Twitter starts sharing ad revenue with verified creators

Twitter is switching up its game, now sharing ad revenue with its verified creators. Those who subscribe to Twitter Blue and have consistently garnered more than 5 million tweet impressions per month over the past quarter are eligible to join this revenue-sharing scheme.

Elon Musk, Twitter's owner, declared that the initial round of creator payouts will total an impressive $5 million. This sum will accumulate from February onwards and will be dispersed via Stripe.

Well-known creators have already begun sharing their substantial earnings. Writer Brian Krassenstein, with around 750,000 followers, claims to have received $24,305, while SK, a creator with about 230,000 followers, pocketed $2,236. Benny Johnson, a political commentator with 1.7 million followers, reportedly earned $9,546.

Payouts are determined by tweet impressions. Ashley St. Clair, a writer for Babylon Bee with 710,000 followers, earned $7,153. Her "napkin math" shows her rate as roughly $0.0085 CPM (cost per mille), translating to $8.52 per million impressions. Whether these CPM rates differ between users remains unclear.

Interestingly, Twitter has chosen to monetize ads served in tweet replies, incentivizing creators to engage users into replying to their posts. This strategy, however, could potentially drive a surge in extreme emotional content, similar to what Facebook experienced.

As Farzad Mesbahi humorously pointed out, "The more haters you have in your replies the more money you’ll make on Twitter." To which Musk amusingly responded, "Poetic justice."

Twitter has set certain limits on the type of content eligible for monetization. Sexual content, pyramid schemes, violent content, criminal behaviors, gambling, drug and alcohol-related content, and unauthorized copyrighted content are off the table.

Despite Twitter's generous $5 million payout to creators, controversy surrounds the platform. The company faces a lawsuit over $500 million in unpaid severance checks to laid-off employees amid Musk's takeover and has also allegedly defaulted on its office space rents.