In the two years following Elon Musk‘s buyout of Twitter, now called X, it’s become absolutely infested with hateful content. And, since most brands don’t want their ads running next to pro-Nazi, racist, transphobic posts, a record number of them are planning to decrease their marketing spend on X in 2025.
Perhaps to get ahead of that mass exodus, X is changing the structure of its creator monetization program so payouts are no longer based on ad revenue, but instead on the number of impressions generated by X Premium users.
When X first launched creator monetization in summer 2023 (part of Musk’s increasingly desperate attempts to get creators like MrBeast to consider X a major part of their content strategies), the whole program was designed around X Premium users, who pay $8 a month to be “verified” and to have their posts surfaced at the top of users’ feeds and under other users’ posts. Only Premium subscribers were eligible for monetization, and they would only earn revenue from ad impressions generated by other Premium users. Free users are entirely outside the system.
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That’s not changing. What is changing is that now, ad impressions aren’t enough. Other Premium users must actively engage with a person’s post for them to earn money from it.
We’re not sure whether X counts likes/retweets as “engagement” or if it’s solely counting replies. Either way, X users are likely about to see way more blue checks swarming one another’s posts and leaving asinine replies in an attempt to squeeze money out of the system.
X also emphasizes that if more people subscribe to Premium, there will be a bigger pool of money that could be paid out to blue check creators: “So, when your followers subscribe to X Premium and engage with your content, they support you directly. And, because X Premium is growing, your payout is too,” it said. “The more Premium subscriptions overall, the more revenue you earn.”
We wouldn’t be surprised if X continued urging Premium users to convert their free followers to paid subscribers–especially since X has an estimated 300-400 million active users, with potentially fewer than a million paying for Premium.
So, just how much revenue will those Premium creators earn under this new system?
X says that “up to” 25% of Premium subscriptions will be paid out as part of the program. That’s a pretty dour split for creators, who could go to YouTube and make 55% of ad revenue, or to Twitch and make 70% (usually). But creators getting a rough deal on X isn’t new: back when this program first launched and was paying out based on ad impressions, one creator did the math and realized she was being paid $8.52 per million impressions. That’s a CPM of $0.0085, compared to YouTube‘s CPM of around seven bucks.
X’s efforts to keep a significant chunk of income also aren’t a surprise, considering its overall revenue has reportedly dropped nearly $240 million year-over-year so far in 2024. To that end, this change will almost certainly bulk X’s revenue, since the pool of money coming in from Premium is probably much smaller than the collective figure remaining brands are paying to advertise on X. That means X now has an overall smaller pool from which it’s obligated to pay creators–and that it’ll be able to keep all ad revenue for itself.
As for whether this will ultimately work out for X, it does insulate the platform’s relationship with creators from its ever-worsening relationship with advertisers. That reached new lows in August, when X filed suit against Unilever, Mars, CVS Health, and Orsted, accusing them of organizing a “systematic illegal boycott” because they chose to pull ads off its site.
There is also a sort of precedent for this style of monetization: In December 2023, Meta similarly shifted from paying creators based on ad impressions to paying them based on views. X’s system seems to require more direct audience involvement than just views, but both systems move away from tying creators’ content and ad revenue.
But whether X can make money off Premium users echo chambering each other for revenue remains to be seen.
