Does YouTube Finally Have Competition?
Published on January 1, 2026
Published on Wealthy Affiliate — a platform for building real online businesses with modern training and AI.
Twitter's Actually Competing With YouTube Now
So Twitter (or X 🙄) is finally doing something interesting—they're going after YouTube's creator money. And unlike Rumble or Vimeo or whatever other dead-end platform you can think of, this might actually matter.
Why Twitter's Different
Two things: they've got actual funding, and their posts show up on Google. That second part is huge. Try finding a Rumble video in search results. Good luck. Twitter content? It's everywhere in search. That's real discoverability.
Musk admitted in October that Twitter underpays creators compared to YouTube. His exact words were that YouTube does "a much better job." Then someone suggested Twitter should pay creators even MORE than YouTube, and Musk said okay. Will he actually do it? Who knows. But at least there's pressure on YouTube now.
Twitter Monetization Requirements
- Pay for Twitter Premium yourself
- Get 500 followers who also pay for Premium (weird, right?)
- 5 million impressions in 3 months
- Identity verification
That 500 premium followers thing is bizarre. You need followers who pay, not just followers. A million regular followers means nothing if 500 aren't paying subscribers.
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YouTube's Requirements
Early access:
- 500 subscribers, 3 videos, 3K watch hours or 3M shorts views
Full monetization:
- 1K subscribers, 4K watch hours
YouTube doesn't care if your subscribers pay for anything. Just subs and watch time.
The Numbers
Twitter earnings depend on impressions. Rough estimates before Musk's payout increase:
- 1M daily impressions = few hundred bucks/month
- 10M daily impressions = ~$2,500/month
- 50M daily impressions = ~$12,000/month (basically impossible)
YouTube's all over the place depending on niche and video length. Example: 170K views might get you $400, but make money online content could triple that.
What Actually Matters Here
Twitter's adding live streaming, they've got the infrastructure, and they're trying to pull creators away from YouTube. Whether Musk follows through is the questionable thing, though, isn’t it? He says a lot of things. But competition is good for us either way.
I'm not ditching YouTube. That'd be stupid. But Twitter as another income stream? Worth paying attention to. We've been stuck with YouTube having zero real competition for years. Maybe that changes.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Never have, never will.
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