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Twitter sure has exploded this year. I remember when I first stumbled across it and wondered why people would use it when it was pretty much just the status update feature that Facebook, and many other social network sites, offer.

As with anything, as Twitter became popular people started to wonder if it would be possible to use it as a platform to make some money. But with so many people using Twitter to make money these days it can become almost impossible to make your tweets heard among the other tweets.

I’ve listed some ideas on how I think you can increase your chances of standing out from the crowd.

Custom Design

I’m in the middle of doing this myself. If you look at the big money makers on Twitter they all have their own custom background design. There are hundreds of thousands of people, just like you, trying to make money and this kind of thing will help you stand out.

Talk With Twitterers With Big Followings

A neat little trick that I have used in the past to gain followers is to find a Twitterer with a big following and engage them in a conversation. If you do it right you’ll find that some of their followers will start to follow you.

Advertise Your Page On Your Site(s)

You obviously have a web site or a blog so why not advertise your Twitter page on it? If you have more than one web site or blog then advertise it on all of them. It is called free advertising.

Run Contests That People Enter By Following You

Next time you think about running a contest, instead of asking people to join your mailing list just ask them to follow you on Twitter. I know a lot of people might just unfollow you as soon as the contest is over but hopefully you will have hooked them with your updates by then.

Place URL In Forums & E-mail Sigs

If you use a message board (forum) then why not put a link to your Twitter page in your sig? This can really make a difference if you are part of a very popular message board. Also, how many emails do you send out a day? If you send a few then why not stick your Twitter page link at the bottom of them?

Drop It When You Guest Post

If you guest post on other blogs then the blog owner normally allows you to have two links to your site in the post as a thank you. You can leave one for your chosen web site or blog and the remaining one as a link to your Twitter Page.

Commenting On Other Blogs

You may have heard that commenting on other blogs in your niche is a great way of receiving traffic (and receiving backlinks if they are do-follow), well next time you leave a comment drop your Twitter URL instead of your site or blog link.

If you have any ideas of your own feel free to leave them via a comment.

One of my close friends has followed in my footsteps and has bought himself a classic car. He has bought himself a VW and I have to say that I am incredibly jealous and will be pestering him to let me get under the hood at some point.

He is not really as big a car fan as I am but I like to encourage him, and it is far better than his deep sea fishing hobby. I already hooked him up with a number of reliable web sites that specialise in selling classic VW accessories, so he won’t have the kind of headache I had.

I wonder how his wife is taking the news? When my wife found out about my love of tinkering with cars she wasn’t best pleased, especially when she would turn over at 2am and I’d still be out in the garage playing away.

I’m quite surprised cars don’t cause more trouble in marriages than they do!

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Bidazzled. All opinions are 100% mine.

There are two things that I like to do online, one is buy cheap items from auction web sites and the other is make the odd donation to charity. Today I came across an auction web site that is run by a charity.

Bidazzled is an auction web site that is set up and run for a charity called The Ruch Foundation, which is a charity about lung cancer. This means that every thing you buy the money goes to the charity.

The auction is run in the same style as a penny auction. The idea is that you buy your bids and are able to use them on whatever items you wish, so in theory you could buy 25 bids and use them all on one item.

When you join you are given five free bids to get the ball rolling, according to their site in the past two months two people have won Nintendo Wiis with their first five free bids. And for a limited time (until January 15th) they are running an offer where new members get 15 free bids. All you have to do is enter one of the following codes:

* Blog: BBP1202A
* Twitter: BTP1202A