The social network X, formerly Twitter, is trying out an invitation-only pilot programme that pays creators a bonus for their own short vertical videos. In the Video Kickstart Bonus programme, X promises a bonus to creators who upload such videos on fifteen different days, regardless of views.
Nature video creator Xander Geographic counts on the bonus in a budget for a winter trip to Yellowstone that an AI assistant built for him, and in his post he cites a potential $500 for the bonus. But he wants to cover two thirds of the trip with X payouts, for which, by his own calculation, he needs roughly two million verified impressions.
Invited creators must be adults, live in a country where the Original Content Rewards programme operates and pay for an X Premium subscription. Creators outside the US need a verified Stripe payout account. Czechia is on the list of countries where Original Content Rewards operates.
The Original Content Rewards programme pays creators based on qualified impressions. It counts only unique impressions from users with a Premium subscription. Entry requires an active Premium subscription, a minimum number of verified followers and at least 500,000 impressions from verified users over the past 90 days. Meeting the criteria does not guarantee acceptance, however. Pilot participants get fast-tracked entry into the programme.
What X pays for in the Video Kickstart Bonus pilot
During the Video Kickstart Bonus programme, X counts the days on which a creator uploaded an original video. The bonus for a period goes to a creator who accumulates 15 such days, and the days do not have to be consecutive. A table of examples in X's help centre does not award it to a creator who uploads the same number of vertical videos on a single day. Each original video must have a 9:16 aspect ratio and run for less than three minutes.
The bonus can also cover an original video that has already run on TikTok and has been sitting in a phone's gallery ever since. The video must not, however, carry the watermark, name or logo of another platform. X's help centre advises uploading the original file, such as an export from the phone's gallery or a cloud video folder, because videos saved from other apps often carry a watermark. Dani Newman, who previously worked at Instagram, described the bonus in a discussion under a post by a content strategy consultant as a clever way to get creators to upload their archive of older videos.
A sample invitation, which a member of X's creator product team attached to the pilot announcement on 15 October 2026, promises earnings of $3,000 for original videos. X derives the bonus amount from the combined number of followers the creator had on X and on other platforms at the time of the invitation. Each follower tier has a fixed amount that applies for the whole programme.
What the pilot terms guarantee creators
The fixed amount that the sample invitation promises as “Guaranteed pay” is described in the pilot terms as a variable reward at X's discretion that is not guaranteed income. The figures on the progress tracker in Creator Studio are only estimates and not a guarantee of payment. X can still disqualify a video at the final review even if it shows as qualifying during the period. X also obtains a worldwide non-exclusive licence to the videos, and the creator must keep the posts public and unedited for at least 30 days after the end of the period for which they received the bonus. The pilot is a limited test for evaluation. X may change or end it at any time.
Meta has ended short-video bonuses before, when in March 2023 it stopped signing new and extending existing Reels Play agreements with creators on Facebook and with US creators on Instagram. According to Meta, its other monetisation products are growing faster and proving more sustainable in the long term.
Since March 2026, Meta has been paying Facebook creators in its Creator Fast Track programme a guaranteed monthly amount. It pays it for 15 Reels a month. Neither Czechia nor any other EU country is among the programme's countries. To creators from countries where Fast Track operates, the programme page promises that they do not have to meet any view targets on Facebook.
The X pilot also does without view targets. Its first period ends on 14 November, and Xander is counting on the bonus in the 18 November payout. Sami Hussain, who designs thumbnails and titles for YouTube channels, wrote about YouTube's bonuses in a LinkedIn discussion: “The incentive creates the surge, but retention is still on the creator.” Of the $500, Xander wrote “potential” in his post, and the pilot terms add the sentence “X is not obligated to make any payment”.
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