Every morning when Guo wakes, the first thing she does is update her Weibo, microblog, China's version of the Twitter social network. The 22-year-old Shanghai college student has 350,000 followers - as far as circulation goes, she is as influential for her Chinese fans as Bill Gates, who opened an account on Sina Weibo last September, eight months before Guo.

In August 2009, the Sina Company became the first in the country to launch Weibo, a hybrid of Facebook and Twitter, where users post thoughts, opinions, ideas and news in under 140 characters.

The platform has become one of the most popular social networking sites in China. By this October, it boasted 2.5 million users, about 30 percent of China's total Internet population.

With the growing influence of Weibo, there have emerged grass-roots Weibo posters like Guo, who are not celebrities but manage to attract tens of thousands of followers. They not only find themselves the center of attention but can be offered business opportunities as well - because they attract millions of followers, the commercial value of their Weibo accounts is considerable.

"Just for a few clicks, they can get a few hundred or a few thousand yuan," said Cao Yongjian, a middleman in Weibo marketing, who looks for popular grass-roots Weibo accounts to sell advertising. "It is easy for an account with 3 million fans to make 300,000 yuan ($47,137) a month. An account that has 300,000 followers can easily make 20,000 yuan a month."

An unexpected bonus

On Sina Weibo, three out of the top five grass-roots Weibo accounts, most with about 5 million followers each, have become registered companies.

Single mother Xiao Junli collected tens of thousands of yuan by posting advertisements on her Weibo account. She made 400,000 yuan by selling her Weibo account to a coaching company.

Every day, Yang, a 28-year-old Shanghai man posts five advertisements on his Weibo account, which has attracted 890,000 fans. He gets as much money doing this as he earns from his full-time job as an international machinery trader.

The extra income was unexpected. "I never looked for advertising. The advertisers found me," Yang said. In October when his fan base hit 400,000, he began to receive business offers.

"On Weibo, once the number of fans reaches to a certain level, say 100,000, advertisers will contact the posters," said Cao, who has been involved in cyber marketing for two years.

Cao said many companies, even some luxury brands, are willing to work with popular grass-roots Weibo accounts. "It is the most popular and effective form of cyber marketing."

Yang opened his Weibo account at the end of this July, but he said he never expected a large fan base. "At the start, I thought 4,000 fans was a big deal."

He had earlier run a personal website similar to Weibo. However, it fell out of popularity and Weibo grew so he transferred his energies to Weibo.

Unlike most Weibo accounts that share personal lives and thoughts, Yang's Weibo offers Shanghai lifestyle information. "I wanted to make a Weibo that was useful for others. When you read a Weibo about a person's life, you might get one useful post in 10. If you want to get 10 useful pieces of information, you have to look through 100 posts - it's a waste of time. So I try to gather all the valuable information I can and put this on my Weibo."

In the first month, his Weibo attracted 4,000 fans. In the second month, the number jumped to 20,000. "It's easier for a Weibo that provides useful or interesting information to win fans," Yang said. On Sina Weibo, the top five grass-roots Weibo accounts all fall into this category: some offer black humor, some offer horoscopes. But they all require time and energy to find and publish up-to-date information.

Liu Suqian has spent at least five hours a day updating her Weibo every day over the last eight months. "To build a large fan base, you have to keep updating," said the 20-year-old, a beauty website editor, who runs a city lifestyle Weibo that attracts 100,000 fans. "The work is so demanding. I spend nearly all of my spare time on it. I don't know whether I would be able to do it if I had to start all over again."

Every day, she surfs around 40 websites and checks updates on 1,500 Weibo accounts to make sure she has the latest information on her Weibo. "Even when I was ill, I felt driven to update the information on my Weibo," Liu said. "I get uneasy when I stay in a place without an Internet connection for two or three hours - I can't help worrying about the news I might be missing."

Guo also experiences this anxiety. "There are so many Weibo accounts providing lifestyle information, you have to work hard to stand out." Guo keeps her mobile phone on 24 hours a day so she can update anytime and anywhere. "Even if I wake at midnight, I check to see if there is anything new worth posting."

To sharpen her competitive edge, Guo looks for techniques to enlarge her fan base. "I did some research into how to increase my followers. As well as offering interesting content, you have to take the initiative and ask people to be fans."

Yang agrees. "At the beginning, every time I saw someone had circulated or commented on my posts, I would send an internal message, asking him or her to be a fan. It was effective," he said.

At the end of September when he had 20,000 followers, Yang spent 10 days finding himself 10,000 new fans. "When you see your fan numbers growing, you yourself become motivated to keep growing."