X Shuts Down Revenue Sharing: How Tweet Monetization Will Change
Last year we wrote about X monetization and broke down how creators can earn from content. Now X is significantly overhauling its monetization model: starting August 7, new participants are no longer accepted into Creator Revenue Sharing, and on September 7 the program will be shut down entirely.
We've broken down what's changing in payouts, who will be eligible for the new program, and whether it will become harder to earn on X.
What's changing?
Under the old system, Creator Revenue Sharing required a Premium subscription, at least 500 followers with X Premium, and 5 million organic impressions over the past three months.
Starting in September, X is transitioning to Original Content Rewards. Eligibility still requires a subscription, at least 500 followers with X Premium, and 500,000 impressions in the Home Timeline from verified users over the past 90 days. At the same time, reply views will no longer be counted.
At first glance, the threshold has dropped tenfold: instead of 5 million impressions, only 500,000 are required. But there's a catch — only impressions from Premium users in the main feed count. A single account can no longer generate multiple qualifying views of a post, and paid or artificial impressions are excluded from the calculation.
X now pays only for original content — material created by the author: text, video, photos, memes, illustrations, as well as original commentary, analysis, and other content where the author's contribution is substantial. Copy-pasting, re-uploading others' material, minimally altered posts, aggregated content, and reposts are not considered original.
X has also separately disabled monetization for content containing misinformation or misleading claims, automatically generated posts, and material whose primary purpose is to teach other creators how to maximize their own payouts. Posts with a Community Note are also ineligible for monetization.
The old Revenue Sharing will continue to operate until September 7. X will process three final payouts on its standard schedule. Current participants can already apply to the new program if their account meets the requirements. Eligibility can be checked in Creator Studio.
Another potential change concerns the payout format. According to CoinDesk, X is in talks about using stablecoins — specifically USDC — to pay creators. This format would simplify international settlements and speed up payouts, though it is currently still in the draft stage.
How will this affect creator earnings?
The update hits farm account operators hard — those who built their monetization on reposts, aggregating others' content, and viral publications. Even if a post racks up millions of views, a payout is no longer guaranteed.
For creators who produce their own content, the picture is more interesting. The formal entry threshold has been lowered, and X counts as original content not only fully authored material but also thoughtful reactions, analysis, and adding original context to current events. In other words, a creator no longer needs to generate everything from scratch — what matters is that their contribution to the final result is meaningful.
At the same time, X does not publish a formula along the lines of "$X per 1,000 views." Under the new program, payouts are calculated based on qualifying impressions, and the platform reserves the right to change the calculation structure. The terms state that payouts are based on views from Premium users.
Comparing earnings under the new model with last year's cases is difficult. In our previous piece, we looked at examples of creators earning thousands of dollars thanks to large reach. But the new system doesn't treat all views equally — what becomes decisive is who is actually watching the content and how well it meets the requirements.
X has effectively shifted creators' focus away from provocative content and toward original content. Original Content Rewards is designed to reward creators who bring their own ideas, expertise, perspective, and creativity to X.
While the content monetization system is still in the relaunch phase, there are no publicly available case studies yet. However, creators on X are already posting that they've managed to gain access to the program — something they previously couldn't do due to the high entry threshold.
So now the key metric is no longer view count, but quality. There will be fewer sellers of "make money on X in 30 days" courses, but the main question is how significantly the funnel profitability will shift for creators.
Takeaways
It's safe to say that the prime era of monetizing zero-follower accounts through reposts, third-party content aggregation, and betting on rage-baiting is officially over. Whether the new model will prove more profitable remains to be seen.
