Bot creators now have a new way to make money Poe, the AI chat platform owned by Quora. On Monday, the company unveiled a revenue model that allows creators to set a per-message price for their bots so they can earn money every time a user sends them a message. The addition follows the October 2023 launch of a revenue-sharing program that would give bot creators a cut of profits when their users sign up for Poe’s premium product.
Poe was first launched by Quora in February 2023, and offers users the ability to test a variety of AI chatbots, including those from ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others. The idea is to give consumers an easy way to play with new AI technologies, all in one place, while giving Quora a potential source of new content.
The company’s revenue models offer a new twist on the creator economy, rewarding AI enthusiasts who create “prompt bots,” as well as developer-built server bots that integrate with Poe’s AI.
Last fall, Quora announced it would launch a revenue-sharing program with bot creators and said it would “soon” open the option for creators to set a per-message fee for their bots. Although it’s been almost 5 months since that announcement – almost “soon” – the latest is now live.
Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo he explained on Monday that Poe users will only see message points for each bot, which include the same points they have as either a free user or a Poe subscriber. However, creators will be paid in dollars, he said.
“This pricing mechanism is important for developers with significant model inference or API costs,” D’Angelo noted in a post on X. “Our goal is to enable a thriving ecosystem of model developers and bot builders who build on top of models and H covering those operating costs is a key part of that,” he added.
The new revenue model could spur the development of new kinds of bots, including in areas such as teaching, knowledge, assistants, analytics, storytelling and imaging, D’Angelo believes.
The offer is currently only available to bot creators in the US, but will expand globally in the future. Joins with creator monetization program who pays up to $20 per user that subscribes to Poe thanks to a creator’s bots.
Along with the per-message revenue model, Poe has also released an improved analytics dashboard that shows the average earnings for creator bots across payments, subscriptions, and messages. Its information is updated daily and will allow creators to better understand how their pricing is driving bot usage and revenue.
