Also invited to be MyLikes Influencer

MarketPOWER, LLC is now an Amazon.com Associate, an affiliate of Amazon, and has opened an Amazon.com portal on the site. “This means site visitors can shop Amazon.com–and not limited categories, or items handpicked by us, but ALL of Amazon.com–right here on our site,” said Jeff Cotrupe.  The page displays a rotating selection of items including pricing and ratings, and shoppers can either click on a featured item or use the clickdown Category menu and open search window to find whatever they like. Visitors start on the MarketPOWER site and when they click on an item, a new window opens taking them right to the item on Amazon.com. “Same Amazon, same endless universe of items, same pricing, but if you buy something during that click sequence I earn a small percentage on the sale,” said Cotrupe, adding that he hopes visitors will bookmark the portal as their Amazon start page.

In other interactive news, Cotrupe was invited by a colleague on Twitter to become an Influencer for the MyLikes interactive advertising service. Cotrupe has since been receiving daily requests for products including the Amazon Kindle and Western Digital hard drives and posted a MyLikes page on the MarketPOWER site.

“I’ve posted hundreds of tweets, and  since I usually try to share things with serious news, business and/or technological value, the vast majority of them have discussed some sort of product or service, and I have been doing that for free for a long time to deliver value throughout the Twitter ecosystem. So getting paid to do the same thing, and again, only about products I believe in, with no pressure from MyLikes to tweet up anything I don’t, is second nature,” said Cotrupe. It is also preferable, he said, to the many get-followers-quick ‘train’ schemes making the rounds on Twitter, “all hyped to the max, tweet after tweet, by Twitter users who get compensated for every new victim they persuade to join the scam.” Cotrupe is quick to note he has built his follower base 100% organically by providing news, business or topical value.

One week after Cotrupe was recruited for MyLikes, Twitter announced it was shutting down all such advertising services operating on Twitter and finally launching its own  long-awaited advertising program, Promoted Tweets. MyLikes still appears to be operating on Twitter, but even if that comes to an end it already operates on YouTube and a number of other significant social media networks. So advertisers can visit MyLikes and in the field where it asks for a description of the product/service, request Jeff Cotrupe (MarketPowerLLC) as an Influencer. Twitter was also careful to note in its announcements that individuals are free to sell their own tweets. New media icons such as Chris Brogan,  Guy Kawasaki and Tony Stevens, members of HubSpot’s Top 100 Twitter Elite (and mutual followers with Cotrupe) have follower streams so large they could represent viable advertising audiences, in the same way TV, radio or any other medium ever has: By promising that a certain number of eyes and/or ears will receive a given message. That was the guiding force behind MyLikes and other sponsored tweet services operating on Twitter. Rising media icon Kim Kardashian, with nearly 3.8 million followers, is reportedly looking to sell her tweets, and she is not alone. The whole situation does straddle an ethical gray area, Cotrupe believes. “Because I have done some sponsored tweets–even  though they are clearly marked with a tag such as #ad or #sponsored–will followers now believe all of my tweets are now sponsored?”

Whatever happens with MyLikes, Cotrupe sees a bright side to the story. “However this comes out, it has once again provided a platform to prove I can effectively position products, services and ideas in the marketplace to help companies achieve their goals.”