While monetizing users is an ongoing challenge for social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, one user has found a way to make $500,000 per year using social media platforms. Kris Sanchez, the 25-year-old man behind the Twitter account @Uberfacts, has made a career out of tweeting random facts. Uberfact tweet 1 Uberfact tweet 2 Since his first tweet in 2009, Sanchez has amassed over 18 million followers across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

"It's actually an interesting business model. I work with publishers who create content for my Twitter and Facebook page and then I get paid based on how much web traffic I bring to their website," Sanchez said recently on CNBC's "Closing Bell."

Sometimes the account will do direct campaigns for new products or movies. For those, Sanchez will get paid per post, but it's mostly all about the traffic that the account generates to third-party sites. The Uberfacts account is one of the 150 most-followed handles on Twitter, with 13.5 million followers. Those include all types of celebrities, and Sanchez says his more high profile accounts helped him to create a business out of it. "It definitely picked up when celebrities like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian started retweeting the account. But it became a business when another company taught me how to monetize from Twitter," Sanchez said.

Sanchez said he didn't know he could make money by tweeting when it first started to pick up traction. Then a company called ChaCha reached out to him, and helped him learn how to monetize all of the content. "They taught me the way to influence by choosing galleries that really resonate with my audience," Sanchez said. "They would make galleries like 'Ten Things You Didn't Know About Space' or '7 Facts You Won't Believe About the Human Body'. So things that just really fit the audience." Even though it all began on Twitter and that's the account with the biggest following, Sanchez says he gets the most engaged following on Instagram. "Everything I post, they're all images, they're all videos," he said. "So there is way more of a personal feel to just text-based Twitter updates. Now I've started doing more images."

Regis Duvignau | Reuters