hard to pinpoint.

Edit: Twittad CEO James Eliason suggests some solutions on the company blog, including coupon codes, or using a new url to track activity (as when TV ads use .tv to show where the interest came from).

2. For users, it may frustrating that Twitter profiles with a significant following are effectively priced out of the market. If 300 followers can sell for $30, then it’s tempting to sell 1000 followers for $100. But prices vary wildly, from 7144 followers for $140, to $1399 followers for a whopping $1500! So it’ll take a while for the Twitad economy to settle down and establish what a realistic maximum price tends to be.

3. Are there enough advertisers to sustain this type of service? For most mainstream businesses, the concept of Twitter is still a novelty, or an incomprehensible piece of geekery. People like @Zappos and @Comcastcares are written about because their methods stand out. And companies using techniques like those mentioned aren’t likely to find the idea of going from engagement to broadcasting their ads via profiles appealing. Meanwhile the mainstream who are more likely to see broadcasting as easy and attractive are quite happy playing with Adsense, or possibly Facebook.

Having said all that, I’m completely impartial about whether or not Twittads is a success or not. There’s no escaping the fact that various individuals and companies will seek to monetise the time and effort that creating a network on any platform requires, and capitalise on the opportunities it presents. And there’s no moral or ethical reason why an inoffensive advert on a profile page should impair the internet experience for anyone. But it’ll be interesting to see whether Twittads succeeds as is, or evolves further.

If you’re interested, there’s a Twittad blog. I’m intrigued enough to see how much value my 1200 followers creates, so don’t be surprised if I post later pimping my own advert (Of course, you could always beat the rush and contact me first!). After all, you can’t comment on something properly without taking a close look…