This question is not about whether or not you'd make money selling tweets as I know many webmasters/bloggers who actually earn a decent income with paid tweet. It's more about the ethics of selling tweets. Is this the right thing to do considering how much effort it takes to develop a loyal following on a social networking site? I've seen some Twitter accounts spammed up with paid tweet ads and it makes me wonder just how long the followers will put up with that before they go elsewhere. How do you ensure that you're doing the right thing for your readers/followers when selling tweets? Are you picky over which companies you will tweet ads for? Or, do you accept all advertisers even if their products don't actually serve your followers best interests?
It is kind of a gray area I guess. If you specify that it is a sponsored tweet, wouldn't that clear up any ethical issues?
Some sites already require you to disclose when a tweet is sponsored for their product. That way there is transparency in dealing with the public. In some areas, bloggers are being required to disclose that they have paid links on their site too.
As far as I know Twitter didn't really allow users to sell tweets. But we all know people still do it, right? It's just, they (or we) are doing it as normally as possible.
Do you tell your followers that a tweet is sponsored or do you act like you're tweeting about that site because you like it?
