X (previously known as Twitter) has had a big week, with the logo being updated to the new X at the headquarters in San Francisco, as well as the website and mobile apps.
Alongside the branding change, X turned on advertising revenue sharing today for many more creators (including @techAU), as promised by Elon Musk earlier in the year. In February, Musk said Twitter (now X), would soon start sharing ad revenue with content creators.
By April, they announced sharing Ad revenue with creators would start rolling out in the next few weeks. In mid-May, Twitter split an initial $5 Million fund among the top creators, a figure backdated to earlier in the year.
Today, the program expanded to allow those eligible to activate the Ads revenue sharing option in their account, adding to the subscription revenue opportunity released earlier in the year.
To be eligible for a slice of the revenue X generates from advertisements shown against your content, you need to meet the following criteria:
- Be subscribed to Blue (costs $13.00 per month) or Verified Organizations.
- Have at least 15M impressions on your cumulative posts within the last 3 months.
- Have at least 500 followers
While 15 Million impressions sounds like a lot, it is a threshold, many have managed to reach and should serve as good motivation for X users to post good content often.
X says this move is part of their effort to help people earn a living directly on X. Regarding the possible income users could earn from this revenue share, we’ll have to wait and see what an average amount looks like, with today being primarily about setting things up, the first payments won’t arrive for a couple of days.
X posted an update today:
For eligible creators who set up their payout details, you will receive a payment the week of July 31st if you meet the criteria and your payout amount exceeds the minimum threshold of $50 USD.
How it works
- Eligible users will be able to join and set up payments from within the Monetization section of the app. This is found in the side menu on iOS and Android, and the overflow menu on web.
- Once you click “Join and setup payouts” you will be redirected to our payment processor, Stripe, to setup an account to receive your share.
- This Stripe account will be where you will be able to transfer funds to your external bank account.
- Once you opt in, you will receive payouts at a regular cadence, so long as you have generated more than $50 USD.
My experience of joining the X ad rev share
As news spread on X today that this Ad Rev Share program was live, I was keen to be involved. after reviewing the criteria above, I believed I met the mark, being Blue Verified for months, and having 50,500 followers and having accumulated 26.2 Million impressions in the past 90 days.
When I first attempted to join, I was met with ‘Not yet eligible’. I took to X and posted that I believed this to be incorrect.
Thankfully a few hours later, the issue was resolved and I received a notification from X that read:
‘Thank you for creating on X – You are eligible to receive a share of ads revenue. Set up your Stripe account to get paid out.
Having set up Stripe when I enabled Subscriptions on my account, this was in place. I was then presented with a screen titled ‘Ads revenue sharing’.
This screen detailed that my account was automatically eligible to get paid for posts. A little strange wording given I had to fight to get enrolled. That aside, it goes on to say, as a Blue or Verified Organisations subscriber, you are automatically eligible for ads revenue sharing. Your payout is based on the number of verified impressions on ads shown in the replies to your posts.
I would like to see some additional information in X Analytics that details this information, currently, it simply lists the impressions and engagement but doesn’t breakout comment impressions or anything relating to the number of ads shown or revenue estimates.
The final step in the process was to click the ‘Join & Set up payouts’ button at the bottom of the screen. Tapping this allowed me to identify the existing Stripe account for X (formerly Twitter). Now we wait…
Visiting the Monetization tab on X’s web interface now shows both the Subscriptions and Ads revenue sharing options. Clicking on the new (second) option, you are taken to the ‘Creator earnings dashboard’ which so far shows just one statement – ‘You have no payout history this month.’ I look forward to this changing in the near future.
It’s great to see X making this move to share some of their income (being private we don’t know how much) with creators and users of the platform. I joined Twitter back in Feb 2008 and have posted 128,260 times. I use the service daily and regularly dedicate a monitor to running TweetDeck to allow multiple searches to stay up to day with content in my location and around the world.
I love interacting with my followers (and subscribers) on Twitter and if you don’t already follow @techAU, please consider.
You can get more info on the Ads Revenue Sharing program).
