The Secrets to Earning Thousands of Dollars from Your Tweets

Do you like to make a living by simply tweeting your thoughts on all the latest hot topics?

It is why your trusted partners at Yaccarino and Musk are trying to suggest, with a range of high-profile Twitter users this week sharing their big payouts from the first round of the ad revenue share program of Twitter.

It enables creators to profit from ads shown to verified users within their tweet replies.

Indeed, some tweeters have generated five and even six-figure sums from the program, but before quitting your day job, start crafting clever tweets.

It is worth noting that Twitter’s new incentive scheme has some pretty significant conditions.

First, Twitter’s ad revenue share program is only available to Twitter Blue subscribers. So you have to pay $8 a month to get eligible for the program in the first place.

It is not a significant barrier, especially when you will be taking in thousands from your tweets. Furthermore, you will also need a Stripe account to facilitate payment.

It seems easy so far, but now comes the stricter element, you will also need to average 5m tweet impressions per month over three months.

Yes, it is a lot to take in. Most users are not seeing anywhere close to that level of response. It significantly limits who can monetize their content.

There is also a question of scale and the practicality of Twitter delivering big payouts from the ongoing program. For this first payment, Elon Musk says that the total sum paid equates to $5 million.

It covers a five-month period back to February when he first announced the revenue share scheme to all the users of Twitter and the public in general.

So while these initial payments are high, you need to divide each by five to get the monthly payment totals, with the block payment giving an exaggerated view of what you can expect.

You need to break down the numbers a bit further to get a view of what form of payment you see.

Looking at the payouts reported via tweet, with several program participants sharing their figures, more than 9% of the total $5 million payout has gone to just 40 creators.

Some of these creators have reported getting $20k, $25k, and even $100k in the case of @InterenetHOF, which re-posts popular content from across the web, including Twitter.

But even considering all of these significant payments, the average payout among these high-engagement profiles is $2,275 per month.

Take out the top 4 earners on the list, which drops to $1,500 monthly. So, while the big numbers being shared may be dazzling, you are unlikely to be able to quit your day job based on this program alone.

It is, of course; Twitter is not saying that you can. It is one component of its broader creator monetization push. It includes subscriptions and many more to come.

But it is worth noting that the reality of generating income from ads in tweet replies is improbable to see you pulling in $100k payments, as some have in this first set.

According to the Washington Post, most of the top earners thus far have also been right-leaning political commentators.

It makes sense, as these users are signing up for Twitter Blue. There are a lot of the big winners who are also aligned with Musk himself. It includes a range of Tesla fan accounts.

As a result, some have suggested that this is just Elon paying his friends, and without transparency, there is no way of knowing the entire workings of the process.

But Twitter still maintains that the program is open to all meeting all stated requirements and living in a region where Twitter payments are available.

Indeed, Twitter has also been using these big initial payouts as a lure for more creators. It is a clever ploy for Musk and his team to send this notification to other big accounts.

Note the use of ‘could’ in the first sentence, as we reported last week, for the delayed payments.

It leads to more significant totals, and the timing of the release has made this the perfect counter to the sudden attention that Meta’s Threads app is getting.

By showing users, they could profit from their tweets and get big money if they stayed with Twitter.

But ‘could’ is essential. Several big accounts were not eligible for the program, even some of those who had met all the high engagement markers. However, Twitter has also noted that it is expanding eligibility soon.

The next question, then, is long-term viability. Twitter’s ad revenue is still down by 50% year-over-year. It leaves a slimmer pool to draw from for creator revenue share.

It means that as more people sign up, it will get even more challenging for Twitter to keep offering the same payouts unless it can lure more ad partners.

At some stage, it will also come to a head, and if Twitter cannot bring in more ad revenue, then you can bet that the creator cut from ads in replies will be reduced.

Furthermore, they will start diluting the amounts paid to all creators.

It is going to be the subsequent considerable risk. Snapchat, for example, suffered a significant backlash after more creators sought to participate in its Spotlight rewards program.

It saw creators allocated a percentage of a static fund based on the performance of their clips.

As more creators signed up, the payment totals shrunk. So while creators were generating more engagement over time, the money they saw, as a result, was declining each cycle.

If Twitter is also forced to reduce its payment amounts similarly, you can expect a similar response, especially as creators become more reliant on that income.

It is very early days for the program as yet, and if Twitter cannot get more ad dollars coming in, it will be hard to see how this program scales accordingly.

More users seek to boost their Twitter engagement for a share of the cash.

And unless you are seeing, or likely to see, millions of tweet impressions per month, it might not even be worth signing up, and even then, with an average payout of $350 per week for the top most active accounts.

The amount of time and effort you will need to put in to reach these numbers may not be worth it, especially as Twitter looks to crack down on those just resharing all the popular content from across the web.

The result will be many more people posting many incendiary tweets in the hopes of sparking more engagement.

Anger is the emotion that sparks the most comments on web content; as such, it is most likely how users will look to find a way into this program.

More divisive content is conversely unlikely to attract more ad spend. And if advertisers don’t want their ads to appear in reply threads, it reduces the revenue to share.

It may not be the gold mine that these big early payouts suggest to lure more users and people to this program.

But wait, there is more. Elon has also said that the payouts from Twitter’s ad revenue share will soon be ‘roughly double’ when they add in share from profile page views.

It cannot be sure how accurate that estimation will be, as most users spend most of their Twitter time in the main feed. But it adds another consideration to the mix that could help to lure more creators.

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