X now pays for impressions, not just engagement

The test

X's help article on Original Content Rewards, as retrieved on 16 September 2026, describes a programme replacing Creator Revenue Sharing, with X stating a 'final payout for earnings accrued through September 7' and that, 'starting September 8, 2026, we'll begin rolling out access for existing Revenue Sharing members to apply for the new Original Content Rewards Program.' X defines the new payout unit precisely: 'qualified impressions are unique impressions from Premium users... on the Home Timeline feed, where at least 50% of the post is visible,' excluding 'paid, promoted, or artificially generated impressions' and repeat views from the same account. X's separate Creator Revenue Sharing article, still published at the time of retrieval, describes the older model as weighting 'verified Home Timeline impressions' more loosely, without the same visibility and exclusion rules.

What the evidence says

Both pages are X's own living help documentation, not independent audits; the Original Content Rewards article states the mechanism, qualified impressions from paying subscribers, and the transition date, but does not disclose a per-impression rate or an aggregate pool size. It also sets a content-quality bar in prose rather than a formula, stating that 'if the primary value comes from someone else's work and you've done little to transform or add to it, it won't generate qualified impressions,' and separately naming 'copied content,' 'minimally modified content,' 'aggregated content,' and 'cross-platform reposts' as excluded categories. The older Creator Revenue Sharing article, left online during the transition window, still describes a $30 minimum payout processed every two weeks, a detail the newer article does not repeat.

The sample and the variance

The qualified-impression definition applies only to views from paying subscribers, 'X Premium Basic, Premium, Premium+, or Premium Business,' on one surface, the Home Timeline, and excludes duplicate views from a single account; X does not disclose, in the pages reviewed, how many impressions typically convert to a given payout. The transition itself is dated precisely, a 7 September final payout and an 8 September rollout, but eligibility approval timing for individual creators is not stated.

What to try next

This is an editorial checklist, not a payout projection. A creator moving between the two programmes can reasonably confirm ID verification and payout-method status first, since X states existing verification carries over; anyone citing an X creator-earnings figure should specify whether it predates or postdates the September 2026 transition, given the two programmes measure different things; and a marketer assessing reach should note that qualified impressions count only paying subscribers, not X's full audience.

• Does a cited X payout figure come from Creator Revenue Sharing or Original Content Rewards?
• Would your content meet X's own transformation bar, or would it fall into an excluded category?
• Has your account's verification and payout status carried over automatically, as X states it should?

X's own transition record is unusually dated for a living document, a named final-payout day and a named rollout day, even though neither of X's two help pages states what a qualified impression is actually worth.