Earn Money While Supporting Local Santa Monica Businesses
SANTA MONICA, CA — A new app named Thumzup is offering to pay people who shop and post about locally-owned Santa Monica businesses on their social media.
Those looking to make some quick cash can log on to the app and visit any of the 80 participating businesses and post about it on any social media site including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube. Participants can earn anywhere from $5 to $50 per post.
“We think that this is really valuable to small businesses and to retail quarters that have been that have had a real challenge of bouncing back from COVID,” said Thumzup CEO Robert Steele. “Because this shows people out and about eating at restaurants shopping at local stores.”
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Steele said the inspiration to create Thumzup came from a statistic from audience measurement research company Nielsen that says 89 percent of people trust recommendations from people they know over any advertisement. Partnered with the desire to help local businesses thrive, Steele said that is how the app was born.
Businesses who sign up on the app determine how much they are willing to pay for a post and all app users have to do is make a post and the money goes straight to their PayPal or Venmo account. For businesses, Steele said it makes the stress of finding helpful advertising strategies in a busy area such as Los Angeles County much easier.
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When signing up, small and local businesses get to choose how many posts they want to pay for over a period of time and get the value they want. So far, Steele said businesses like Sparkl at the Third Street Promenade— a local clothing boutique — and Bellissimo Venice — a cafe — have seen a lot of success from the app.
“It’s like a chain reaction, the minute you post something it’s viewed by so many locals and that’s what every business owner is looking for,” said owner of Bellissimo Ronen Helman.
Thumzup is Steele’s way of fully “socializing” local brands and shops that don’t know how to start participating with the huge digital advertising industry. The goal is to keep adding more businesses and keep expanding to get as much support for small businesses from their community, Steele said.
So far, Thumzup is mainly focused on the Venice and Santa Monica areas, but Steele believes it won’t be long until they are able to offer more opportunities to more people.
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“We’re very excited about what we believe is digital word of mouth, is what we’re doing. We’re making it easy for a business to create digital word of mouth on social media,” Steele said.
Thumzup is available on both the Apple Apple Store and Google Play.
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