X Scrapped Creator Revenue Sharing Entirely and Replaced It With a Program That Pays for Original Work
The old ad revenue share paid out through September 7. Original Content Rewards started September 8 and explicitly excludes reposts, copied posts and repackaged downloads. Payout rates have not been disclosed.
The Creator Economy
Editorial oversight by the Editor-in-Chief
X announced on August 8 that it is ending its creator ad revenue sharing program and replacing it with something called Original Content Rewards. The old program paid out through September 7. The new one started September 8.
X's Allegra Jacchia said the previous program had reached a point where its incentives were misaligned, which is a diplomatic description of a program that paid for engagement regardless of whether the account generated anything.
What the new program pays for
Original Content Rewards is scoped to original reporting, original analysis, original photo and video, designed memes, and substantive commentary. It explicitly excludes reposts, copied posts, and repackaged downloads.
Eligibility requires an X Premium subscription, 500 verified followers, and 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users over a trailing 90 days.
The impressions threshold is the interesting one. Counting only impressions from verified users is a deliberate filter against bot-inflated reach, and it also means an account's eligibility depends on the composition of its audience rather than its raw size.
The open question
X has not disclosed payout rates or the size of the reward pool. Without those, no creator can model what the program is worth, and no agency can advise a client on whether to build for it.
This follows an April attempt to cut payouts to accounts X characterized as clickbait, which Elon Musk partially reversed after creator backlash. A program that changes its rules twice in five months, and does not publish its rates, is not yet a channel anyone should plan a business around.
The read
The stated direction is correct. Paying for engagement rather than for work is how a platform ends up with a timeline of repackaged screenshots, and every major platform has now conceded that point in some form, from YouTube's inauthentic content policies to Snapchat pulling fully AI-generated video out of Spotlight rewards in August.
Whether X's version works depends entirely on numbers it has not published. Watch for the first payout cycle in early October.
By The Creator Economy Editorial Team
Editorial oversight by Ismail Oyekan
Ismail Oyekan is the Editor-in-Chief of The Creator Economy and the founder of IMCX (Influencer Marketing Conference & Expo), the premier industry gathering connecting creators, brands, and capital. Named one of the 100 Most Influential People in Influencer Marketing by Influence Weekly, he has managed over $20 million in influencer marketing budgets and worked with A-list talent including Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled. He is a sought-after advisor to creator economy startups.
