The artist who can pay off his credit card debt, the photographer who earns extra money by answering the most polarizing posts he can find, the food blogger who tries to start interesting conversations. These are some of the creators that Meta pays to post on Threads.
Meta introduced an invite-only program in Aprilbut shared only limited details about how it works. Engadget spoke with half a dozen creators who joined the program over the past few months. They described their strategy for reaching the required engagement sizes and the sometimes confusing nature of the Threads recommendation algorithm.
Creators are divided into different levels of the program, which determine how much their bonus can be and what size their posts must reach. None of the creators Engadget spoke with knew how or why they were selected for the bonus program, although they all had some Instagram followers. (One known requirement is an Instagram professional account.)
Audrey Woulard is a photographer with over 25,000 followers on Instagram and nearly 5,500 followers on Threads. He uses his Facebook and Instagram accounts to promote his portrait photography business. But when he was invited to the Threads bonus program, he saw an opportunity to experiment with different types of content.
According to him, his strategy consists of answers. He only focuses on responding to other users’ posts rather than creating his own. “I don’t necessarily create content on my own,” he explains. “I’m kind of activating other people’s content.” Focusing on the responses, he says he was able to reach the required 60 Threads with at least 750 views each to earn a $500 monthly bonus.
This has helped it to be particularly attuned to the types of topics that can attract a lot of views. “Polarizing content, anything that gets people talking,” he explains. In particular, she looks for topics on which people have strong opinions, such as marriage, parenting, aging, and politics, though she tries not to respond to obvious engagement bait.
Woulard’s experience is not unique. By default, topics follow a “for you” timeline based on recommended posts rather than posts from accounts you already follow. There is meta he also said it does not want to “encourage” users to write about news and politics. Perhaps as a result, Threads’ “for you” feed is often slower and less focused on current events than X’s.
What the algorithm prioritizes are posts that get a lot of responses, even if it’s about a seemingly mundane topic. This led to a strange random quality to the tape that blogger Max was reading dubbed “Gas leak social network.” It’s not uncommon to see a post recommended by someone completely unrelated to you talking about a minor concern, medical condition, or other anodyne anecdote. What these posts have in common is a lot of responses.
It also created an opportunity for those willing to game the program’s algorithm by posting spammy content, generic questions or polarizing admissions aimed at attracting as many responses as possible. (The meta admins said they were working to fix After the increase of such posts on this topic, they accept that there are responsive posts most likely recommended.)
But for Woulard, Meta’s emphasis on “social conversations” worked to his advantage. He says he’s been able to max out three months worth of bonuses so far just by responding to Threads. Woulard makes more money from his Facebook page, but enjoys the simplicity of the Threads bonus program. “It’s so easy for me to make this money, I can sit in my room and answer a bunch in 30 minutes.”
For Meta, offering Instagram creators bonuses for posting on Threads is part of a strategy to use Instagram to grow the legacy service. The company has relied heavily on Instagram to grow already-engaged Threads 200 million users. There were also some growing pains, says social media consultant Matt Navarra.
“I think people make it difficult to create for platforms like Threads,” Navarra told Engadget. “Writing interesting, engaging posts for a text-based platform like X, Twitter or Threads is a different skill set. And I think that’s a bit difficult for some creators.”
Artist Josh Kirkham, who specializes in Bob Ross-style painting videos, has experienced this. With nearly 800,000 followers on Instagram, she is at the top tier of the bonus program, which entitles her to earn up to $5,000 per month from her posts on Threads. He was able to maximize his bonus by sharing drawing videos cut from his live streams on Instagram and TikTok.
Despite the success, he was unable to detect any patterns of what types of videos might be coming out. He has over 150,000 followers on Threads, but like other creators in the bonus program, relies on the app’s recommendation algorithm to get his posts noticed. “At first I was posting mountain videos and they were doing the best compared to everything else,” he says, “And then a week later every mountain video just looked like nothing. Sometimes videos that I thought would be good didn’t turn out well, and vice versa.”
Kirkham says he almost never responds to Threads posts when he’s trying to earn a bonus, because he worries that doing so will reduce his chances of getting the 5,000 views per post needed to earn the maximum payout. Still, as a full-time artist and creator, she says she’s grateful for the program. “It allowed me to pay off my credit card debt and then boost my credit score tremendously,” he says. “I’m hoping for at least a few more.”
Almost all of the developers who spoke to Engadget were skeptical that Meta would continue its bonus program at its current level for much longer. In the past, when the company tried to develop a new format like Instagram Reels or Facebook Live, it offered generous bonuses to creators, only to have those payouts dwindle as more people joined and Meta inevitably shifted its strategy and funding for creators elsewhere. .
Logan Reavis is a photographer with nearly 50,000 followers on Instagram and nearly 8,500 followers on Threads. Although he has more followers on Instagram, he says the Threads algorithm is more favorable to creators. “The [Threads] the algorithm works completely differently, especially as a photographer,” he says. “I feel like sharing my photos on Instagram has been difficult, but they encourage it on Threads. I’m actually reaching a completely different audience.”
Even so, he said he had to contend with the quirks of the Threads algorithm and its tendency to highlight engagement bait. “Replying to threads with a lot of comments or chatter gets me more bonus views, which is frustrating because there are so many clicks,” he says. To date, Reavis has not received the maximum potential $500 monthly bonus on Threads.
Creators are part of Meta’s strategy to make Threads the next billion people app, the company hasn’t always been able to explain what its newest app is actually for. So it should come as no surprise that even the creators he pays to publish there take it as a test.
“I still don’t think it has a niche in the social media ecosystem,” Navarra says. “He doesn’t really have an identity or a personality of his own and I think that’s one of his many problems right now.”
