Elon Musk’s X wants influencers but doesn’t seem all that interested in paying them. Since it launched its ad-revenue-sharing program last summer, X has paid out just $45M to 150K posters. In the creator economy, those are penny-slots numbers, a small fraction of the $700M MrBeast makes on YouTube each year paying people to live in a coffin for six weeks (or whatever he’s up to).
For comparison, YouTube says its Partner Program has paid out $70B to 3M channels in the past three years. X’s $45M spend over eight months isn’t going to do the trick, given that (back-of-the-napkin) YouTube’s spending on the order of $1.6B over the same period.
So why the stinginess? Well, to share ad rev you need ad rev, and that’s been a struggle for X. Late last year, dozens of major advertisers including IBM, Apple, and Disney paused campaigns on the site after Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory on the platform. This month Musk told Don Lemon (who was, for a minute, a certified X Creator™️) that ad and subscription revenues were rising rapidly, though he didn’t share #s.
X aside, it’s tough being an influencer. Goldman Sachs said only 4% of global creators pull in more than $100K/year.