As a social media marketer, you are stuck with producing regular content for your blog. The reason that you do this is of course simple – to give your customers a reason to return to your site. You are adding value to the already great services and products that you offer by giving away free information to your loyal following on just about anything and everything to do with your industry.
This of course puts you where you want to be in your field – you are not just a producer of products, but an actual thought leader, giving people the information they need as well as the services. You are a content marketer, and so you produce content on a regular basis.
This is all well and good. But you know yourself that the skills that you have as a writer are not really being recognized for what they are. Yes, you create content and people read it. But when you think about it, all this great stuff that you’re producing for, say, Facebook, goes a long way towards making our favourite social network the wonderful thing that it is.
Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn – these are all fabulous sites that are filled with fabulous information that fabulous people like yourself have put there for free. Where’s the reward, I hear you ask. Where are the thanks? Where’s the dollar?
Ok, so it would be little disingenuous of me to suggest that as a content creator you are not getting anything in return from the likes of Facebook et al. to allow you to post on their carefully crafted social networks. Of course, you do – you’re rewarded with likes and followers and traffic to your website, a percentage of which, in turn, will convert into paying customers.
That’s how this game works. That’s what we’re all in it for, and if you’re reading this blog, then you’re wrapped up in it all too, regardless of whether you’re a social media marketer or not.
Imagine An Online World That Rewarded Content With Cash
But it doesn’t have to be this way. You know how valuable your content is, and, believe it or not, there are some social networks out there who want to reward you – in cash – for what you produce, for they know how valuable your skills are, too.
There are in fact several social platforms in existence that have become wise to the fact that people would like to get paid for the creation of original content. And so they are experimenting with this concept, and are actually enjoying a reasonable amount of success. All you need to do to get on board with this steadily rising market is start choosing the social networks that pay you to post.
So, let’s take a look at 3 of our favorites.
3 Social Networks That Pay For Posts
1. tsu
tsu, as it explains on their site:
“is an invite-only platform that rewards social activity for all users. You can share photos, videos, and any type of content with your friends and followers.
“We believe in quality content, real ownership, and the value of one’s own network.
“We recognize members for their likeness, image, and content.
“Our content creators earn fair value for all the social things they already do.”
tsu generates its revenue by serving ads – the same as most social networks. The difference, however, is that tsu gives almost all of the revenues generated from the ads back to its members. As much as 90% in fact.
The creators of tsu know that the best content will receive the most traffic. So, as a content creator, knowing that there is a monetary reward for your efforts in the pipeline, you are thusly incentivized to create the best content that you possibly can.
It’s not just content, however, that results in monetary rewards. You get paid as well when you invite someone new to the platform. And it doesn’t stop there. The Hootsuite blog explains the payments even further (and provides the infographic below):
“Users are also encouraged to share photo, video and text content that garners pageviews from their social media audience—all typical behavior for social networks. What makes tsu different from other social media giants is that the network only takes 10 percent of ad revenue generated by advertisements placed on the users’ pages. The other 90 percent is divided among the content creator, who gets 45%, and the other 45% is distributed among that user’s “family tree”—essentially operating on a multi-level marketing model. Successful users can cash their earnings once they amount to $100.”
2. Bubblews
Bubblews kicked off to a flying start when it launched in June last year, attracting 200,000 users in its first week, according to Business Insider.
Trying to break the rules a little (in what I think is a rather finicky and misguided attempt to try and be ‘unique’), it doesn’t use hashtags but “+” signs instead, and handles are not prefixed with an “@” sign, but an “&”. Why bother, I say.
Content creators are compensated with 1 cent for each click, like, or comment that they receive on their posts, and are paid via PayPal each time a user hits the magic $50 mark.
“No one should come to our site in anticipation of being able to quit their day job,” Bubblews CEO Arvind Dixit says in Business Insider. “But we are trying to be fair with our users. Social networks don’t have to be places where you feel like you’re being exploited.”
3. BitLanders
BitLanders is way, way ahead in the 21st Century social media game, not only paying its users for content but paying them in cryptocurrency to boot.
Content creators are paid an amount determined by their BuzzScore, which is, as is described on the Hootsuite blog, a “number ranging from 1 to 100 that is influenced by the number of followers, people you have invited to join the network, the amount and quality of content you share on the network. Users can use their Bitcoin for PayPal payments in minimum payouts of $10. They can also choose to use their earned cryptocurrency to shop for gift cards, or donate it—for these two options, users don’t have to wait until they reach the $10 amount to transfer money.”
Final Word
So, all in all, there’s nothing to get too excited about as yet in terms of making money from your original content on these platforms. Put simply, you’re simply not going to be able to make a fortune on any of these, but rather you might be surprised every now and again as an extra 10, 50 or 100 dollars ends up in your PayPal account. Aside from that, it looks like your best bet is still to stick with the social network power players – even if you dabble in these 3 paid platforms as a bit of a sideline – and try and generate a revenue through conversions the old-fashioned way. Maybe the one-day content creation of this type will prove to pay off, but we’re still quite far away from those glory days at the moment.
Have you made money using a social network that rewards content with cash? Let us know in the comments below!
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