Popular creators on Twitter will soon receive their long-awaited payouts as part of the platform’s revenue-sharing program.
Months after Twitter owner Elon Musk’s initial announcement, the company confirmed on Thursday that the money will be transferred to eligible users within the next 72 hours. The program is exclusively available to Twitter Blue subscribers and is driven by ads placed in tweet replies.
Surprise! Today we launched our Creator Ads Revenue Sharing program.
— Twitter (@Twitter) July 13, 2023
We’re expanding our creator monetization offering to include ads revenue sharing for creators. This means that creators can get a share in ad revenue, starting in the replies to their posts. This is part of our…
Initial reports indicate that the payouts are substantial, ranging from a few thousand dollars to nearly $40,000 for accounts with millions of followers. Writer Brian Krassenstein, who has over 750K followers, claims to have received payments of $24,305.
Twitter just paid me almost $25,000. pic.twitter.com/oIJ2Ycymzb
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) July 13, 2023
His brother Ed Krassenstein, who has close to 980K followers, claims he got $24,877.
When Elon Musk said that he was going to pay Twitter Users a revenue share, I thought, "wow, that's awesome."
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) July 13, 2023
I assumed I'd would be getting paid around $500 or so for the past 4-5 months. I thought, it would be pennies on the dollar compared to what George Soros pays me… pic.twitter.com/or1PBR2c97
The latter shared a list of declared payouts so far, with amounts ranging from a little over $1,000 to a whopping $100,000.
Today Elon Musk and Twitter began Twitter ad share revenue payouts. Here is a list of the users who have shared how much they made publicly.@DirtyTesLa – $1,004@Anc_Aesthetics – $1,358@nickfloats – $1,393@mysteriouskat – $1,469@elon_alerts – $2,226@raptalksk – $2,236…
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) July 13, 2023
The specific criteria and calculations used to determine the payouts remain unclear. However, accounts must have generated at least 5 million impressions on tweets in the past three months. The revenue-sharing model is based on tweet impressions, with creators earning a certain rate per thousand impressions. The exact rate and whether it varies among users are yet to be confirmed.
Twitter has opted to monetize ads served in tweet replies, as identifying the creators to compensate for ads in the feed poses challenges. Encouraging users to engage in conversation through replies will likely incentivize creators, although this may result in more extreme emotions driving higher engagement, as seen on platforms like Facebook.
These payouts come at a crucial time for Twitter, as Meta’s version of the microblogging app, Threads, gained 100 million users in just five days. Twitter needs to find a way to keep its most engaging creators, especially if Musk wants to turn the platform into a multimedia hub.
Moreover, despite Musk and new Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino’s claims of increased usage metrics on the platform, a recent post by Cloudflare CEO shows a significant dip in Twitter’s traffic.
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