What is Twitter Flipping?

By admin

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I wrote on my twitter account a couple days ago, “So has anybody been trying any twitterflipping? And the response, was a ton of emails asking what was twitterflipping. I didn’t think this was that new an idea, but apparently I’m one of the first who thought of it. Now I’m not really advocating this because of the potential of annoying twitter and getting suspended, but I’m writing this post to explain what it is, and to show links proving it’s out there.

If you don’t know what twitter is, read these other posts I’ve written on twitter, for help on setting it up, and using it to help your blog. Tips for maximizing your Twitter, and How to Use Twitter.

Twitter Flipping is similar to site flippping. Which in case you don’t know, is essentially buying domains to sell them for a profit. When you buy a domain to sell it, there are lots of factors that go into it, especially if it’s one that is expiring, and thus already has links and subscribers. If your interested in siteflipping here is a great site to help you with finding good ones to buy.

But Twitter Flipping is slightly different in that, it’s free. All you do is make an account for free, and then you can potentially sell it. However, because they are free, most likely nobody wants it. So the question is how can you make it worth anything? There are several ways to make a twitter account worth selling, which I will explain in steps below.

1. Make your own custom design

Twitter has included the option, of allowing you to create your own unique design. Because most people don’t really understand how to valuable twitter is, very few people take the time to create a custom design. If you are good with web design, then you can create a nice unique one, the will really help the price of the account.

2. Make sure it have a lot of followers

I wouldn’t recommend selling a twitter account that has less then 1,000 followers. There are many different ways to get more followers, putting a link up on your site, being active on the twitter, writing a post about it asking for followers… This is one of the most attractive points when you’re selling a twitter account, and largely what they will determine whether to bid or not. Although a twitter follower is no where near the value of an RSS subscriber yet, we may be quickly reaching that point. Not in a 1 to 1 ratio, but in like a 7 to 1 or maybe 5 to 1 ratio. Twitter followers are very useful as a way to get traffic, and can be just as devoted as subscribers. Having alot of followers, makes a twitter account worth buying, because of the great marketing potential.

3. Make sure the account has a good reputation

If the account’s reputation is for being a spammer, who just posts his blog links every time, then you won’t be passing on a good piece of merchandise. If you have a reputation for answering questions, being polite and helpful, and your able to pass that onto to the buyer, then people will continue to follow the account. Look at it like if you were flipping a site, spend time, get to know your followers, and be helpful to them.

4. Keep the account for several weeks at least

Don’t sell the account in the first couple weeks. Like a blog domain, it appreciates in value, give it a chance to grow some. Don’t put it on the blog forums to fast, let it grow.

5. Look for a valuable account name

This is the most important one of them all, and the one is the most valuable. Look for a twitter account that has the name of a popular site, or movie, or famous person… If someone was able to get twitter.com/problogger it would have been worth a lot of money. Twitter accounts are going Fast! so now is the chance to grab up potentially valuable accounts before they are gone.

Those are some tips that should help your twitter account be worth more in value. Now you may have read all that and gone, isn’t that illegal? The answer is surprisingly no, there is nothing in Twitter’s Terms of Service that talk about selling accounts. Now, does that mean this will stay that way for long? probably not. However, for now it is legit, so take advantage of it while you can.

Your second question is, “now who in the world would buy a twitter account?!?!” This all started when Andrew Baron from rocketboom.com thought,

“It would be silly to just delete this account I have here, especially if there is someone out there that had like interests and had something to say or wanted to get involved in some relevant conversations. In terms of monetary value, I have no expectations or needs at all so I decided not to put a minimum bid on this. Whatever will be, will be. The winner of this auction gets my account with all of my followers.”

And so he put the auction up on ebay, and it sold for over 1,200 dollars. That’s quite a bit of cash, especially when he self admittingly had no idea what he was doing with the site, and didn’t even use his account very much.

Now your third question is, well even if somebody was stupid enough to buy it, he would immediately lose all of his followers once the blog changes right? Wrong. The followers of the site under Andrew Baron was, 1397. Since then, the number instead of decreasing, has jumped to 4324.

Now all of this I find very interesting, becuase I never thought that people would actually be able to make money from this. Does this article mean I am telling you to go do this? No. Am I telling you that people can do it, and can make money from it? Yes. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether you want to do it or not. But I just find it all very interesting, and if you want to do it, these are some tips to show you how.

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