Paise vasool! Indian creators start receiving payouts from Twitter

Last month, X (formerly known as Twitter) owner Elon Musk revealed that the platform will be sharing a portion of the ad revenue with its content creators. It has now begun paying the Indian creators.

Indian creators have started sharing screenshots of their first payout from X and are thanking Elon Musk for it. (AFP)

On July 29, X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk rolled out Ads Revenue Sharing, a program that will share a portion of the money the company makes from the advertisers from the impressions on posts and profiles, back with the community and the content creators of the platform. Over the days, users in the US and Europe have been sharing screenshots of emails from the company telling them the amount they will receive soon. Now, yesterday, Indian creators finally began receiving similar emails, and many of them took to the microblogging platform to share screenshots of the amount they have been earning off the platform.

A user popular by the name Maithun (Being_Humor) thanked Musk and shared that he received Rs. 3,51,000 from the company. The account has around 382K followers. Another user who goes by the name Gabbar (GabbbarSingh), with 1.4 million followers, received Rs. 2,09,282 from X, and said, “Blue tick ke paise vasool (The blue tick was worth the money)”. However, the upper limit for the payout seems to be much higher, meaning creators can theoretically earn even more. For comparison, a US-based creator named Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) got a payout of $13,306 (roughly Rs. 11 lakh) from the company.

Announcing the ads revenue sharing program, Musk had tweeted, “Today is the day: Ads Revenue Sharing is now live for eligible creators globally. Set up payouts from within Monetization to get paid for posting. We want X to be the best place on the internet to earn a living as a creator and this is our first step in rewarding you for your efforts”.

X Ads Revenue Sharing: How does it work

Through this program, eligible creators will be given a share of the ad revenue they generate through their content. So, every time another user views an ad on their post or on their profile, the impression generates revenue for the platform, and it is sharing a part of it with the creator.

X also shared a list of eligibility criteria to earn through this opportunity. It has the following components:

• The user must be subscribed to Blue or Verified Organizations.
• The user must have at least 15 million impressions on their cumulative posts within the last 3 months.
• The user must have at least 500 followers.

Those, who are eligible, will need to create a Stripe account, which is X's payment processor for the payouts.

Users can apply for Ads Revenue Sharing through the monetization option in settings. Not all applicants will be approved, and the applicant will be told about their application status once processing is complete. The platform has highlighted that following the Creator Monetization Standards and the X Rules are important criteria to be monetized, and violating them may lead to the user being excluded from the program.

A move to popularize X Blue subscriptions?

Last month, some reports also highlighted that X was struggling to boost the number of its premium users, a foundational stone in getting a steady stream of revenue, as well as bringing the advertisers back. If more users were to comply with the X Blue guidelines, which also fall in line with what advertisers are looking for, then more advertisers are likely to join the social media platform.

Some are viewing this payout as a way to incentivize users into paying for the subscription. However, at the same time, it cannot be denied that the program does give the content creators on the platform a means to support themselves financially, while freely creating more content for their followers.