Elon Musk's plan to reduce Company X's dependence on advertising revenue by increasing paid subscriptions has not yet taken off. Since launching the subscription service, formerly known as Twitter, in 2021, X has earned about $200 million across iOS and Android, according to a new third-party analysis of the X premium subscription service by app intelligence firm Appfigures. It is said to have generated in-app purchase revenue. Blue.
There are a few things to note about this diagram. First, this amount is based only on purchases made via the mobile app, not the mobile or desktop web. This means the actual total is likely to be even higher, especially considering that X offers discounts on web purchases.
Then there are fees to consider.
The company estimates that after paying app store fees, X would have earned at least $140 million. However, this number could be higher, as Apple and Google discount fees from 30% to 15% in the second year. (Appfigures says there is no way to reliably calculate the number of subscriptions associated with each commission rate).
More specifically, Twitter Blue itself was launched in 2021, but relaunched in December 2022 as Twitter under Musk focused on non-ad revenue. The service brought in just $11 million in mobile app subscriptions within the first three months of its relaunch, according to data from app data provider Sensor Tower. A year ago, the company now called X launched two additional subscriptions: Basic and Premium+.
Image credit: Twitter
There's no way to definitively determine how many of X's users are paying for an X Premium subscription, but there is a way to bring the estimates back here, at least from a native mobile subscriber perspective.
Currently, X continues to offer three subscription tiers: Basic, Premium, and Premium Plus, which include varying access to advanced features such as Grok AI, blue verified checkmarks, and reduced ads. Masu. The top in-app purchase (based on App Store data) is X Premium, which costs $11 per month on mobile.
According to Appfigures, in September 2024, X generated $14.7 million in revenue through in-app purchases on mobile devices.
Since X is a private company and is not obligated to publicly share its user numbers, we can only speculate about how many people are purchasing which subscription tiers.
But if most of that revenue is generated by the top in-app purchase, X Premium, that equates to about 1.3 million paying users (or $14.7 million / $11).
If all sign-ups had instead been for X's lowest tier, X Basic at $4 per month, X could have gained as many as 3.7 million paid users that month.
Assuming that X's paid users are 70% Premium, 20% Premium Plus, and 10% Premium Basic, that's approximately 940,000 Premium users, 134,000 Premium Plus users, and 368,000 Premium Basic users. . This split seems reasonable since the top three subscriptions for X are (in order) Premium, Premium Plus, and Basic. These numbers add up to approximately 1.4 million paid users added during September.
Appfigures estimates that in-app purchase revenue growth jumped 30% from Q2 to Q3 after being relatively flat in the previous quarter, quarter-on-quarter in the context of X Premium. It looks like it's getting a little easier.
In addition to X Premium, there are other in-app purchases to consider, such as subscriptions to top creators on the platform. For example, Elon Musk himself has many supporters. Fortune magazine reported last year that Musk was the most followed user with 155 million followers, more than 40,000 of whom were subscribers, or 0.025% of his followers. Musk currently has 200 million followers. Assuming about the same percentage are subscribed, that would be about 50,000 subscribers. If your subscription fee is $4 per month, your total revenue will be approximately $200,000 per month.
Image credit:X Screenshot
Another user with a large subscription base is @stevewilldoit, who follows all of his subscribers. He currently follows 10,400 people on X. If 3/4 are subscribed, you would have about 7,8,000 subscribers paying $5 a month, which would bring in $39,000 in gross revenue per month before X's share runs out. Masu.
Although they are rough estimates, these additional numbers are also important as they are part of X's plan to grow its user base through creator content.
The company announced last week that it would start paying creators based on the engagement they get from X's premium subscribers, rather than a portion of ad revenue. This is clearly a change intended to increase the number of subscribers to X. On the other hand, given that X has reduced the ad load for Premium+ subscribers to zero, this could open up even more potential for creators to earn money. But paying for engagement often encourages clickbait or controversial content designed to get responses.
Nevertheless, Bloomberg reported earlier this year that X generated $1.48 billion in total revenue in the first six months of 2024, according to financial documents shared with regulators. In other words, subscriptions are still a very small piece of the X pie.
The introduction of the new program follows moves by X that have alienated some advertisers, including suing the organization over an ad boycott and CEO Elon Musk telling advertisers to “run away from him.” It was something. Since then, the company has been trying to make amends, recently striking a deal to bring Unilever back into its fold.