---
title: "Earn X payouts by starting real conversations | Ian Nuttall"
description: "Monetization on X with engagement and authenticity"
canonical: "https://ian.is/post/x-creator-payouts"
language: "en"
---

# Earn X payouts by starting real conversations

May 2025 / 17,039 views / [via X](https://x.com/iannuttall/status/1921864178014486711)

I made $1,886.26 yapping on 𝕏 this month. here's how you can get monetised and do the same

(the no bullshit guide)

1\. share your thoughts/work mostly unfiltered and unplanned

I think being a threadboi or ai reply guy is a net negative in the long term and the entire point of "social media" is to be, well, social

(and i see the irony that this is kind of a threadboi post...)

@X is paying out 5-10x more now because it's focused on engagement from premium users, and the best way to reach them long term is by connecting with people and actually making friendships

the thing with this is that you also have to be doing interesting stuff which is v important!

2\. look at the topics that people are engaging most with and double down on them

for me this seems to be MCP servers and coding with Cursor, maybe a bit of SEO but not so much recently

find your mix of topics that people are interested in and share as much as you can about it!

it's much easier in the saas/ai niche but definitely possible outside of that too. this prob needs to be things you're passionate about and would do without posting about them too

3\. shit posting is okay, but likes/impressions make less $$ than real engagement with premium accounts

I got 22m impressions on a meme post about ghibli images. I made less money than I did with 4m impressions about Cursor/AI

that's because all the engagement was from angry anons who don't pay to use X, but the Cursor engagement is smart devs and real people looking to learn and connect

conversations > rage bait

4\. followers still matter for going viral

you can post a banger without an audience but it's just harder to repeat it time and again.

i think this is because the first hour or so after posting really signals to the algo whether it should boost your post

with a huge audience the chances of getting that early engagement are much higher

this doesn't mean you need 100k+ though, you just need to attract the right followers who will always engage (see point 2 again!)

5\. copy others, BUT find your own unique content angles

by all means look at what others are doing and try to copy elements from them but you have to iterate on it to do your own thing

I love how @gregisenberg shares value consistently and in various styles, he's testing different formats all the time

(this post is MOST DEFINITELY inspired by greg)

but I don't copy him verbatim! instead i use it as inspo to do my own thing and found that for me sharing quick little 30s-1m screencast videos works really well

6\. it doesn't actually matter that much when you post

I used to check my stats and schedule my posts at the exact same times (which only made the stats more skewed towards those times)

but recently shared a couple of quick posts on a weekend which I never normally do and they took off!

just post it when you think of it and you can always repost it in a different format later if you think it had more potential

i rarely schedule posts now unless I'm going on holiday or I have a lot to say but already spammed my timeline for the day 😂

7\. stop doing what everyone else does (auto reposting, auto reply "if you liked this you'll love to follow me @iannuttall")

maybe I'm missing out by not doing that any more but I actually dislike when I see reposts and I almost always mute the auto plug follow/subscribe to my newsletter stuff

imo being more authentic is how you win and stand out in a world where every fucking thing is "wild" or "game changing"

8\. don't be afraid of doing long posts (like this one)

threadbois never do it, but that doesn't mean you should follow blindly.

my hot take is that the X algo might prefer this format because it encourages longer form reading and keeping users on the post for longer

also just having that "show more" cta is a signal to the algo too

the only time I really use a thread is if I want to link out somewhere and even if X say there is no algo penalty for links in posts, anecdotal evidence says otherwise

9\. making money from yapping should not be your goal

by all means get monetised and earn a little cash just for being here (it's awesome!) but don't expect to make a living from it

I have 54k followers so I make ~$0.03 per follower and an RPM of $0.05 (even my shitty display ad programmatic SEO sites get an RPM of $10 😂)

for comparison @levelsio made $7,351 in same period with 668,000 followers (~$0.01 per follower)

saas/product: grow your wealth
x cash: slush fund for fun things

what do you think? if you have any tips on getting monetised or getting more engagement in a non-bs way share them below!

a few more I thought of:

10\. most posts don’t hit at my level, keep trying

vast majority of my posts get maybe 5-10k views. only a small percentage hit big numbers

the lesson is that nobody knows what’s gonna hit so share what you want

11\. read interesting shit

I’m on here a lot as a lurker and spend time on reddit checking out stuff I enjoy like SEO, mcps, cursor, ai in general

a lot of times I see stuff nobody else has just because I’m in the right place at the right time

12\. healthy obsession of a topic is good

much easier to be “an expert” when you genuinely love the things you’re talking about

x is my outlet to share because friends and family dgaf about any of this 😂

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