Elon Musk wants X to become the most lucrative platform for creators, promising to boost payouts beyond what YouTube offers. There's just one problem: YouTube is really, really good at making money for creators. And the platform's biggest star is happy to explain why beating Alphabet Inc.'s (GOOG) (GOOGL) Google will be an uphill battle.
The Case for Paying Creators More
The conversation started when an X user made a pitch to Musk about cranking up creator payments well above YouTube levels. The argument was straightforward: once AI language models finish digesting most of the internet's existing content, the platforms that actually pay creators well will be the only ones with fresh, original material worth consuming.
Musk liked the idea. "Let's do it," he responded, though he emphasized the need for strong safeguards against gaming the system. He tagged Nikita Bier, the entrepreneur who sold his apps Gas and tbh before joining X as head of product, suggesting this could become a major initiative.
Reality Check from the Platform's Biggest Creator
Enter Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, who has about 457 million subscribers on his main YouTube channel. His take? Good luck with that.
"Competing with YouTube revenue gonna be pretty hard, they're the best platform to ever exist at this," MrBeast wrote in response to Musk's commitment. "I've done 9 figures in ad revenue on just one channel for example."
That's not just posturing. MrBeast has actual data from testing X's monetization capabilities firsthand.
The $250,000 Experiment
In 2024, MrBeast ran a monetization experiment by uploading videos to X that had already been published on YouTube. One of those videos generated impressive numbers on X, pulling in roughly $263,665 from about 156.7 million impressions. The strong advertiser interest drove significant payouts as the video gained traction.
Over $250,000 for a single video sounds pretty good, right? Except MrBeast confirmed that the same video earned substantially more on YouTube, though he didn't share specific figures for the YouTube side. That's the gap X is trying to close.
MrBeast ended up distributing the advertising revenue from his X experiment among his followers on the platform, turning the test into both a data collection exercise and a giveaway.
The Monetization Mountain X Needs to Climb
Since acquiring X for $44 billion, Musk has made expanding revenue-sharing programs and boosting engagement central priorities. The platform has rolled out various creator payment initiatives, but YouTube's monetization infrastructure represents decades of refinement, massive advertiser relationships, and proven systems for connecting content with paying audiences.
When someone who's earned nine figures from a single YouTube channel tells you that competing with YouTube's revenue model will be "really hard," that's probably worth listening to. X may be able to generate eye-popping payouts for viral content, but consistently matching or beating YouTube's monetization across millions of creators is a different challenge entirely.
Whether higher payouts will be enough to shift creator behavior and content production remains to be seen. But MrBeast's assessment suggests X has a steep climb ahead if it wants to become the top revenue platform for creators.