Elon Musk tries to lure YouTube stars on to Twitter

Although rival sites such as TikTok are rising up the rankings, YouTube generates more money for its creators than any other platform thanks to the scale of its advertising sales, the size of its audience and the structure of its revenue-sharing model.

The best-paid YouTubers earned a collective $300m (£264m) in 2021, according to Forbes, with advertising revenues supplemented by merchandise and back catalogue sales.

Top of the league is MrBeast, AKA 24-year-old Jimmy Donaldson from North Carolina, who began posting videos when he was 13. He took home an estimated $54m last year, trumping the actor Angelina Jolie and the media personality Kim Kardashian , and making him the best-paid YouTuber ever.

Those willing to pay to post will also be awarded the blue tick that shows Twitter has verified their identity, a feature typically reserved for public figures such as government officials, journalists and celebrities.

The first of these was Twitter Blue, rolled out in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Twitter reportedly considered an Only Fans-style subscription under its previous leadership but abandoned the plan under concerns about being able to police such a service for child sexual abuse material.

TikTok makes undisclosed funds available to some creators in the UK, while the user-generated site OnlyFans, which is dominated by pornography, gives creators 80% of their subscription fees.