Elon Musk has finally started writing checks to Twitter “creators,” part of a policy where he believes frequent tweeters and high-engagers deserve some share of Twitter’s revenue, similar to how YouTube pays its video-makers.
It’s…actually an idea most people can agree with, even Elon detractors, but the way its being implemented should make you pause before you run out and sign up for Twitter Blue itself, the fundamental requirement to earn money from Twitter.
On Thursday, the site was flooded with screenshots of high profile users getting paid anywhere from $1,000 to $25,000 to allegedly $100,000 in revenue share. This created some disbelief, but the money does appear to be real (I’m still not sure about that $100K one though).
However, it takes a whole lot more than signing up for Twitter Blue and immediately cashing in. And those payments above really need some exploration and dissection.
- First of all, this first round of “creators” with the biggest payments were mostly people that Musk follows or personally interacts with on the site. They skew heavily, heavily conservative, and are constantly posting inflammatory things that get more engagement than other posts might. The same goes for the highest profile liberals getting paid, Brian and Ed Krassenstein, the previously-banned posters whom Elon frequently chats with. It is unclear when exactly this will widen past a very, very select group of what appears to be Musk-picked users.
- Secondly, those payments are backdated. Musk has said that he’s paying people since back when he first announced the payments would go live, which is back in February 2023. So this is not a monthly payment being shown, this is about five months of payment, so divide whatever you’re seeing by five.
And then there are the qualifications:
- You need to have subscribed to Twitter Blue for at least three months
- You need to have gotten 5 million tweet impressions for at least three months, which rules out an extraordinary amount of recent Twitter Blue users who may only have a few hundred of few thousand followers who will not hit that mark.
- You are not getting paid per impression, as listed in your Twitter analytics (on Desktop under “More” then “Creator Studio”). Musk has said that you are only getting paid for impressions from other Twitter Blue users. And that means two things: Twitter Blue users are supposed to see 50% less ads than normal users at baseline. And the main source of blue checks on the site are either crypto tech bros or conservative users who believe in supporting Musk’s “free speech” mission. Or both. And those types of users are more likely to follow the kinds of conservative/crypto creators that just got paid.
The original calculation was that for about every 100,000 followers you have, that equates to about $1,000, judging by how the payments worked out for these big users. So trying to calculate this for me personally, my payment would theoretically be around $1,600 for my 160,000 followers. But remember, you have to divide that by five since the listed pay is backdated, so that’s $320 a month. Then this would be further reduced due to some sort of unknown calculation of how many Twitter Blue followers are seeing my tweet, but it’s probably a lot less than the creators who just got paid.
While sure, say ~$250 a month or whatever it might end up being is not nothing, I am guessing most people reading this don’t have quite as many followers. So 16,000 instead would be what, ~$25-30 a month, if you even meet the impression metric? But again, it also depends on your Blue followership. I just saw a Bored Ape NFT guy post he made around $2,400 in those five months with just 14,000 followers. But obviously he will have a huge amount of Blue followers.
This feels like a play to just boost Twitter Blue sign-ups from people who will either not qualify to get paid or barely get paid anything. The amount of people who could earn a significant amount from this is extremely low compared to the huge scope of Twitter’s userbase, and as flashy as these big checks are, this is not going to go how people think.
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