How you can help my 5-year old buy a toy

-
By tweeting this post, you can earn promotional tweets from me as part of the Amazon Tweet Exchange.
Details here.

I'm teaching Scotty, my five-year-old, the value of money ... and hard work. He earns a 10¢ white poker chip for each task he completes. The poker chips are then converted to an actual allowance once he's collected enough of them.

And being a 5 year old, he buys toys with his allowance. Like the one pictured above, which is the next toy on his list. He has a batmobile, batwing, and several figurines from the same set. A friend of ours gave him a used batcave from the set as well.

What tasks does he complete?

Each night he picks up his toys in the living room
and neatly lines them up in a designated spot. 
He practices writing letters.
He got pretty good at "B"
during his last session.
He's also helped me take out the trash. First, we filled up the kitchen trash by dumping the various trashcans around the house. We have four of those: living room, dining room, bathroom, and a spare in the kitchen (so that the kids don't have to search for a trashcan when they need to throw something away).

Then, Scotty insisted on carrying the bag of trash out to the container in front of the house. I tried to help him, but he wouldn't have it. He's independent that way. Finally, with a minor amount of help from me, he rolled the container out to the curb.

You should have seen his face when he did all that. He was very proud when he told his mother what he had done. He acknowledged that I helped him ... but "just a little," he said.

And one last task, which is the purpose of this post. He helps out with the website ... well, not directly. He can't read yet. However, he can do repetitive, simple tasks. Such as following people on Twitter.

He earns a poker chip every time he does it. Just for a few minutes. Doesn't have the attention span and patience to do it much longer than that. I find an appropriate Twitter list, and he follows the ones we aren't following yet.


How you can help

Put simply: hire me and Scotty. 

 Here's what we'll do for you (me and Scotty).
  • On Twitter, we'll unfollow the people who aren't following you back. (up to a thousand)
    • If there are ones you don't want us to unfollow, I would suggest putting them in a list. It would be too difficult to not unfollow them, so I'll just re-follow them after we are done unfollowing everyone else. I'll simply bring up your list and make sure you're following everyone on it.
  • Then, we'll follow 1,000 people for you using Twitter lists that list writers or readers—which ever one you prefer. 
    • This task may take several days depending on how many people follow you on Twitter. We can follow up to a thousand a day but only if you have enough followers. Otherwise, you'd be in Twitter jail for following too many people too quickly. 
  • Once we are done following people for you, we'll wait a week. At that time we'll unfollow those that didn't follow you. That will leave you room to continue these efforts after we're done.
  • Yes, doing all of the above will mean we will need your Twitter password, so I suggest changing it before you send it to us via email. In the past clients have sent their password via two emails for security reasons. My email is msl_007@live.com.
All of this will probably take an hour or an hour and a half, depending on how much of this Scotty is willing to do. I don't force him. But I'm pretty sure he'll be willing to do some once I explain it to him.

The above task will cost you $10. After Paypal takes their portion, Scotty will get the entire thing. Even for the work I do. If he can get two clients, he'll earn enough to buy the toy pictured at the top (with probably a dollar to spare).

There is an upgrade option. For $20 we'll still follow 1,000 people, but the search will be a little bit more targeted—thus, you should get more followers from it. Let me explain.

Writers and readers collected into Twitter lists are very generalized. There are people who don't follow anyone for whatever reason, including fame. If Stephen King is listed, he won't follow you back. He only follows 15 people. He's famous, after all. Why should he follow more? Scotty won't necessarily know the difference, so the Horror King could easily be one of the thousand.

A targeted search based upon follow ratio will typically result in a higher follow back number. For example, a person who has 500 followers but follows more than a thousand is a good candidate. Statistically, they will follow you back more often than a generalized Twitter list of the same type of people.

But that takes a lot longer to do ... I would say twice as long.

And we'll also include activity in the search. Only those that have tweeted recently will be included. However, because the search is so targeted, I may not be able to find 1,000 readers. I will probably have to include a few writers in the group. They are readers, after all.

How many followers will you gain?

That's tough to say. Numbers can vary greatly. The less targeted method would probably be in the 10 to 25% range. The targeted search could be as much as 50%, though I have seen numbers even higher than that. 

I will keep track of numbers to let you know. If I am totally unhappy with the results, I may do a few more for you or offer you something else, such as a few promotional Amazon tweets. But that will be on a case by case basis.

Hire me and Scotty


Choose one


Scotty and his sister Gracie (3 years old ... just about)