General

Q: What is TweetReturns?

A: TweetReturns is a system that rewards people for promoting your website on Twitter.

You create a free gift offer. A visitor to your site posts a message to his followers on Twitter about your free offer. In return, you give the visitor your free gift.

TweetReturns acts as the "middle man" in the transaction, verifying the visitor's Twitter account, posting the message for the visitor, and delivering your gift to the visitor automatically.

Q: Why is TweetReturns better than the viral Twitter scripts I can install myself?

A: TweetReturns uses Twitter's secure, encrypted, OAuth authentication scheme. OAuth allows Twitter users to grant permission to 3rd party applications, like TweetReturns, to access their account without giving out their login information.

Other scripts use Twitter's insecure, unencrypted, basic authentication scheme that requires visitors to your site to give you their Twitter username and password. Many visitors will think twice about giving out their Twitter login information. This will cost you those visitors.

Twitter will be discontinuing the basic authentication scheme at some point in the future because it is not secure. When they do, those other scripts will stop working.

Twitter also may make other changes to their system in the future. When that happens, it may break other scripts, and require that you update the software (if the vendor actually supports the software).

But, with TweetReturns, you won't have to worry about installing software updates yourself. TweetReturns will be updated by our programmers to support whatever changes Twitter decides to implement in the future.

In addition, there are many enhancements planned for TweetReturns. As these new features are rolled out, you will not have to update any software on your PC or web hosting account.

Q: What kind of offers can I promote using TweetReturns?

A: Just about anything that can be delivered electronically through your website...

* Free downloads of just about any kind: software, ebooks, MP3 files, etc.

* A password to protected content on you blog or website.

* A discount code or coupon for you products or services.

* Free or discounted access to a membership site.

There are some limitations, however. We do not allow owners of illegal or pornographic websites to use TweetReturns. We also do not allow websites that promote hate, violence or intolerance. Please see our full terms and conditions for details.

Q: What are the different levels of membership in TweetReturns?

A: At the moment, there is only one level of membership open to the public. That is the FREE membership level. With a free membership, you have access to all the basic functionality of TweetReturns and can post up to 5 gift offers for use on your websites.

In the future we may offer one or more paid levels which will include access to more advanced features and functionality and possibly allow more than 5 gift offers. If and when these new membership levels become available, we will notify all our members and give them the opportunity to upgrade to a paid level of service.

Q: How do I sign up for my free TweetReturns account?

A: It's actually very simple. Go to the TweetReturns home page and look for the blue gift box form. In the form, is a button labeled "Send Tweet." Click that button, sign in to your Twitter account and then click the "Allow" button when Twitter asks if you want TweetReturns to access your account on your behalf.

TweetReturns will then post a short message to your Twitter followers about TweetReturns (you can see the text of the message in the gift box form) and then return you to the TweetReturns registration page where you will create your account.

Q: How do I cancel my TweetReturns account?

A: We'll be very sorry to see you go. But if you must cancel your account, just log in to your account and click the "Cancel My Account" link from the Members' Area Control Panel. You'll be asked to provide your password to confirm your cancellation request.

Make sure that you really want to do this, though. All of your gift offers will stop working immediately upon cancellation of your account. Also, all of your account and gift offer campaign data will be completely deleted from the system after 14 days following your cancellation request. After that, it cannot be restored.

Q: What is Twitter?

A: Twitter.com is a very simple social media website where people post short messages about, well, anything. A person who posts interesting messages on a regular basis often gains followers--that is, other Twitter users who want to be notified whenever he or she posts a new message to Twitter.

With TweetReturns, you can leverage the reach and influence of other Twitter users by having them post YOUR message to THEIR followers. In other words, you don't have to have any Twitter followers of your own to get your message to go viral on Twitter!

Q: Do I need to have a Twitter account to use TweetReturns?

A: No. All you need is a website and a gift offer that can be delivered electronically. However, if you do have a Twitter account, you can include an option in your TweetReturns gift offer form for your visitors to follow you on Twitter.

Q: This looks great for purely online businesses, but will TweetReturns work for a local brick-and-mortar business?

A: Absolutely! Just set up your gift offer as a coupon that your visitors can print out and bring in to your store to claim a free gift or discount. The people who take you up on your offer will be from your local area. And they will more than likely have followers on Twitter who are also in your local area. And so on, and so on. You can't get much more targeted than that!

Features

Q: What kind of statistics does TweetReturns report for my gift offers?

A: TweetReturns captures the number of unique daily visitors to see your offer, the number of visitors who have accepted your offer and the number of Twitter followers to whom those visitors have sent your tweet.

Other statistics are in development and may be released as free or premium membership features in an upcoming release of the TweetReturns system.

Q: Will TweetReturns get me more followers on Twitter?

A: It's possible. If you have a Twitter account, you can give your visitors the option of following you on Twitter at the same time they send your tweet and claim your gift.

Your visitors my decline this option. However, it is likely that many will accept and start following you because of your gift offer.

Q: Can I use my own gift offer form instead of the one created by TweetReturns?

A: No. Because your visitors will be directed to Twitter.com through TweetReturns.com, we must make sure that they are aware of exactly what tweet they will be sending and what the process entails before they click the "Send Tweet" button. The only way to ensure that this is done properly for all gift offers for all TweetReturns members is to control the content of the gift offer form.

Q: Can I send my visitors directly to my gift offer delivery page after they've sent my tweet and bypass the TweetReturns confirmation page?

A: Not at this time. We are looking at the possibility of making this a feature of the premium membership level. However, no firm decision on this has been made.

Q: How many gift offers can I create with my TweetReturns account?

A: The free membership level is limited to 5 gift offers. We are looking at the possibility of removing this limitation for the premium membership level. However, no firm decision on this has been made.

Q: What is a P.O.T.?

A: P.O.T. stands for "Proof of Tweet" and it's an exclusive feature of TweetReturns. Whenever a visitor sends your tweet to claim your gift, TweetReturns will send that visitor to your gift delivery page along with a P.O.T. code. You will be able to verify the validity of that code using PHP or another web scripting language to make sure that visitors to your gift URL have actually sent your tweet to their followers before giving them access to your gift.

This is a completely optional feature. You do not need to use this if you don't want to. But, it is available if you choose to use it.