By Boluwatife Oshadiya│ September 10, 2026
KEY POINTS
- X stopped accepting new enrollments into Creator Revenue Sharing on August 7, 2026, and fully retired the program on September 7
- The replacement — Original Content Rewards — requires 500 verified followers, 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users within 90 days, and an active X Premium subscription
- Reposts, re-uploaded media, and recycled content without meaningful transformation are explicitly excluded from the new program
- Existing Revenue Sharing members became eligible to apply for Original Content Rewards from September 8, with first payments scheduled for September 25, 2026
- X says the old program’s incentives had become “misaligned,” rewarding aggregators and engagement farmers over genuine creators
MAIN STORY
X has officially ended its Creator Revenue Sharing program and replaced it with a stricter, originality-focused monetisation model called Original Content Rewards — a move that reshapes how hundreds of thousands of creators on the platform earn money, and signals a broader industry shift away from engagement-based payouts.
The platform closed new enrollments to the Revenue Sharing program on August 7, 2026, and retired it entirely on September 7. In its place, Original Content Rewards launched on August 8, with applications opening to existing Revenue Sharing members from September 8. The first payout under the new program is scheduled for September 25, 2026 — but only for creators who qualify and successfully enroll.
The transition marks one of the most consequential changes to creator monetisation since X — formerly Twitter — introduced ad revenue sharing in 2023 under Elon Musk’s ownership, a model that at the time promised to turn viral posting into a legitimate income stream. That promise is now being rewritten, with X drawing a clear line between creators who produce original work and those who have built audiences — and income — on recycled or aggregated content.
For creators caught between the two systems, the message is unambiguous: the old rules are gone, and getting paid again means starting over under new ones.
5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT X’S NEW CREATOR PAYMENT SYSTEM
1. The Old Program Is Gone — And It’s Not Coming Back
X’s Creator Revenue Sharing program, which had been the platform’s primary mechanism for paying content creators since 2023, was formally retired on September 7, 2026. The wind-down followed a structured timeline: new enrollments closed on August 7; existing members received final payouts on August 14 and August 28; and a last payment covering earnings accrued through September 7 was processed around September 11.
Creators waiting on that final payment should note it was not a sign of anything broken — it was the scheduled last cheque under a programme that no longer exists. The path forward runs exclusively through the new Original Content Rewards system.
The abruptness of the retirement reflects a deliberate strategy. Rather than a gradual phase-out or a parallel-running period, X drew a hard line: one programme ends, another begins. Creators who assumed continuity — that they would simply transition automatically — discovered on September 8 that they needed to reapply, meet new eligibility thresholds, and pass a content review.
2. The New Requirements Are Stricter — And Deliberately So
Original Content Rewards launched on August 8, 2026, with a qualification bar that is more demanding than its predecessor in one key dimension: the nature of the content itself is now under review, not just the size of the account.
To be eligible, creators must hold an active X Premium subscription, have at least 500 verified followers, and have accumulated a minimum of 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users within the last 90 days. Impressions on replies are excluded from the count — a detail that meaningfully affects creators whose reach is built primarily on reply threads rather than original posts.
Those are the numerical requirements. The harder test is the originality one. As part of the application process, creators are required to submit 10 original posts for review — a step designed to let X’s review system assess whether an account’s content actually qualifies under the new definitions.
According to the official X Creators announcement: “Creating original content takes time, effort, expertise, and creativity. The Original Content Rewards Program is designed to reward creators who bring those things to X.”
3. What Counts as “Original Content” — and What Doesn’t
Perhaps the most consequential aspect of the new programme is how X has defined “original content” — because that definition will determine which creators survive the transition and which do not.
X will pay for: original reporting and analysis; photos and videos that the creator personally produced; memes and graphics the creator designed themselves; and commentary that adds what the programme describes as “genuine original value.” That last category carries a caveat — accounts that regularly build on other people’s material must demonstrate that their additions represent meaningful transformation, not light repackaging.
What is explicitly excluded is a direct description of how large segments of the old programme were being used: posts copied from other accounts; media downloaded and re-uploaded without transformation; and reposts without meaningful transformation. In plain terms, the aggregation economy — screenshot accounts, clip-farming channels, and engagement recyclers — has been cut out of the revenue structure.
The X Creators account was direct about the boundaries: original content means content that the creator themselves brought into existence. Curating, sharing, and amplifying other people’s work — however popular — no longer qualifies for payment.
4. X Admitted the Old System Was Broken
What made the transition announcement notable, beyond its scale, was the candour with which X explained why it was happening.
Allegra Jacchia, announcing the change on behalf of X’s creator team, was unusually direct: “The reality is that Revenue Sharing had reached a point where its incentives were misaligned. Creators should be focused on bringing net new content to the platform instead of maximising payouts.”
She added that rather than continuing to patch the existing rules, “the better decision was to start fresh and build a program designed from day one to reward originality.”
That admission is significant because it validates what critics of the Revenue Sharing programme had argued for years — that the payout mechanics rewarded virality over value, and that the creators who earned the most were not necessarily the ones producing the most original or useful content. The clip-farmers, the screenshot aggregators, the accounts that harvested content from other platforms and reposted it with minimal edits — these were legitimate earners under the old model.
The acknowledgement also gives context to the events that preceded the retirement. In April 2026, X had already attempted a lighter version of the same crackdown, cutting payouts to accounts identified as aggregators and “clickbait” producers. That move generated significant creator backlash, and Elon Musk reportedly paused some of the changes. September’s programme retirement is X’s more decisive follow-through — not a reversal of April’s intent, but a structural answer to it.
5. What Creators Need to Do Right Now
For creators who were earning under Revenue Sharing, the practical checklist is short but urgent.
The old programme is over. If payouts have stopped, that is not a technical error or a payment delay — it is the end of the programme. Waiting will not result in resumed payments. The only route back to monetisation on X is through Original Content Rewards.
From September 8, existing Revenue Sharing members can apply for the new programme through Creator Studio, under the Original Content Rewards tab. Creators who have already completed ID verification and have a valid payout method connected to their account do not need to repeat those steps. Those who are accepted will receive their first payment on September 25, 2026, with subsequent payouts on a bi-weekly schedule.
There are disqualifiers to be aware of. Accounts whose monetisation is currently paused due to a previous policy violation are not eligible to enrol in Original Content Rewards. Additionally, X’s updated terms make clear that soliciting engagement — a common tactic under the old ad-revenue model — can result in removal from the new programme and a policy referral. Tactics that worked before may actively damage eligibility now.
The bottom-line instruction for working creators: audit the last 90 days of content for originality, confirm Premium subscription status, check eligibility in Creator Studio, and apply.
THE ISSUES
The retirement of Creator Revenue Sharing exposes three structural tensions that have defined platform monetisation since the creator economy began to formalise.
The engagement trap. Every algorithm that rewards engagement creates a perverse incentive: produce whatever generates the most clicks, not whatever is most valuable. Revenue Sharing, because it tied payouts to impressions from Premium users, was no different. Creators rational enough to optimise their output for the payout formula did exactly that — and the formula rewarded recycled content as readily as original work. X is not the first platform to arrive at this problem, and its solution — moving the reward trigger from engagement metrics to content-type review — is an attempt to break the loop. Whether the review process is robust enough to hold the line is an open question.
The aggregator economy. A significant portion of the accounts that earned meaningfully under Revenue Sharing were not creators in the traditional sense. They were curators, aggregators, and distributors — accounts that identified popular content from other platforms or earlier in the news cycle, reformatted it, and republished it to large audiences. This model generated real value for audiences who discovered content through aggregators. But it generated that value by extracting it from the original creators, not producing it. X’s new programme explicitly breaks this model’s access to platform payments.
The platform-as-landlord problem. X’s announcement landed days before TechCrunch reported that YouTube had simultaneously doubled the watch-hours threshold creators need before they can begin earning. The two decisions, at the two largest video and text platforms, point in the same direction: platforms are repricing the creator relationship around originality and scale. As one analyst framing widely circulated on X put it — build on rented land and the landlord sets the terms. The creators most exposed to this shift are those who built income around platform-specific monetisation rules rather than audience relationships that could survive a rule change.
WHAT’S BEING SAID
The response from the creator community has been, as X’s own trend summary acknowledged, divided.
Among the voices that welcomed the change were creators who had long complained that the Revenue Sharing payout model disadvantaged original producers. The argument — that an original reporter or a photographer who spent hours on a story could be out-earned by an account that screen-recorded and reposted the same story — resonated with a segment of the platform’s professional and semi-professional creators.
Zach Bussey, a digital media commentator, noted on X shortly after the announcement: “The new program focuses on Original Content, meaning aggregators, copies, or reposts will not be eligible.” One response to his post captured the sentiment among a subset of creators: “Rip clipping channels. Especially the ones pushing misinformation and directing hate.”
Sawyer Merritt, who covers X closely and has a large following on the platform, observed simply: “Big changes are coming.”
On the critical side, the reactions centred on two concerns: the stricter impression threshold and the subjectivity of the originality test. Some creators worried that the 500,000 impressions-from-verified-users requirement within 90 days — a bar that excludes reply impressions — would push out mid-tier creators who had been earning modest but meaningful amounts under the old system. Others flagged anxiety about the application review: if X’s model for assessing “original content” is not transparent, creators may struggle to understand why they were rejected and how to appeal.
The mixed reception noted by X’s own Grok-generated trend summary — “some celebrate approvals while others face rejections and adjust their habits ahead of biweekly payouts from September 25” — reflects a transition still in progress, with the full picture of winners and losers not yet clear.
X did not respond to BizWatch Nigeria’s request for comment on the specific criteria used in content originality reviews by press time.
WHAT’S NEXT
- September 11, 2026: Final payout under the old Creator Revenue Sharing programme, covering earnings accrued through September 7.
- September 8 onwards (rolling): Eligible existing Revenue Sharing members can apply for Original Content Rewards through Creator Studio. Access is being rolled out gradually, not all at once.
- September 25, 2026: First scheduled payment under Original Content Rewards for creators accepted into the new programme.
- Allegra Jacchia indicated that X intends to “continue refining the program, improving our models, and raising the bar over time” — meaning the eligibility and originality standards applied at launch are likely to evolve. Creators accepted under current terms should expect ongoing policy updates.
BOTTOM LINE
The Bottom Line: X’s retirement of Creator Revenue Sharing is less a pivot than a reckoning — an admission that three years of engagement-based payouts built an economy around virality rather than value, and that the platform is now trying to unwind the incentives it created. For creators who built genuine audiences around original work, the new programme is an opportunity. For the aggregation economy that quietly dominated the old payout structure, it is the end of a business model. The harder question — whether X’s content review system is sophisticated and fair enough to reliably tell the difference — will be answered over the coming months, one application at a time.
BizWatch Nigeria covers Africa’s digital economy, technology sector, and the creator economy across the continent. For corrections or feedback, contact the editorial desk.
