After joining the Web Monetization Challenge at the AfricaHacks 2020 Hackathon, participants wanted to learn about Web Monetization. So we launched the Web Monetization for the Passion Economy Fellowship. The program brought together Content Creators and Builders to learn about Web Monetization for the first time, create content, and build solutions to enhance free, fair, and transparent open revenue models that gave the creators and consumers the power back.
Program Process
- Weekly reading list, event, and milestone submission
- Mentorship from the AfricaHacks team and the Web Monetization community
- Content creation challenges
- A Hackathon
- Access to tools and products ranging from cloud, marketing, sales, operations, and other tools needed to run an early-stage business.
- Airtime and internet data from Chimoney for all participants
- Coil credits for participants
- A year of egghead.io for all participants that demoed
Highlights
Projects
The participants built so many unique projects. Some that stood out to us are:
- TREBLE: Victoria Ayodeji created a TREBLE, a platform for web monetized live events where users can stream music or live shows with payments streamed to the Artist's wallet. Read more
Express Disposed: Muhammad Umar Inuwa and his team created a prototype of a platform for African Creators to host and earn from their content
Trotro Live: Godfred Addai Amako, Michael Akala, and Isaac Avoseh created Trotro Live, a digitized system to know actual 'government' or national fare when traveling via minivans taxis. Read more
Participants
For Cohort 1, active participants from Canada 🇨🇦, Nigeria 🇳🇬, Lesotho 🇱🇸, and Ghana 🇬🇭 and a mix of Builders and Creators. Many participants were new to web monetization, so it was inspiring to see them go from newbies to web monetization builders and creators in 6 weeks. Some comments from participants are:
Michele David said:
I have never thought of blogging or writing articles until I joined this program. And with the deadline on every breakthrough, I have learned to be self-disciplined and eager
Victoria Ayodeji said that:
I had no idea what Web Monetization was until I enrolled into this program. I learnt a new way to monetize contents without using ads to invade users privacy and that is, Web Monetization using Coil.
Now, I can categorically say I'm pumped enough to pass down the knowledge to the newbies.
Content
- Michael Akala created a Content Channel for Educating content creators to monetize their content on youtube and blogs.
- Victoria Ayodeji published an article on how to use Coil for web Monetization as a content creator. The article featured a step-by-step guide process of implementing web monetization on Coil.
- Rachael David published articles on monetizing Hashnode blogs and all the steps involved in adding web Monetization as Content Creator on Hashnode.
- Lebohang Bernard Motseki published an article on different revenue models used in Web Monetization. The blog post explored each revenue model's pros and cons and how content creators and product builders can use revenue models.
- Isaac Avoseh published articles on what Africans need to know about Web monetization and How Content Creators can successfully use Web Monetization in their work.
- Tanoh Jean Achile published an article on how technical and non-technical people can monetize their blogs.
Learnings
- Overcommunicate: We learned the importance of overcommunicating because we initially assumed that participants would follow the program calendar and event app's schedule and study materials. But we were wrong. We later realized that we needed to include more live events to provide reminders, handle Q and A, and have peers lead sessions. We also leveraged the text/SMS reminder feature from the AfricaHacks virtual learning and lab platform to send timely reminders for upcoming deadlines and events.
- Provide multiple touchpoints: If we combined the milestone-based program structure on all AfricaHacks programs with progressive content reveals and byte-sized content summaries, we would likely have provided a better experience and had more engagement. This is because many participants were not always connected or were busy with other engagements. A daily 160 character text/SMS highlighting a critical point with a link to further reading would have helped.
Opportunities
Builders and Products
There is an opportunity to support projects like TrotoLive, TREBLE, and others to take them from MVP to launch in the next 4-6 months. This could bring us closer to having Artists like Burna Boy, Davido, Wizkid, and others hosting web monetized live concerts on something like TREBLE, which will drive traction to the ecosystem and increase subscription to providers like Coil.
Creators and Content
There is a more enormous opportunity to engage and attract creators from Africa. This is because, from a recent clubhouse room, many content creators (mostly Yotubers and bloggers) of African descent who were in a room I spoke at have never heard of Web Monetization. It felt like magic when they learned about the potential of it.
A Web Monetization Course
There is an opportunity to partner with online learning platforms to create a Web Monetization tutorial for both Builders and Creators.
Appreciation
The Web Monetization for the Passion Economy program is made possible with the support of:
- Participants for joining the program and making it engaging and worthwhile for us
- Grant for the Web for supporting Africa's Journey to host a Web Monetization Hackathon and additional support of the Fellowship program
- Coil for the Coil credits and guidance
- Hammed Babatunde for coordinating the program
- Christine Dikongué and the Marketing team for developing and implementing marketing and promotional plans for the program
- Chimoney for powering airtime and internet data for virtual event participation and crypto prizes for giveaways and winning teams
You can apply for the next cohort when we launch at apply.africahacks.com. Please, comment or email team at africahacks.com to work with us.
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