Here's Who Qualifies For New Twitter Monetization

Twitter introduced its new monetization program Thursday, a plan that shares revenue with creators from the replies below their posts.

Political commentator, Benny Johnson shared a screenshot showing he already earned $9,546. Writer Brian Krassenstein says Twitter paid him $24,305.

But the posts also raised questions about why only select creators have access to the program. The reason is the rollout on Thursday was only available to creators who met the following criteria:

An active Twitter Blue subscription, a Stripe account for payment, and an average of 5 million tweet impressions for three months.

The tweet impression threshold is what held most users back. As well as the Stripe account, which suggests Twitter had informed some creators ahead of time to make an account, a message not spread wide.

That said, Twitter posted a follow-up article on Thursday saying an additional release would allow more users to monetize their tweets.

"We're rolling out the program more broadly later this month and all eligible creators will be able to apply," says Twitter.

But here's where it gets mucky.

The tweet directed users to a link detailing the requirements for the forthcoming rollout month, the one available to "all creators." At first, the article did not mention a need to reach a three-month average of 5 million tweet impressions, meaning it was only a requirement for the initial release. However, Twitter updated the link to make 5 million impressions a requirement for the wider relase later this month.

The requirement list now reads as follows:

How you can become eligible

To be considered eligible for creator ads revenue sharing you must: 

What you’ll need once you are approved

So, now it appears ever later this month users will have had to average 5 million impressions in order to monetize their tweets. If so, the "available to all creators" explainer was not quite accurate.

To check your impression count, go to https://analytics.twitter.com/.

As for how Twitter determines a payout, the belief is a user makes around $0.0085 CPM (cost per mille), which is $8.52 per million impressions.

Not great. Though, not bad for users with high engagement. And still more than Mark Zuckerberg offers Threads users...

The business plan seeks to incentivize creators to drum up replies, not retweets -- a distinction from Twitter 1.0 programing the algorithm to cater to posts with high retweets and likes.

To see if you apply, click the "Monetization" tab under Twitter Blue.