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Elon Musk recently hinted at the adoption of a new revenue model by Twitter, where the social media platform will begin sharing revenue with creators for ads shown in their tweet replies. With the intention of making X/Twitter more successful and adding another pathway for content creators to make money from their Twitter presence.
The latest revenue-sharing element as announced by Twitter chief Elon Musk is the next step for Twitter’s creator monetization push. With the incentives offered, there are some significant considerations to factor in and make the most out of the revenue-sharing strategy as a Creator.
In a few weeks, X/Twitter will start paying creators for ads served in their replies. First block payment totals $5M.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 9, 2023
Note, the creator must be verified and only ads served to verified users count.
Twitter’s new model for revenue sharing
Why this new revenue-sharing model and other features for Twitter blue subscribers?
Ever since the company was taken over by Elon Musk, new strategies were in place in order to drive user engagement and create revenue sources for the company as well as offer benefits to the users. It has been reported that Twitter 1.0 was rarely profitable and staff was aware of that.
With Musk introducing Twitter blue verification, and taking more steps to live within its means, the company is approaching profitability. Twitter has watered down its approach and strategy to make people pay by offering something exciting in return to the creators. This time the lucrative revenue-sharing model is all they could ask for.
The report says under Twitter 1.0 staff were aware that Twitter was rarely profitable, but now under 2.0 the company has taken many more steps to live within its means – e.g. sales staff have to apply for reimbursement on expenses.
— T(w)itter Daily News  (@TitterDaily) June 11, 2023
Read the full thing: https://t.co/3dxyyRo9cm
The bottom line for Twitter Blue was Musk’s commitment to halving ad exposure for paying subscribers. The records show that the average revenue per Twitter user (in the US) was $12 per quarter with the majority of income from ad exposure. Cutting ad exposure by 50 percent would mean an average revenue of $6 per user, instead of ad exposure alone.
Twitter simmered this down since Musk’s announcement for Blue subscribers, “50% fewer ads in the For You and Following timelines”, but the same amount in all other elements. As a result, that has reduced Twitter’s exposure to revenue loss while obviously aligning with this new revenue-sharing strategy.
Essentially, the earlier announcement for ad reduction doesn’t relate to this update, as the amount of ads shown in replies remain unchanged, but Twitter did have to do some re-arranging to separate these elements.
What Creators need to do differently
Firstly, to make it clear, in line with Twitter’s broader verification and revenue-sharing strategy, only Twitter Blue subscribers will be eligible for the program. The actual verification elements remain questionable, like would you only need a phone number and a subscription?
Diving more into the revenue-sharing aspect, for creators only ads served within replies of verified users will count towards this new revenue-sharing pool. The condition is to prevent the use of an army of bots to artificially boost your view count.
As @aakashg0 points out, the fact that (for now) this only counts ads served for replies incentivizes making tweets that encourage conversation (recent changes to the algorithym have also leaned in this direction) https://t.co/uXgeDvfmdD
— T(w)itter Daily News  (@TitterDaily) June 10, 2023
The next thing to consider, then, is potential ad exposure, and what sort of money Twitter creators can expect to see as a result of this new initiative. Don’t expect it to be too much, it would only be substandard.
Talking about how it works and how can content creators benefit, let’s see what the dynamics for ad exposure on Twitter feed are. The majority of ad exposure appears in the main feed, and not in replies. But at the same time, Twitter Blue subscribers are also likely to be more active in the app than any average user which would increase their value for that matter.
In short, based on the number of replies they see, some users will earn a lot more, thereby giving Twitter more capacity to display ads in-stream, which will give it a bigger revenue share. Talking about earnings, the returns aren’t going to be huge, you will be only able to cover your Twitter Blue monthly subscription, that too if you are lucky.
The incentive is better than not getting anything back, which is the case right now. But the revenue-sharing model seems to be no way near to what YouTube or Instagram are offering in terms of direct income based on your content.
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