X is finally paying smaller creators for the content they produce on the platform, and creators say the earnings are decent.
Last month, X began issuing ad revenue-sharing payouts in the thousands to select accounts, many of which had followings in the hundreds of thousands (and were some of Elon Musk's favorite users). Now, smaller creators are sharing the payouts that hit their accounts this week, which are indeed smaller but still significant.
Robert Freund, a lawyer with 7,584 followers, made $291.8136984 on his X content in July (that insane decimal seems to be a rounding error the folks at X failed to catch before sending out last month's payments).
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Freund told Mashable over direct message, "considering my audience size, I was very pleasantly surprised by the amount I was paid." The payment won't "meaningfully supplement" his income, he says, and he doesn't expect to earn nearly as much in the future (since a "uniquely viral" tweet of his on Jul. 31 racked up a whopping19M impressions). Regardless, "$300 is still nice."
Roberto Blake, a YouTube creator with 87,000 subscribers, made $307.891725 from his X content last month. In the replies to his post, Blake noted that spending "$8 to make $370 is a fantastic ROI for something I do anyway" but that the program needed improvements, like better analytics and control over what ads are shown under his content. But, overall, he saw the program as "complimentary" to his YouTube channel.
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In a help center article, X says that its ad revenue-sharing program is intended to enable creators to "share revenue from verified user's organic impressions of ads displayed in replies to content you post on X."
But on Jul. 14, Musk complicated this description. "It’s not exactly per impression," he told an X user who attempted to break down revenue-per-impression. "What matters is how many ads were shown to other verified users.
That same day, a former Twitter executive told the Washington Post, "The numbers are totally and completely bogus [when it comes to impressions]. It’s all completely made up. It really feels like they’re arbitrarily writing checks to people they like, which is not a sustainable creator strategy.”
Whether the program is sustainable remains to be seen. But the money seems real...for now.
