Elon Musk has announced a series of changes since buying microblogging platform Twitter for $44 billion last year. Among them is the launch of Twitter Blue, his most controversial move, where the company charges money from people who wish to display the coveted blue mark on their profile. Twitter made it mandatory to subscribe to Twitter Blue and get a verified handle, purging all the legacy checkmarks. Mr Musk also launched the Twitter Creator Subscription programme to allow content creators to sell their exclusive content for a price.
On Tuesday, he posted a tweet to explain how the Creator programme works. "Content creators may wish to enable subscriptions on this platform. Just tap on Monetization in settings," Mr Musk said in his tweet, posting a screenshot showing the relevant links.
This generated a lot of buzz on Twitter, with users questioning how much does Mr Musk earn from Twitter since he has made a number of changes in its algorithm that allows his profile to get more views.
The screenshot Mr Musk posted shows he has 24,700 subscribers. According to the revenue breakdown posted on Twitter website, the cost of the subscription is $4.99 per month for subscribers in the US. After the deduction of app fees and Twitter's revenue share, a creator gets $3.39.
Angel investor Alex Cohen did the math and tweeted that with each subscriber paying him $4 a month, the Twitter CEO is generating around $1.2 million a year "in passive income".
"It's literally this simple to achieve financial independence and retire early," Mr Cohen further said in his tweet.
"On the other hand, I have 14 subscribers and generate $70/mo in passive income. This is almost enough to give every US Citizen a million dollars," he added.
Mr Musk had announced earlier that Twitter won't keep any of the money users earn from their monetised content for the next 12 months.
