How a Twitter Account Turned Into a $500,000 a Year Business
Kris Sanchez always had a hobby of looking up random trivia, or as he put it “the most unimportant things you’ll ever need to know.” In 2011, he began experimenting with social media and posting his findings on his Twitter account UberFacts. In order to get more followers, he invested $1,000 in Twitter advertising.
“I started it when I was 18 and studying in SUNY New Paltz,” Sanchez explained. “I started tweeting these fun facts, and didn’t take it that seriously.”
Three years later, UberFacts has sent out more than 88,300 tweets and now has 10.7 million followers including celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Aaron Paul and Kim and Khloe Kardashian. It has a Facebook page with more than 1.5 million likes and an iOS app with upward of 2 million downloads. And, thanks to its viral success, Sanchez claims its Twitter account alone is bringing in $500,000 in ads annually, with the iOS app pulling in $60,000 a week. (Monetization for the Android app, which was launched in December 2014, was not disclosed.)
“All that was organic, and that was also very, very cool,” he said.
Sanchez explained that after he amassed his first million followers, he started working with services like ChaCha and Social Reactor that create sponsored content and seed it through affiliates. UberFacts would weave in branded posts from companies like MTV, Paramount and Ford in between its original tweets, and then get paid a fee each time a user would click the branded links. All the sponsored content Sanchez selects fits in line with the trivia UberFacts usually posts.
The UberFacts app makes money from traditional banner ads, but Sanchez said they will offer sponsored takeovers of its Twitter or app page in the near future.
“Our main concern has always been making sure that things like the app and the Twitter page were as good as they could be before making money off of them,” he said.
Whether the facts are true—both Gizmodo and BuzzFeed have written articles claiming the trivia isn’t always correct—remains a point of contention. Sanchez said he and one other person discover and verify all the facts posted, often from sources like Reddit, Digg, Google Alerts and Mental Floss.What is certain is that Sanchez is forging ahead with the account and thinking about developing books and television projects.
“After all these things are done and successful, I might want to get into reality TV production or casting,” the 23-year-old said.
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