Sure, Twitter is handy — but can it make you money?

By now many of us have conceded that Twitter, once deemed the most useless of all networking sites, is actually pretty handy. But can it help you get paid? Can you actually earn and save money in 140 characters or fewer?

Let's explore the concept.

Self-promotion

Restaurant specials, mobile food cart locations, MySpace music links — Twitter is free advertising space. But is it effective? John Spring wants to know for sure. In May, the 36-year-old started allworldcoupons.com from his St. Petersburg home. The site contains a database of discounts at two-dozen local businesses, including EEcomputerz in Clearwater and Larry's Subs in Pinellas Park. He also publicizes the deals on Twitter (@allworldcoupons).

"Everybody talks about how powerful it is, but the fact of the matter is that people don't know exactly how many people are reading (the tweets)," Spring said, noting that followers don't always equate to active readers, and users who don't re-tweet a message may still be disseminating the information through word of mouth.

"So what if they didn't see it on Twitter? If they heard it from a friend (who did), well, that's the effect of Twitter," Spring said.

Some of the businesses that pay $550 a year to advertise on Spring's site have agreed to take part in an experiment. Spring will tweet about an outrageous deal — say, a free pizza if you mention Twitter — just to see how many customers it brings through his clients' doors.

Driving traffic

Most of Spring's tweets link back to his site — 50% off Jimmy Johns sandwiches … check out http://www.allworldcoupons.com for more details — which, according to Palo Alto, Calif., Internet mogul Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki), is the key to maximizing one's earning potential.

"Self promotion, coupons and deals are just the tip of the iceberg," Kawasaki, 54, wrote in an e-mail to tbt*. "The greatest use of Twitter for big brands is for branding and driving traffic to a site. It's all about the long haul, not the quick sale for brands."

Spending less

Retailers and airlines tweet discounts, while @cheaptweet aggregates deals from across the Twitterverse. There are also applications to help you stick to a budget (tweetwhatyouspend.com), collect debts by synching your Twitter and PayPal accounts (twitpay.me) even get stock tips from other users (@stocktwits). Yikes!

Retweeting

Sites like be-a-magpie.com and revtwt.com will pay you to share your Twitter account info with them so they can tweet advertisements via your user name. The more followers you have, the more money you could make. For instance on Magpie, Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) could theoretically earn more than $3 million a month. I (@tbtreporter), on the other hand, would max out at $46.44.

It's tempting: money for nothing. But Josh Carrico, 32, of Tampa (@sigepjedi), who has organized several Tampa TweetUps and runs thinkcycles.com, offered this caution in an e-mail to tbt*: "While this is thought to be a way of monetizing Twitter in a transparent way, in fact it's considered 'spam' and frowned upon." Send your followers too many Viagra ads, and you may not have any followers at all.

Carrico and Kawasaki also warn against Twitter-based money-making opportunities that sound too good to be true. And on July 7, the Better Business Bureau released a statement advising the unemployed to steer clear of Twitter-related work-from-home scams.

Sources: New York Times, westflorida.bbb.org, mashable.com