Super Follows Will Usher in a New Era for Twitter.

Twitter will change and the change will be good. 

Yesterday, Twitter announced that it will begin to give content creators the option to charge for exclusive content. For example, a follower could pay a content creator a few dollars a month to view special Tweets or access a subscription (Group/Newsletter). It was met with blowback but rest assured this change will be for the good.  Who will it be good for? EVERYONE. 

Let me explain.

The Consumer 

Yes, Twitter is free. Congratulations. But do you know why most of it is free? Because most of it isn’t worth anything. The biggest problem with Twitter is that it is full of low-value content designed only for engagement purposes. It is a dopamine factory. Monetization will combat this problem. 

The majority of the information on Twitter is throw-away material. It could come from a fortune cookie. Do you know entire industries exist just to produce simple easily digestible retweetable Tweets? This will change when you begin to charge. Expectations will shift.

When PieDiePie began to make millions on Youtube it radically changed how the platform was perceived. This perception led to a spike in the production/quality of Youtube videos. Other people caught on and cashed in. Youtube is now a competitor for all of the major media companies.

The same potential to make millions off of Twitter will be there with Super Followers. Think about the ramifications. Children want to grow up and become YouTube sensations. Could the same thing happen with Twitter? Perhaps.

If you aren’t open to this line of thinking, you aren’t thinking big enough. 

The Creator 

Never will it be easier to make money from the comfort of your home. 

Let’s run some numbers. 

Say you have an account with 100,000 followers. If you are able to convert 10% of your followers to pay $2 a month for your content, you will be pulling in $20,000 PER MONTH. 

That is nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year from subscription services. 

That is not a chump change. 

Medium is another platform that has recently been monetized. For Medium, their partner program has been a win-win. Why? Because there is an extremely low barrier for entry with high rewards. Some bloggers are making up to $50,000 per month.

Sites that make money, attract better people. There is no reason why Twitter cannot follow suit. 

Twitter Itself

The bird app is going to win big. Think about how money currently flows on Twitter.

Content creators use Twitter as a funnel. The goal is to get consumers off the platform as quickly as possible. Creators view Twitter as an opportunity to send their customers to other places where they can actually charge them. They use blogs, email lists, Gumroad, and Youtube to accomplish this.

Twitter does the dirty work. They collect the following but other platforms are monetizing them. Users are already paying to be a Super Follower, just somewhere else. This means that there is already a list of proven things Twitter can charge for. It has already been done. It is all about the quality. There is no reason simple tweets/newsletters could not contain premium content.

Think about it from Twitter’s perspective. Why let users leave the platform? It just creates more friction. Friction is bad.

Now Twitter can keep them there, and charge them.

Everyone wins.