Hey Prompt Entrepreneur,
Today we get into the meat of the week: how to actually monetise an audience.
We’re entrepreneurs and that’s the end goal here on X – to build a business and leverage the attention that a large account gives us.
I’ll walk through a number on “on-platform” alternatives as well as “off-platform” potentials.
Let’s get started:
Monetising X
1. Subscriptions
The first and arguably most direct way to monetise an audience on X is to set up a premium subscription.
You can set a price, starting at $1, that your followers pay you monthly in order to get exclusive access and content. You get 97% of the subscription revenue directly – X’s cut is very small.
In exchange your premium followers get a special area where you can deliver different and supplementary content.
The key here is working out what to provide and how to make it valuable enough for people to want to pay to support you.
Let’s use a prompt to begin the process of deciding what to put in our Subscription area.
As in the last Part load a CSV of your X activity into the Code Interpreter and use this prompt:
Act as a Twitter expert and carry out these steps.
Analyze the CSV file: Load and understand the structure of the new data.
Popular Content Analysis: Identify the most popular content excluding mentions of other accounts.
Plan for Members-Only Content: Suggest a plan to place the most valuable content in a paid, members-only section.
Suggestions for Additional Content: Based on the data, propose new content ideas for the members-only section.Prompt Output 💬
This gives us lots of ideas to start with.
For example in my data it’s the personal posts about what I’m doing on a daily basis, how I’m building my businesses and what I’m learning that seem to do the best.
Therefore using the Subscription as a “Behind the Scenes” look into my life and work makes a lot of sense.
Additionally, talk about my eBooks does well – based on this I could make the eBooks all free for subscribed members.
Additionally this prompt gives you further ideas about what you could do beyond the current content.
Use all of the suggestions ChatGPT comes up with to craft a unique and interesting subscription offer based on what already works.
To actually set up Subscriptions head to Monetisation in the main X menu then Subscriptions. You’ll need to add some basic information and then wait for the request to be reviewed.
2. Revenue Share
Revenue Share gives a portion of the revenue generated from advertising with the original creator.
Let’s say I have a post gets 300 comments. Within those comments X will show advertising. Anyone in my comments section will see the adverts. X gets paid every time someone sees and/or clicks on that advert.
Because the advert is showed in my comment section X now shares a % of the advertising revenue with me.
To be eligible you need to be a fair sized account – this is not open to small accounts. As of the time of writing the minimum limit is 15M organic impressions on your cumulative posts within the last 3 months.
This will change – be sure to check the actual X guidelines.
If you go into Monetisation in X you’ll see Ads Revenue Sharing and whether you are eligible or not. The most up to date requirements will be there.
How to reach the minimum requirements? Grow your account. We’ve already covered how to do this – don’t do anything differently!
Some people will try “engagement farming” – basically aiming to get engagement at any cost, regardless of the quality and whether or not they themselves are putting anything of value into the world.
This works – they will hit the requirements and generate cash simply by spamming memes and motivation quotes. But it’s not a business – it’s a short term ploy only.
Consider Ad Revenue Share an additional bonus rather than your end goal. Focus instead on building a quality account and many more monetisation routes will be open to you – routes that will pay far more in the long run that Ad Revenue Share.
3. Affiliate & Sponsorship
As you start to grow you’ll begin receiving DMs from companies to feature their products.
Anecdotally this started happening with me around 2000 followers. I checked with other people and they agreed it happens around 2000-5000.
Most will approach you wanting free coverage. You have a number of options here.
The first is providing free coverage but ask for a some product that you can giveaway to your followers.
This is a nice win-win where you get something to write about, your followers get free product and the company gets the coverage they want. This works especially well with software as you can simply share codes.
Mechanics wise write a post or thread about the product and mention that you have a certain number to give away. To win one the follower needs to like, share and comment to be entered into the giveaway. After a certain period of time (say, 24 hours) you choose someone at random to give the prize to.
Tweethunter can actually send DMs to winners randomly which makes larger giveaways easier. There’s also WinnerPicker as an external tool. Or simply copy paste all the names into a random picker tool.
I like to use this method with obviously small companies as well as products I actually like.
Second, offer to cover the product but ask what their affiliate structure is. That’s pretty much it : “great, can do. What’s your affiliate structure thanks” is all it takes.
If they have an affiliate programme get signed up so you can receive a % on any sales. Make sure to disclose to your followers that it’s an affiliate link. It’s the legally sound and ethical thing to do.
Third, sponsorship. If your account is larger (10k+) in a valuable niche then the company can sponsor posts.
You can sell a single or package of posts in exchange for payment. Again, make sure to mention it’s a sponsored post.
The exact format of the post will depend on the niche and agreement with the sponsoring company .
How much can you charge for a sponsored post? This is a movable feast – again it depends on the niche (finance posts will cost more than fashion posts for example) and your account size and engagement percentage.
For this I suggest you find and use a calculator – there are lots out there but I like this one.
To give you a rough idea though IZEA run an annual State of Influencer Earnings report and recently found that an account around 10k followers commands $1000-1500 per post.
These three methods are all ones you can use if a company directly contacts you – which they will start doing.
You can also go and find sponsors and affiliate deals yourself. This is too large a subject to go into here but I’ve covered this in other Prompt Playbooks especially the one on Newsletters (for sponsorship) and Affiliate Marking Blogs (for affiliate). Both Amazon affiliate links – see what I did there? 😁
4. Email capture
One final, and arguably strongest, route to monetise your audience is via getting them off-platform to purchase your products and services.
You could sell any number of products and services and I can’t cover them all. The other Prompt Playbooks talk about how to set up these various businesses and offerings in detail so refer to those.
What is common between them all though is that it’s much easier to market a product or service if you can get your prospects off X and onto your email list.
You then have direct access to them via email marketing – a much more powerful and reliable marketing method than relying on X. Any product or service can then be introduced.
To get X users off platform and capture their email address one of the best methods is using a “lead magnet”. This is basically a piece of value that acts as a magnet to get the lead (email).
The basic setup I recommend is this:
- create something of value in Notion or, more simply, a PDF.
- host that valuable asset on Gumroad.
- Set the price to $0
- Promote on X
- Send collected email addresses to your email software, newsletter or simply market from Gumroad
Here’s an example as it’s easier to understand : https://kdgbalmer.gumroad.com/l/Newsletter
That link goes to a Gumroad page where you’ll see the product description.
The price is $0 so all Gumroad does is collect an email address.
The person who signed up can then see a link to your valuable asset – your Notion document or PDF – and access it from inside Gumroad.
The main complication here is creating a valuable lead magnet and making it appealing!
Here’s a prompt, again building off of your X analytics data. Use Chat GPT Code Interpreter and upload a copy of your past X data.
Review this CSV of past Twitter activity
Look for the most engaged with content, ignoring any content with Mentions
Use this to suggest a lead magnet idea that would be appealing to my audience
Create a detailed structure for the lead magnet to help me prepare it
Create a full description of the lead magnet (2000 words) that I will use on its Landing PagePrompt Output 💬
Here’s the lead magnet structure:
and the Landing Page description for Gumroad:
Interestingly enough I’m currently planning a “Basic Starter Guide” just like this already – so ChatGPT’s response is bang on the money!
Do this with your data to get similarly personalised recommendations.
For creation I personally use Notion. You could equally use Google Doc or Word. Then use ChatGPT to help flesh out the sections and get you started.
Once you have a lead magnet ready:
- Sign up for a Gumroad account. Follow all the normal account setup, branding etc. steps required.
- Create a new product.
- Add the description you generated.
- Set the price to $0.
- For the product’s content add a PDF export of your lead magnet or the published Notion link.
- Promote the Gumroad page as a free giveaway on X. I personally always have one such post pinned on my profile as well as promoting actively.
- Collect emails in Gumroad and use these emails to market products and services. You can send emails directly from Gumroad or connect your email CRM or newsletter software, depending on what your business setup is.
Pulling it together
In this Part we’ve gone through a range of options for generating revenue from your X following.
This is a relatively small and focused list. There will be unlimited other options as you grow. Attention is powerful.
You can leverage your audience for product launches, teaching, consulting, coaching, events, publishing books, running a retreat, launching joint-ventures, raising investment and more.
An audience opens up possibility – it’s up to you to work out what to do with this power.
Until then I’ve delivered a range of options for you to explore and get started with.
Over the last 5 Parts we’ve covered:
Part 1: X Niche
Part 2: X Content Creation
Part 3: X Engagement
Part 4: X Growth
Part 5: Monetising X
You should now have a basic plan for growth and monetisation in mind. And more importantly you have the tools (primarily ChatGPT’s Advanced Data Analysis and a copy of your post data) to make adjustments and decisions.
Rather than give you a generalised one-size-fits-all methodology hopefully equipping you with the impetus to get started and the tools to learn and adapt will help you find your way forward.
The only thing left to say is make sure you share your journey with me on X. I’m @iamkylebalmer and am available to help support your growth! See you there!