Can You Make Money With Twitter?

This is a question that most writers need to ask — where can you make money with your writing?  When you are in need of both book sales and money, you have to wonder what sort of social networking site can help you.  Twitter is a social site that can help you or hurt you when it comes to building a following, but it can also do the same with your potential for making money with it.

Or does it?

I decided to try an unscientific experiment, learning about the Twitter platform and how it can help authors.  I need to earn money just like the next author, and common sense tells most authors to work where the money comes from.  To test the theory that writers need to have something to keep them going, I added my link to my book on Twitter on a more regular basis to see if it increased sales.

The result is both interesting and a bit disappointing.  I was expecting something but it most certainly wasn’t what I was anticipating.  I did not sell a single copy of my e-book or my paperback directly from Twitter, and the Amazon rank was sinking as I did this.  Self-publishing a book is hard, but it is also hard when you have to spend time trying to get more out of the places you use — after all, my book is something that is important to me.  Writing a blog is another means to make money, but if you link to your Twitter account you might even see more traffic, which can help with selling your book.

It’s certainly not a bad thing to use Twitter, and I recommend it, but I will say that as an author in a niche market, it is harder to get readers to purchase your book.  Twitter is a wonderful platform,but using it doesn’t mean you will get instant sales.  What it does offer is a good potential to build your online presence.

I would argue that Facebook works much the same way. A lesser-known author with a small group of people will only generate so many sales, but an author with a large following will have more chances to build on this.  I think that you could make money with Twitter or Facebook or any other platform for that matter, if you do work at it, but working at it means you will need to take time away from doing what you need to be doing — writing your next book.