Among Musk's 155 million fans, only 40,000 paid subscribers, accounting for 0.0
News on September 8, for a long time, the social network X (formerly known as Twitter) has been trying to get a piece of the creator economy by providing users with various monetization tools, such as Ticketed Spaces, Tips, etc.
One of X's newer tools is called Subscriptions, formerly known as Super Follow, which allows users to offer exclusive content to fans who pay monthly. The feature was first launched in 2021 and was first introduced in April this year by Elon A. Elon Musk rebranded.
While X doesn't disclose the total number of subscribers to the feature or the number of subscribers accumulated by a single creator, the data on Musk obtained by Fortune magazine suggests that the subscription feature hasn't really caught fire among X's claimed 541 million users.
According to the data reviewed by Fortune magazine, Musk has 155 million fans on the X platform, the account with the most fans. But only about 40,000 X users have subscribed to Musk, or 0.025% of his total followers, who pay $4 a month each. Before Apple and X split, this equates to nearly $2 million in revenue per year.
Several other high-profile creators have fewer than 5,000 paid subscribers on X, a relatively small number compared to their large fan base, according to a person familiar with the matter.
According to sources, the creators set the subscription price they want to charge on X, up to $250. When Twitter first launched Super Follow, creators' subscription fees could only be set at $2.99, $4.99, or $9.99.
Creators can also choose how much exclusive content to offer subscribers. In the menu of services that X creators can offer their subscribers, exclusive live audio "space" sessions and bonus "behind the scenes" tweets can be included.
Musk sometimes tweets 24 times a day, but he rarely posts exclusive content to subscribers. Musk appears to have made 7 posts for subscribers since April. He owns two exclusive "spaces" but hasn't posted since the end of June.
It's unclear who has the most paid subscribers on X, but paid subscription features on other platforms could attract more paying subscribers. For example, the top creators on OnlyFans earn more than $300,000 a month and stream NSFW content, which is very different from what Musk offers subscribers.
On Patreon, a platform similar to subscriptions, comedy podcast duo Shane Gillis and Matt McCusker have nearly 70,000 subscribers for between $1 and $50 a month.
A source at X said: "I think the current subscription feature is performing too badly. ”
Paid subscriptions have never been a cash cow for X. When it first launched in September 2021 under the Super Follows name, the feature only brought in a paltry $6,000 in revenue for X. According to AppFigures' estimates, total revenue will also be only $530,000 in February 2022.
X receives only 3% of the creator's first $50,000 in earnings. Beyond this threshold, creators are expected to earn up to 80% of their revenue. In April, Musk rebranded the feature "subscriptions," and subsequently announced that the platform would give up its customary 3 percent share within a year.
When the feature was also called Super Follows, users needed to attract 10,000 followers and post at least 25 tweets in the last 30 days to use the feature. Since then, that prerequisite has been reduced to just 500 followers, with no minimum number of posts. (little)
