How canTwitter make money? That’s the billion-dollar question. This question is important for Twitter, as well as its users and global advertisers.

With traditional advertising proving less effective, marketers need new outlets like Twitter and Facebook to help create interest and demand. Here are some ways Twitter can make money.

1. Answer a Person’s Product Need

We all search in Google, Yahoo, and Bing because we’re looking for something. How do the search engines make money? They make money from sponsored listings when people click on them.

A similar revenue stream could be Twitter’s. Simply ask a question, such as, “Where can I buy the foam things for my iPod headphones?” If a user tweets this, they could get answers from their “followers” — in other words, real people (think organic results). Or, if they opted in, they would receive information direct from foam ear bud cover suppliers (think sponsored listings).

Now, the key for this to work, just like in search, is the relevancy. A good first step would be a simple “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” relevancy button for the supplier tweets. This puts the onus not to spam back on the advertiser, similar to Google’s quality score.

You can see why Google is possibly interested in acquiring Twitter, and also why Google launched Google SearchWiki, which allows users to rate search results and comment on them. Google understands that social media is their most daunting of competition.

2. Be a Recruiting Tool for Job Seekers/Recruiters

Just like Craigslist or LinkedIn Twitter could have employers pay a small fee to easily tweet their jobs. The user would select which titles and occupations they want to receive tweets for.

3. White Label Twitter Functionality for Fortune 500 Companies

Fortune 500 companies don’t understand the Web, but think they do. These companies believe they need micro-blog functionality to keep up with the “Web 2.0 times.” Don’t believe big companies do this? American Airlines and Lufthansa unsuccessfully tried to build their own social networks.

Or going back to the ’90s, remember when every company wanted to build out their own portal? AT&T thought everyone would make their My AT&T page instead of MyYahoo. A company called MyWay (part of Diller’s IAC) made some serious bucks off these portal wannabes.  However, I feel companies are now more open to tapping into best of breed, so this may not be as lucrative.  They could do something like Yammer though, that is more for internal chatter and connectivity and charge a small license fee per user as a result of the more robust privacy/security needed.

4. Analytics Packages for Companies

Break down the conversations occurring within Twitter into digestible data. The categories can be as simple as: Bad Review, Good Review, Product Question, Top Complaints, etc. The challenge here is that a third party may come along and offer this service for free (e.g., Google Analytics).

5. Local Coupon Pushes

This is probably the most obvious. Someone can simply ask for restaurant specials nearby and be pushed digital coupons.

Due to these tough financial times, visits to coupon related sites were up 33 percent, according to comScore. Cellfire ran a test with retail grocery client Kroger and saw mobile coupon redemption as high as 20 percent.

The time is right for this on Twitter. Other researcher (looking for the source I jotted this down from)  indicated that 16 percent of all buyers wouldn’t make a purchase these days without some form of coupon or incentive.

6. Micro-payments for Answers to Questions

Willing to pay 75 cents for the best answer to: “Trying to register my Mac & iTunes so I can rent a movie, but I can’t figure out where to do this on the iTunes Menu – please help!”? Some people certainly are willing to pay 75 cents to assuage a major pain point.  Twitter would take a cut of the 75 cents and give the majority to the person answering the question.  The beauty here is that the Twitternation does the work and Twitter takes the “pass-thru” cut.  Heck, the students at Auburn can probably answer the majority of these questions.  If you ever need an answer to something you can call the Auburn Hotline at 334-844-4244.  This has often ended many a drunken debate.

7. Analytics Packages for Individuals, Small Business

Just as it’s helpful for big businesses, it would be very useful for journalists, reporters, authors, etc., to be able to easily get a sense of what the public likes and dislikes about their work.

8. Quickly Find Sources for Reporters/Bloggers

Writers on a deadline can pay a subscription to easily be connected to the proper professionals to answer questions germane to their story or post. Professionals would register with the service to make themselves available for the free publicity.

9. Capture Revenue from Wireless Carriers

It’s in the carriers’ best interest to have many text messages flying across their networks. The wireless carriers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc.) could offer a $5 all-you-can-tweet (has a nice ring to it, no pun intended) monthly package.

10. Premium Service

If you launch a version with paid advertising, then you can launch a premium service that scrubs all the ads — say $4 per month for an advertising-free Twitter.  Or the ability to send 3 direct messages to anyone (similar to LinkedIn’s premium package).

Item 10 may be counter-intuitive. The key (and challenge) to all of these ideas: they need to be incorporated into the Twitter experience and enhance it rather than being interruptive detriments. If this isn’t done properly, then the Twitternation will definitely let you know in seconds, and that’s the beauty of it.

(Re-post from www.socialnomics.com)