Web Monetization, stream money on the go
Content is everywhere these days. All you need is at the tip of your fingers as long as you can successfully navigate the internet. The aftermath of the pandemic has seen lots of people change job roles by learning new skills or upskilling through various resources found on the internet. All that is needed to access most of these resources is internet access making learning accessible to everyone. The same can be said of other types of resources which are none educational such as images, blog posts, research articles, music, movies etc.
Platforms such as YouTube, medium, dev.io, Udemy, Udacity, Stackoverflow etc bridge the gap between content creators and consumers. As users visit these sites, various models are used to ensure that content creators get paid. Udemy and Udacity ensure that customers buy each course content while YouTube ensures that a creator must have a certain number of views before their contents can be monetized, some other sites leverage ads which come up at conspicuous intervals and may seem very annoying to consumers to ensure that creators get paid while some other sites allow contents to be accessed freely.
While some users may be content enough to pay, others go in search of free content which are usually not at par with the monetized content thereby creating a learning gap. Web monetization bridges this gap through the use of an easier and seamless model.
Web monetization balances the equation by ensuring that content creators get paid as their contents are viewed and consumers do not have to deal with ads or content purchase. Web monetization provides an open, native, efficient, and automatic way to compensate creators, pay for API calls, and support crucial web infrastructure.
Web Monetization implements Interledger. Interledger is an open neutral protocol for transferring money. It enables money to be transferred between different ledgers and currencies seamlessly. This means that a user can send money in a different currency say, USD while the receiver gets the equivalent of the said amount in BTC or any other currency of their choosing. This money is transferred in small quantities(packets) which makes the transfer fast — a stream like implementation (money streaming).
Yes, money can be streamed in this way, through Web Monetization.
I think the most beautiful thing about Web Monetization is the ease of integration. To enable Web Monetization on your content all you need is to leverage Web Monetization providers such as Coil who will provide the API that can be integrated into your content, the fun part is that the APIs are not complex, just a line of code and you are done. Off you go, making money off the web in what ever currency you desire.
