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Affiliate Marketing Via Twitter

Welcome back! Have you joined my mailing list yet?

I'm sure that there are tons of web-savvy affiliate marketers that are already using Twitter to push their offers to the masses. In fact, I have even started doing this as well. My question is this: do you feel that using Twitter to market stuff is ethical?

Personally, I see nothing wrong with using Twitter. It's easier to maintain a list of followers than it is to run a mailing list, and opting out is easy for people who do not want to be bombarded by messages - they simply unfollow your sorry marketing butt.

Also, finding potential customers is far easier when using Twitter. You simply have to follow people, and the ones that stick are your 'subscribers'. I would recommend using Twitter Karma to unfollow all of those people who just aren't cool enough to follow you back.

Another tip that is working for me as far as getting followers (which worked enormously well a couple of weeks ago on @wwstewart) is to find someone who is using Twitter in a similar way (for example: marketing freebies, blog updates, you get the idea) and follow the living crap out of all of their followers. Odds are, a lot of them will stick around.

Twitter may not bring you the most targeted audience in the world, but if you are smart when selecting people to follow, you can make it more effective and accurate when it comes to marketing stuff.

As for the ethics of it all, I'm pretty sure that there are a few affiliate networks who do not want to see their links strewn about the Twitterverse. While I personally see nothing wrong with driving traffic via Twitter, be sure to read your Terms of Service with your affiliate networks before launching into the marketing abyss.

What do you think? Have you used Twitter for evil marketing purposes?