Twitter Launches New Feature to Allow Users to Monetize Access to Their Content

| Updated
by Darya Rudz · 3 min read
Twitter Launches New Feature to Allow Users to Monetize Access to Their Content
Photo: Depositphotos

For the first year, Twitter will not keep anything apart from the processing fee for the feature, allowing creators to get all the money. Then, after 12 months, Twitter will charge fees similar to iOS and Android.

Social media giant Twitter Inc has announced the launch of a new program called “Subscriptions”. Similar to the “Super Follows” tool used by the users before, the program allows Twitter users to offer subscriptions to their content. Twitter CEO Elon Musk took to his Twitter account to introduce the feature.

How does the program work? Firstly, a Twitter user needs to have at least 500 followers to activate the feature and monetize their content. Secondly, a user is required to post not less than 25 tweets within the past 30 days. And of course, their age needs to be above 18. When it comes to subscription plans, users can charge their followers $2.99 per month, $4.99 per month, or $9.99 per month for access to the content.

The benefits offered by Subscriptions include access to exclusive tweets and their notification on iOS and Android, subscribers-only spaces, a subscriber’s badge, and a tweets lab.

Currently, only US users can monetize via “Subscriptions.” However, users from any part of the world can become subscribers.

Notably, for the first year, Twitter will not keep anything apart from the processing fee, allowing creators to get all the money. As Musk has stated, it will be 70% for iOS and Android since they charge 30% (in reality, they withhold 15%) and 92% for the web (according to the Subscriptions support page, it should be 97%). Then, after 12 months, Twitter will charge the fees similar to iOS and Android.

Twitter has also detailed that a creator will earn less once they cross a $50,000 threshold in lifetime earnings, but will still take home 80 percent after that.

Subscriptions’ FAQs page states:

“When you pay for access to someone’s Subscription offering, they can earn up to 97% of the revenue Twitter has earned from what you pay Twitter, after in-app purchase fees, up to $50,000 in lifetime earnings. After $50,000 in lifetime earnings, they can earn up to 80% of the revenue Twitter has earned after in-app purchase fees.”

The old feature called “Super Follows” allowed users to earn revenue by sharing subscriber-only content with their followers. Notably, the subscription plans were the same – $2.99, $4.99, or $9.99 per month.

Twitter Struggling to Monetize Its Platform

Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, the company’s revenue generated from advertising has declined by 40%. The reason is advertisers’ fear of content moderation on the platform. Besides, Twitter Blue, which was supposed to be the major source of income for Twitter would only make about $24 million a year as only 1% of its monthly users have signed up for the program. As a result, Twitter has been making efforts to monetize its platform lately.

To find new ways to generate revenue, Elon Musk has even announced the plan to create an artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for Twitter. The billionaire has already made a few purchases in line with Twitter’s AI project. Recently, Musk has bought almost 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) to contribute to this initiative.

Artificial Intelligence, News, Social Media, Technology News
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