In late October, someone told me about Magpie and I think it was a post on TechCrunch. At the time, Magpie would analyze the amount of followers you had and you’d allow them to tweet an ad every 5, 10, 20 or 50 tweets. I think I started out making around 3.5 euros per tweet. There was no minimum clicks or any referral program and on January 1st, I received a PayPal deposit of 50 euros (which is the minimum credit you need to cash out).
As the amount of followers I had grew larger, the amount increased. These days I get 6.50 euros per tweet which means I can cash out ever 10 tweets (on average). It’s pretty cool and at the rate I tweet (35-100 a day), I can set Magpie to post every 20-50 tweets and I’m making roughly $75 every 3 days. This is how it was until Magpie changed things.
Advertising inventories have been dropping since we’ve had a bit of a recession. Lately, Magpie has become overrun with ads that are based on referrals. Your followers click an advertisement and buy the product in the ad and you get 4-20% of a kickback from that purchase. I can be more lucrative than the original pricing model but with my 2700 followers, it hasn’t cashed out ONCE.
I switched Magpie to automatically block any ads that require a click or require a purchase. Only ads that pay out just for being posted and this means that my setting of an advertisement every 20 tweets ends up as an advertisement every 12-20 days. That’s right. Ad inventories are so low for this unique model that an advertisement doesn’t come down the pipe to me but every 2 weeks. That’s fine because I don’t need the money and I don’t like having my Twitter stream full of ads with zero guarantee of actually making any money for me.
Magpie has been great at working with me. I once transferred my earnings into an advertiser account meaning that I can spend the earnings as credits toward advertising on other Twitter profiles but I asked them to move the money back to my account and they did with zero fuss. I’ve also pinged them about my gripes with referral and kickback advertising that requires my followers purchase something for me to see money. Magpie kindly listened to feedback from users like me and made it easy to moderate the kind of ads that go to our stream.
The company has been top notch, very professional and I’ve never had any problems taking money out of their service. Hell, they even sent me a tax form for money they paid out to me in 2008 so I could file taxes as earned income from Magpie LTD. Pretty Snazzy!
I think Magpie is great but I have friends at Twitter who hate the service and would like to see it die. Other people hate the concept of advertisements on people they follow but my efforts in ensuring that only tweets I approve go to my followers and my use of a hashtag #advertisement before a Magpie tweet. Finally, the fact that I have it setup so you won’t see more than 1 advertisement per page of my tweets will make sure that it keeps my account looking good and chock full of content as new followers asses my Twitter account.
At the end of the day, $9.00 per advertisement can really add up and Magpie continues to improve their service and their customer support is top notch. I’ve made nearly $400 with Magpie since October. I’m a big fan of Magpie and wish them the best of luck.
Dear Adam,
thank you very much for the nice words and thanks even more for your great feedback which is more than valuable to us.
Please stay tuned as we're making the service better every day and keep the ideas, comments and feedback coming.
Kind regards,
Jan Schulz-Hofen
CEO Magpie & Friends Ltd.
Hi there. I was critical of some things you did as noted in my post but overall, I do stand by the service. Looking forward to further improvements.
It's noted. We're trying to get as many campaigns as possible on Magpie which work by the per-view model.
With an average CTR of 9.95%, we also think that this is very fair for advertisers. Some clients are preferring to pay by click, lead, or sale, though, and we also need to listen to them. After all, it's them who are paying for all us Magpiers.
Do you actually use magpie? I don't think I've ever seen an ad come from your main twitter account…
Do you still use this service? I don't I've ever seen any #advertisement tweets from you, at least not recently.
Yes I do use it but my algorithm is setup to only have ads related to things that I am interested in and also I only allow ads that are “per view” meaning I get paid no matter what so I don't allow ads that require a click or for someone to buy that product.
With that said, I haven't had an advertisement in 21 days and I'm fine with that. It's slowing down more and more but I don't need the money and I don't want to put my followers through something unrelated to my interests and require they buy something for me to get paid.
So I'll wait patiently until magpie does have ads that I want to display.
I'm right there with you.
In this economy, I'm startled that anyone would begrudge you another revenue stream.
Exactly. I also find it odd that people take that stance. Of course, I haven't had a mass exodus of followers while using the service so I'm very happy with how it has turned out.
Exactly. I also find it odd that people take that stance. Of course, I haven’t had a mass exodus of followers while using the service so I’m very happy with how it has turned out.
Exactly. I also find it odd that people take that stance. Of course, I haven’t had a mass exodus of followers while using the service so I’m very happy with how it has turned out.