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 variety of creators get some big first payouts from the platform.

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

In its original iteration, the requirement was that creators needed to have generated at least 5 million tweet impressions per thirty days, for 3 consecutive months, as a way to qualify, but in accordance with latest reports, Twitter’s actually revising this, and a couple of other elements of this system, to higher enable Blue subscribers to earn money from their tweets.

Based on reports, the brand new requirements for the updated program might be:

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

That’ll enable more creators to make it into this system, even in the event that they have a down month within the period, as their cumulative engagement will now be taken under consideration, versus month-on-month figures.

The minimum monthly payout amount for this system might be $50, and creators will soon not need to have Subscriptions turned on to receive payments, though you’ll have to have payouts activated, and a connected Stripe account.

Also, interestingly, Twitter/X appears to be moving away from its previously stated requirement that ‘content should be original, and never mostly re-posts of other content’.

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

But in more moderen iterations of the ad revenue share splash screen, this element has seemingly been faraway from the listing of considerations for this system.

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

Perhaps that softened Twitter’s stance on this element, or possibly they simply can’t implement it, but now this seemingly won’t be as big a consideration as Twitter had initially suggested.

So, to receives a commission to tweet, you only need 15 million cumulative engagements over three months, and to be subscribed to Twitter Blue. I mean, that’s loads of engagement, but it surely could provide one other pathway to getting cash out of your Twitter presence.

Though the motivation structure stays problematic.

For example, a recent trend that’s been getting loads of attention online is NPC live-streaming, which sees people streaming as a personality that responds to stickers posted through the broadcast.

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

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

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

As such, the very best option to prompt maximum replies to your tweets is probably going via divisive hot takes, especially on issues which can be of particular interest to verified users. So free speech, COVID vaccines, Tesla, political hot-button debates, all of those are more 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 think that, over time, non-verified users might be an increasing number of alienated by this push, which could actually open the door for Meta’s Threads app to achieve more traction, and grow to be a much bigger competitor for the app. Previous research has also shown that, in the bulk, most individuals don’t want offended political discussion to take over their social media experience, which is why Meta’s seeking to actively step away from such.

But Twitter/X is moving towards it. Which could not find yourself being the winning strategy Elon and Co. think, while the engagement thresholds may also lock out many users, and see many who just meet them earning tiny amounts, for loads of effort.

Providing more ways for creators to become profitable is undoubtedly a great thing, but it surely looks like this particular incentivization could find yourself becoming an issue for Elon and crew.  

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