Does it make you mad when you receive twitter follower requests from people you don’t even know?  You look at the number of people they are following and that are following them and the number reaches to the thousands.

Well, these people might be on to something according to an article in this past Sunday’s NY Times.

According to the article, marketers know that a recommendation from a friend goes a lot further than an ad placed on a billboard, tv commercial, or website banner.  So they plan to access your network to advertise for specific products.  In turn, you can make money from the process.

There are now a number of websites that allow you to send messages to your networks on behalf of advertisers.

• Ad.ly – “Connecting Top Tier Twitterers with Top Tier Brands”
• Izea – “Sponsored Tweets”
• likes.com – “Promote what you Like” – to be live in the next few months
• Amazon – will pay commissions when you refer people to amazon via twitter
• peer2 – “Engage, Share, Earn Rewards”

So, do you currently have a number of followers for a certain topic?  Or could you start one based upon a particular idea, movie, hobby, etc?  If so, by using the sites mentioned above, you will be able to insert small text ads into your twitter stream that lead your followers to a product or service. These companies listed above will take a certain % of the revenue generated from the advertisement.

This is great if the advertising makes sense.  I follow John Mayer on twitter, and if he recommended a particular guitar or microphone, that would interest me.  But if he advertised for snickers on twitter, that would likely drive me away.

So if you plan to pursue this for your business or personal twitter account, be wise in the advertisements that you put up on your account.