Twitter Tweaks Requirements for Creator Ad Revenue Share Program

As Twitter continues its transition to X, it’s also evolving its creator ad revenue share program, which recently saw a range of creators get some big first payouts from the platform.

As a reminder, Twitter’s ad revenue share program is available to all Twitter Blue subscribers who are generating significant engagement on the platform.

In its original iteration, the requirement was that creators had to have generated at least 5 million tweet impressions per month, for three consecutive months, in order to qualify, but according to new reports, Twitter’s actually revising this, and a few other elements of the program, to better enable Blue subscribers to earn cash from their tweets.

According to reports, the new requirements for the updated program will be:

• Account must be subscribed to Twitter Blue and have payouts switched on  
• Account must have generated 15 million cumulative impressions over the preceding three months

That’ll enable more creators to make it into the program, even if they have a down month in the period, as their cumulative engagement will now be taken into account, as opposed to month-on-month figures.

The minimum monthly payout amount for the program will be $50, and creators will soon no longer have to have Subscriptions turned on to receive payments, though you will have to have payouts activated, and a connected Stripe account.

Also, interestingly, Twitter/X seems to be moving away from its previously stated requirement that ‘content must be original, and not mostly re-posts of other content’.

Twitter owner Elon Musk made a specific statement about this, noting that:

But in more recent iterations of the ad revenue share splash screen, this element has seemingly been removed from the listing of considerations for the program.

That could be because some of the highest-earning accounts do actually re-post a lot of content, while Elon himself is also notorious for re-sharing other people’s memes without credit.

Maybe that softened Twitter’s stance on this element, or maybe they just can’t enforce it, but now this seemingly won’t be as big a consideration as Twitter had initially suggested.

So, to get paid to tweet, you just need 15 million cumulative engagements over three months, and to be subscribed to Twitter Blue. I mean, that’s a lot of engagement, but it could provide another pathway to making money from your Twitter presence.

Though the incentive structure remains problematic.

As an example, a recent trend that’s been getting a lot of attention online is NPC live-streaming, which sees people streaming as a character that responds to stickers posted during the broadcast.

That’s come about because for each sticker that’s submitted, the streamer earns direct revenue, so these creators have worked out how to maximize these stickers as an earnings element, thereby getting them more cash per stream.

Once you put an incentive structure in place (i.e. stickers = money) creators will come up with ways to feed into that specific driver, and Twitter’s creator revenue share program directly incentivizes creators to prompt as many replies as possible, in order to earn money from the ads shown in the reply stream.

Not only that, but only verified ad views count, and many verified Twitter users are politically aligned with Elon Musk’s free speech push at the app.

As such, the best way to prompt maximum replies to your tweets is likely via divisive hot takes, especially on issues that are of particular interest to verified users. So free speech, COVID vaccines, Tesla, political hot-button debates, all of these are likely to drive more response, with the system effectively pushing users to share more content on these specific elements.

Will that improve the user experience? Probably not. I suspect that, over time, non-verified users will be more and more alienated by this push, which could actually open the door for Meta’s Threads app to gain more traction, and become a bigger competitor for the app. Previous research has also shown that, in the majority, most people don’t want angry political discussion to take over their social media experience, which is why Meta’s looking to actively step away from such.

But Twitter/X is moving towards it. Which might not end up being the winning strategy Elon and Co. think, while the engagement thresholds will also lock out many users, and see many that just meet them earning tiny amounts, for a lot of effort.

Providing more ways for creators to make money is undoubtedly a good thing, but it feels like this particular incentivization could end up becoming a problem for Elon and crew.  

But we’ll find out. Twitter’s expected to release its updated ad revenue share requirements shortly.