Despite Twitter’s lack of a business plan, many third party clients are still trying to figure out a way to generate revenue from the service.
While giants like Dell are able to generate $1 million by linking to their products, others are attempting to lure “tweeple” by advertising products on ones account to the point of spamming your followers to death.
TwitPub has a different model where instead of sending out random links that your friends could care less about, they are encouraging users to provide a subscription service similar to the Wall Street Journal.
The basic premise of the site is simple. Users establish a secondary account (or use their current one) and set the account entirely to private. If followers want to access the account, they pay a small fee (like $2/month) which allows them to access your private tweets and gain whatever golden wisdom you have to offer.
TwitPub takes a 20% cut of the revenue, leaving 80% in your pocket (which is a great deal if you ask this author).
While this business model is a step up from the “spam your friends” method that is popular on Twitter now-a-days, there does not seem to be much activity on the premium side as this screen shot reveals.
While TwitPub’s activity may not be all that impressive, their service may have potential within the political and financial realms (as people would pay to access gossip and financial advice, especially in this economy).
Either way TwitPub’s entry into the business twitter realm is a breathe of fresh air, although hopefully they can prove themselves as a worthy service in an age where everyone expects premium content for free.