Can you still make money from X replies?

Can you still make money from X replies right now?

X replies can still lead to money today, but the old reply-farming model is effectively on its way out.

There is a short transition period. Creators already enrolled in X Creator Revenue Sharing can still earn under that program until September 7. New creators cannot join it anymore. X is replacing it with Original Content Rewards, a program built much more heavily around original posts reaching Premium users in the Home feed.

For someone starting now, that changes the answer completely. Replying under viral posts can still get attention. It can still bring profile visits and followers. A particularly good reply can even appear in people's timelines. But accumulating huge numbers of views underneath other people's posts is no longer a realistic standalone monetization strategy.

X has made that unusually explicit. To qualify for Original Content Rewards, creators need 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users over 90 days, and X specifically excludes impressions on replies from that requirement.

So replies still have economic value. They have simply moved much earlier in the funnel.

Why did people start making money from X replies in the first place?

X replies became a money-making tactic because the original creator payout system was closely tied to the reply section.

When X opened its ad revenue-sharing program globally in 2023, the company shared revenue from ads displayed in the replies underneath creators' posts. TechCrunch reported at the time that X was specifically monetizing ads served inside those conversations rather than ordinary timeline ads.

That encouraged a very particular kind of content. A post that triggered thousands of replies created more places for X to show ads. Controversial opinions, jokes, breaking news, provocative questions and other conversation-heavy posts suddenly had a direct financial advantage.

The incentives changed again in 2024. X stopped basing creator payouts on ads shown in replies and began paying according to engagement from Premium users. TechCrunch noted at the time that this could push creators even harder toward content designed to provoke reactions.

That history explains why reply farming became so common. For years, X kept giving creators reasons to chase conversation volume.

The new system is moving in the opposite direction.

What exactly has X changed about creator payouts?

X has changed creator monetization three times in ways that progressively reduce the value of reply farming.

The first version rewarded ad revenue generated inside conversations. X then shifted toward Premium-user engagement. More recently, Revenue Sharing started giving particular weight to verified Home Timeline impressions.

Now X is retiring Revenue Sharing altogether and introducing Original Content Rewards. According to X's current Help Center, the new program pays creators for qualified impressions generated by original content. Those impressions must come from Premium users, happen in the Home Timeline and show at least half of the post on screen.

The intent behind the change is unusually clear. When TechCrunch covered the launch, X senior product manager Allegra Jacchia described the old incentives as "misaligned" and said creators should be bringing new content to X rather than concentrating on maximizing payouts.

That is a fairly direct description of the problem X is trying to fix.

X monetization era	What drove payouts	What it encouraged
Original revenue sharing	Ads shown around reply conversations	Posts that generated lots of replies
Premium engagement model	Engagement from paying X users	High-engagement content
Later Revenue Sharing	Greater weight on verified Home-feed views	Feed distribution
Original Content Rewards	Qualified views of original content	Original posts that X recommends

Do X reply impressions count toward Original Content Rewards?

No. X explicitly excludes reply impressions when deciding whether a creator qualifies for Original Content Rewards.

The requirement is 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users during the previous 90 days, plus at least 500 verified followers and an eligible Premium subscription.

X then adds an unusually specific clarification: impressions on replies are excluded.

That closes the easiest loophole. An account can no longer spend all day jumping into enormous conversations, rack up millions of visible reply impressions and assume those views are moving it toward X's new monetization threshold.

Imagine an account gets 3 million reply impressions over three months but only 150,000 qualifying views from its standalone posts. The account still falls short. The public impression count might look impressive while the metric X actually cares about remains far below the requirement.

This is probably the strongest evidence that classic reply farming has lost its direct monetization value.

Can one individual X reply still earn money?

Yes, potentially, but only in a much narrower situation than most people mean when they talk about making money from replies.

X has not published a blanket rule saying every reply is automatically ineligible for payouts. Its Original Content Rewards rules actually say that genuine commentary, analysis and reactions can count as original content when the creator adds meaningful perspective.

Replies can also sometimes appear directly in Home timelines. X's own documentation says relevant replies may be shown there, particularly when users follow people involved in the conversation.

Put those two rules together and an original reply that gets independently recommended could potentially generate the kind of impression X rewards.

The important detail is where the view happens. Someone opening a viral post and scrolling down until they see your reply is very different from X deciding that your reply itself deserves distribution in a user's main feed.

We would not treat the public impression counter on a reply as a revenue counter. A reply with 500,000 views inside a giant conversation could be economically weaker than a much smaller piece of original content that X keeps recommending directly.

Is qualifying for X monetization easier now?

X has made the headline threshold dramatically smaller, although the views required are much harder to fake with low-quality traffic.

Revenue Sharing required 5 million organic impressions over three months. Original Content Rewards requires 500,000 qualifying Home-feed impressions over 90 days. On paper, that is a 90% reduction.

The daily pace falls from roughly 55,600 impressions to about 5,600.

But the new 5,600 is a far narrower number. As seen above, reply impressions do not help you reach it. The audience also has to consist of verified users seeing the content in their Home feed.

For an established writer, analyst, meme creator or video creator whose posts already circulate among Premium users, the new target may be considerably easier.

For someone whose entire growth engine was replying underneath Elon Musk, crypto accounts, sports posts or breaking news, the lower number can be deceptive. The traffic source that made those accounts look big has been removed from the qualification calculation.

Requirement	Revenue Sharing	Original Content Rewards
Required impressions	5 million	500,000
Period	3 months	90 days
Approximate daily pace	55,600	5,600
Reply impressions usable for threshold	Previously part of broader traffic	No
Verified followers	500	500

Does X Premium still boost your replies?

Yes. X Premium still gives replies better positioning, so paying for Premium can remain useful for anyone using replies to grow an account.

X currently offers reply prioritization across its paid tiers. Basic gets reply prioritization, Premium gets a larger boost and Premium+ gets the largest boost.

X also says Premium status is one of the factors its conversation ranking system considers when deciding which replies appear higher. Other factors include whether the original author responded and whether the reader already follows the person replying.

This creates an interesting situation. X has reduced the direct financial value of farming replies while keeping the distribution advantage attached to Premium replies.

That makes sense if we treat replies as an acquisition channel. Being near the top of a conversation with 500,000 readers can still be extremely useful when the people seeing the reply are relevant to what you write about.

Getting 100,000 random reply impressions and getting 100 profile visits from exactly the people who might follow or buy from you are very different outcomes. These days, the second one is the more interesting metric.

Can replying under big X accounts still grow a small account?

Yes. Replying under large X accounts can still be one of the fastest ways for an unknown account to borrow distribution.

A new account has an obvious problem. Even a very good standalone post may initially reach almost nobody because the account has few followers and little posting history.

A reply lets the creator enter a conversation where attention already exists.

If a prominent AI founder posts something seen by hundreds of thousands of people, a useful reply adding a missing data point or a strong counterargument starts much closer to an audience than an isolated post from an account with 80 followers.

X also confirms that some relevant replies can escape the conversation and appear in Home timelines. That gives exceptional replies a second distribution path.

But reply growth works best when the account stays focused. Someone repeatedly writing smart comments underneath AI infrastructure founders can build recognition among people interested in AI infrastructure. Spraying generic jokes underneath whichever celebrity happens to be viral creates impressions with very little carryover.

The reply still works. The quality of the audience now matters much more than the size of the number underneath it.

Does mass reply farming still work on X?

Mass reply farming looks increasingly weak because X has reduced both its upside and its tolerance for the behavior.

X's current authenticity rules prohibit bulk, aggressive and high-volume unsolicited replies. They also prohibit repeatedly posting identical or near-identical content and using irrelevant replies primarily to drive traffic toward another account, website, product or service.

The platform can reduce distribution, remove posts from search or suspend accounts for spammy behavior.

Original Content Rewards adds another problem. X says creators can lose eligibility for manipulating recommendation systems, artificially generating engagement or repeatedly asking users to like, reply, bookmark, follow or repost.

The trade is simply worse now. Thousands of shallow replies do little to build the new qualification metric, while the same volume makes the account look more like the exact behavior X is trying to suppress.

A smaller number of unusually useful replies is now the safer and probably more profitable approach.

Reply tactic	Likely value now	Main problem
Detailed reply in a relevant niche	Strong discovery potential	Requires real effort
Good joke or insight under a large account	Can attract followers	Results vary
Hundreds of generic replies	Low-quality reach	Spam risk
Copy-pasted promotional replies	Very weak	Explicitly targeted by X rules
Engagement-exchange replies	Poor long-term strategy	Monetization risk

Can AI bots automate X reply farming?

AI reply bots are a particularly bad fit for X monetization right now.

X updated its automation rules this year and says automated systems cannot send unsolicited replies to large numbers of users. Automatically replying to posts found through keyword searches is one example X explicitly prohibits.

There is an even stricter rule for AI. X says operating an AI-powered automated reply bot requires prior written and explicit approval from the company.

Original Content Rewards goes further. X's current eligibility rules say content created or posted using automated means can be ineligible for the program. The company separately prohibits using bots or software to artificially manufacture views, comments, likes, follows or shares.

So the tempting strategy of giving an AI agent a list of 5,000 large accounts and asking it to write context-aware replies all day runs into several problems at once.

Using AI privately to research a topic or help improve a draft is a different situation. X's published rules target automated posting and manipulation much more clearly than ordinary creator tooling.

A fully autonomous reply farm currently combines weak monetization economics with unusually obvious policy risk.

How much does X pay for one million views now?

There is no reliable dollar value for one million X views today.

X does not publish a fixed CPM for Original Content Rewards. Its legal terms say payments are based on impressions from Premium users and that X can change the calculation.

Even the public view counter uses the wrong denominator for this calculation.

Two creators could each show one million impressions publicly and have completely different economics. One creator might have an audience heavily concentrated among Premium subscribers and strong algorithmic feed distribution. Another might get most views through replies, profiles, conversation pages or users who do not qualify under X's payout logic.

X also removes repeat impressions from the same Premium user on the same post, promoted views, artificial traffic and fraudulent impressions.

So formulas claiming that "1 million X views = $X" should be treated very cautiously now. Unless the creator can see the same underlying qualified-impression data that X uses internally, the effective payout rate cannot be reconstructed properly from public impressions.

The new $30 minimum payout tells us when money can be withdrawn. It tells us nothing useful about the CPM.

Can X replies still make money through Subscriptions or customers?

Yes, and for many creators this could be a much better use of replies than chasing X's impression payouts.

A reply can attract someone to a profile even when X pays nothing for that particular view. From there, the visitor might follow the account, subscribe, join a newsletter, buy software, book consulting or purchase something else the creator sells.

X's own Subscriptions product makes the distinction easy to see. Creator earnings depend on paying subscribers and the chosen subscription price. X currently says eligible creators can receive up to roughly 97% of gross Subscription revenue, after outside fees such as app-store or payment-processing charges.

The qualification bar for X Subscriptions remains high, so this is not an instant monetization option for a tiny account. X currently lists 2,000 active Premium followers and 5 million organic impressions over three months among its requirements.

An external business has no such X-specific threshold.

That is why a niche reply with 10,000 views can sometimes be economically more useful than a viral reply with one million. If five founders discover a consultant through the first reply and nobody relevant clicks through from the second, the smaller reply produced the better business outcome.

What is the best way to use X replies to make money now?

The strongest X reply strategy now is to optimize for discovery, then give people something better to find when they open the profile.

We would reply primarily where the audience overlap is strong. A cybersecurity founder gains more from ten excellent replies underneath respected security researchers than from 500 generic replies underneath unrelated viral accounts.

The reply itself also needs to carry some value. Adding a number nobody mentioned, correcting something important, explaining an overlooked implication, sharing firsthand experience or making a genuinely funny observation gives readers a reason to click the account.

Then the profile has to continue the same story. Someone who discovers an account through a strong robotics reply should immediately find useful robotics posts, analysis or a clear product when opening the profile.

That creates a simple chain: useful reply, profile visit, follow, repeated exposure, monetization.

X's recent changes actually make this approach more attractive because good standalone content has become more important to platform payouts. Replies can feed followers into that content without having to be the paid product themselves.

The creators who adjust to that distinction should still get plenty of value from replying.

So, can you still make money from X replies?

Yes, but reply farming as a direct X payout strategy is mostly finished.

Existing Revenue Sharing creators have a few remaining days under the outgoing system. For anyone building an account now, Original Content Rewards is the program that matters.

As pointed out above, X explicitly excludes reply impressions from the 500,000-impression requirement for joining that program. Mass unsolicited replies also run into increasingly clear spam and automation rules. Meanwhile, the replacement program is deliberately steering money toward original content that earns its own distribution.

There is still a useful loophole in the broader sense. A genuinely original reply can be recommended, can bring thousands of people to a profile and may potentially generate eligible feed views when X distributes the reply independently. Nothing in X's current rules says that every reply is categorically worthless.

But the easy version of the business has disappeared.

These days, replies make the most sense as distribution. Use them to get noticed by the right people, turn those people into followers, then make money from original X content, subscriptions or whatever business sits behind the account.

So yes, people can absolutely still make money because they reply on X.

Getting paid simply for farming the reply section is effectively over.