X is changing its creator monetization system. The company has announced the Original Content Rewards Program, which will replace its existing Revenue Sharing program for creators. The new system is focused on rewarding people who bring original reporting, analysis, commentary, videos, memes, and other creative work to the platform.
At the same time, X has stopped accepting new applications for Revenue Sharing. Existing participants will continue earning under the old system until September 7, 2026.
From September 8, they can start applying for the new program if they meet X’s requirements.
The basic idea is still based on impressions, but X has changed what counts as a valuable impression.
Creators will earn from qualified impressions generated by their original posts. These are unique impressions from X Premium users on the Home Timeline where at least 50% of the post is visible.
Impressions from the same user more than once on a post, paid or promoted impressions, and artificially generated or fraudulent views do not count.
X says payouts will be made every two weeks. The first payout under the new program is scheduled for August 28, 2026.
This creates an important difference from the old system. X is now putting more emphasis on who is viewing a creator’s content and whether the creator is actually contributing something original.
Creators must be at least 18 years old, live in a supported country, have an account in good standing, and use a Personal or Business account.
They also need an X Premium, Premium+, or Premium Business subscription, at least 500 verified followers, and 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users within the previous 90 days.
Reply impressions do not count toward the 500,000 figure.
Once a creator meets the requirements, they can apply through Creator Studio. X says it will normally respond within three business days.
The requirement for 500,000 impressions means this is not really an entry-level creator program. X is targeting people who have already built an audience and can consistently generate attention on the platform.
The most interesting part of the announcement is X’s approach to original content.
The company says original writing, Articles, threads, reporting, analysis, photos, videos, memes, graphics, reactions, and commentary can all qualify.
Creators can also use content made by other people. However, they need to add meaningful context, analysis, humor, reporting, narration, or creative transformation.
Simply downloading a video and uploading it again will not qualify. Neither will basic edits such as cropping, adding a watermark, applying a filter, changing the speed, or putting simple text over someone else’s content.
This could be particularly important for accounts that have built large audiences by reposting viral content.
X is effectively telling those creators that reach alone is not enough anymore. There needs to be some original value behind the post.
The new rules could benefit creators who already use X as a place to publish their own work.
A journalist breaking a story, a tech creator explaining a product launch, an analyst providing an opinion on a company, or a creator making an original meme can all potentially qualify.
Even commentary on someone else’s post can count if it adds something meaningful.
That distinction matters because X is not trying to turn the platform into a place where everything has to be created from scratch. Commentary has always been a major part of X, and the company appears to recognize that.
The important question is whether the creator is simply recycling somebody else’s work or actually adding value to it.
There are some strict rules for creators who join the program.
X says participants cannot repeatedly ask people to like, reply, bookmark, follow, or repost their posts. They also cannot use bots or automated tools to manufacture engagement.
Content can also lose eligibility if it contains disinformation, violates X’s rules, is focused entirely on monetization advice, or receives a helpful Community Note.
These rules could make some common growth tactics less useful. Accounts that constantly use engagement-bait posts to inflate their numbers may have a harder time monetizing through the new system.
There is an obvious reason for the shift to a new kind of monetisation program. X is flooded with content that is copied, reposted, summarized, or slightly modified from somewhere else. Generative AI has made producing this kind of low-effort content even easier. If creators can make money simply by generating impressions, there is little incentive to spend hours researching a story or producing something genuinely useful.
The new program appears designed to change that incentive.
X wants the people earning money to be the ones creating the content that attracts users to the platform in the first place.
It could also help X differentiate itself from the growing number of social platforms competing for creators. A journalist or independent creator who knows that original work can generate revenue has another reason to publish directly on X rather than treating it only as a distribution channel.
The idea sounds good. Implementing it will be much harder. X repeatedly uses terms such as “meaningful value” and “original content”, but deciding whether a post genuinely meets that standard is not always simple.
For example, two creators could post the same news story. One might add a few lines of commentary, while another could spend hours researching additional details. Both technically add something, but the value is clearly different.
X will have to make these decisions at a huge scale.
That could lead to creators questioning why one post qualifies while another does not. Automated systems may handle much of the process, but automated moderation can also make mistakes.
There is also an interesting tension in the new model. X says it wants to reward originality, but earnings are still tied to impressions. That means creators will continue to care about reach and engagement.
The difference is that X now wants that attention to be attached to content that the creator actually contributed to.
The new program is not a complete departure from X’s existing monetization model. Impressions are still at the heart of it.
What has changed is the message around those impressions. X is making it clear that simply being good at getting views is not enough. The company wants creators to produce something worth seeing.
That could mean more original reporting, analysis, commentary, videos, and creative work on the platform. It could also make simple repost accounts and content aggregators less attractive.
Whether it improves the quality of X will ultimately depend on how consistently the company enforces the rules.
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