Elon Musk is apparently making over $148,000 a month from subscriptions to his personal Twitter account

Elon Musk’s subscription service for “content creators” on Twitter is already paying dividends — at least for the former world’s richest man.

In a screenshot shared to the social media platform Monday, Musk revealed at least 24,700 people had registered as paid subscribers to his tweets. As it costs $6 (Canadian) a month to subscribe to the billionaire, Musk’s monthly earnings come out to around $148,200 from Twitter subscribers alone.

Musk apparently posted the screenshot to promote the subscription service and show users where to sign up. It also had the potentially intended effect of showing his publicly-hidden subscriber count — an impressive figure for creators considering opting in to the program.

At his monthly rate, Musk stands to make nearly $1,778,000 annually. The figure could soon grow — Musk enabled subscriptions on his account on April 15, meaning his thousands of users have subscribed to his paywalled content in just the past nine days.

That said, his subscribers make up just 0.018 per cent of Musk’s roughly 136,500,000 followers.

What are Twitter subscriptions?

Twitter’s paid subscription service predates Musk’s acquisition of the company for $44 billion US last year. At the time, it was called “Super Follows,” introduced in 2021 as a way for content creators to monetize their content.

For a monthly subscription fee decided by the creator, super followers (and now subscribers) get access to bonus content, subscriber-only conversations and a special badge below their name in the replies to their creator. Musk’s subscription rebrand appears to have changed little other than the name.

Although the Super Follows program was considered a failure, only generating around $6,000 US of revenue in its first two weeks, it remains to be seen whether Musk’s rebranding will meet the same fate.

What’s Elon Musk’s alt account?

Twitter users soon noticed Musk’s screenshot appeared to show the avatar for his alternate account on the top right. Almost immediately, users tracked down an account with the same profile picture: @ErmnMusk, with the name “Elon Test.”

According to its profile, Elon Test joined Twitter in November of 2022, around the time when Musk’s acquisition of the company concluded. Its avatar appears to be of Musk’s son, X Æ A-12.

The account’s posts mostly ranged from November to December of 2022, with its most recent tweet: “I will finally turn 3 on May 4th!” posted soon after the account was discovered.

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