Buy And Sell On Twitter With Chirpify

by Mary C Long 

Chirpify is a Twitter commerce platform that allows users to “buy, sell, donate and transact on Twitter.” 

Thanks to recently raising $1.3 million in funding, Chirpify has expanded its platform beyond physical goods and is now a great place for companies, artists   and other creative types to sell music, writing, videos, tickets (you name it) to fans.

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If you’ve ever wanted to buy or sell things online – or had the need to raise donations online, the process just got a heckuva’ lot easier. Say hello to Chirpify.

Here’s a scenario that will explain how it works: Imagine you’re a musician and you want to sell your latest downloadable track – how do you do it? You can attempt to lure folks to your site to download it, of course. That’s pretty straightforward. OR you can set it up in Chirpify.

Once you have an account, you can send out a tweet alerting followers to the new release and when folks reply to your tweet with the word “buy,” they receive the following direct message from Chirpify: 

Even better? You can schedule your listings throughout the day so that you have a steady stream going out to followers. 

And what happens once followers buy your track? The funds are immediately deposited into your PayPal account (minus a 4% transaction fee if you sign up for the basic account – the Enterprise option requires a custom quote).

Kind of sounds too good to be true, hmm?

It’s also a great tool for fundraising. Followers merely reply “donate” with the dollar amount and there you go! As Chirpify’s FAQs point out, 

"Twitter Donations eliminates all friction points in the donation process, so donors don’t lose interest midway through the process.

Twitter users are often on-the-go, accessing the social media channel from their mobile devices. With one click, they can act on your request without needing to leave the app, pull out their wallets or remember passwords." 

Important FYI – the maximum transaction amount “per item” is $2,000. Oh and it works for retweets as well. They follower just needs to reply to the tweet with the designated word (buy or donate, for example) and it’s credited to your account.

From the buyer standpoint it’s a breeze too – though it does involve signing up for both a Chirpify account and a PayPal account. And we know from Gigaom’s interview with Chirpify founder, Chris Teso, that the folks at Chirpify are “working on lining up other payment options aside from PayPal.”
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Individual folks can also use it to send money (it’s free for the sender). A person would merely need to indicate the payee account, the amount and reason for the payment – like this: 
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And would receive a confirmation direct message: ​

Or maybe you just want to buy someone a beer via Twitter? Yep, Chirpify powers that too.
So what do you think? Will you be signing up for this service? 

This post originally appeared on Social Times 

IMAGE CREDIT: EYELIAM