...You won't make a lot of money right away with this new feature, but you can now enable web monetization by adding a "payment pointer" to your account.
👉 settings/misc to add a payment pointer
It's also in beta so there may be some kinks to work out.
Full details of how payment pointers in this other post...
I just wanted to mention how happy I am personally that we were able to ship functionality. It allows individual authors on DEV to get on board — right through their settings! As more Forems pop up, platform creators and individual members may be able to share in the pie. A lot of adoption has to happen for this to work out, but it's a future we're happy to be pushing.
Web monetization is not baked into browsers yet, but it may be sometime soon. Mozilla's support for Grant for the Web is cool to see. This could be an important part of content-driven web in the future.
I'm so excited about this collab! Immediately thought of you all when I met Coil in Amsterdam! I think adding web monetization to DEV is the perfect fit and incentive for authors!
Coil is the company principally behind web monetization. You can support web-monetized content creators by spending $5/month through their service.
Disclaimer: that's a Coil referral link.
Happy monetizing 🤑
Latest comments (48)
Is there an alternative that works? The coil site is down, no SSL cert.
That's interesting. I did follow the above steps and linked, may I know when I receive the money? I have been checking on uphold account but no pennies so far.
I'm way more curious about how this works than I am in actually using it.
I'm also really wary of things being monetised at all, though I did quite like the idea of things like flattr.
Woah. Just added my pointer. Waiting to see how it goes during my next post
This inspired me to go all in! I setup my wallet here and on my personal blog. In addition, I became a Coil member. This is really exciting stuff.
@ben May there be a chance to also see brave rewards added?
👋 everyone....
Ok. I'm not 💯% sure. But I'm smiling about this all the same.
I've added payment pointers to two sites and I've made $2.00. I'm enthused and excited. I highly recommend that everyone add a payment pointer to their profile. And write at least one article a week.
If you're not sure what to write about leave a comment on my topics I could write about discussion post.
I'll make sure I reply to every comment 🌞.
Whoa!, Really excited to try this out!
This is amazing! I've been putting aside adding this to my personal website for the longest time this just gave me that push.
Just a small tip: You can use your domain name as a payment pointer by setting up a 302 redirect from
/.well-known/payto your real payment pointer, replacing$withhttps://.For people who use Netlify, here’s an example
_redirectsfile that does this:…and now my payment pointer is just
$dt.in.th.This has been spec’d in the Payment Pointers Spec, under the “Resolution” section and supported by Coil extension.
...and now my payment pointer is just
$pother.caFreaking awesome! Great tip, thanks!
Is the contributor payment pointer working? All the post on DEV have the same payment pointer, I tried adding my own and nothing changed?
Does DEV receive a percentage of these micro-transactions? Or are these micro-transactions sent in their entirety to the creator of the post / article?
Nope, 100% direct to creator. Coil, or other providers might have to charge a credit card transaction depending on how you fund your account (not micropayments, but the initial funding), but DEV has no part in this except helping folks publish their pointer.
We will put our own pointer on other parts of the site where no user pointer exists, and to the extent we make money in this system it will be that way.
Awesome! One last question: Will Dev implement "premium" functionality for users using the website with Coil or with any other provider?
This is awesome. Question..... I'm using the dev.to app. Will it automatically coil my micro payments? And I've added my pointer. And I made a penny the other day 🤸.
🎉 🎉 🎉
DEV.to to ad companies
Wow, I absolutely love this show. Good call.
How're you tackling it on mobile app? Is it possible for Coil to make it through custom virtual environment.
@ben does this somehow mean that dev.to posts will start to be under a paywall?
No I wouldn't think so.
We are very against the idea of a Paywall for DEV. The express idea of a site like this is primarily to distribute content broadly to help us solve problems and teach each other as we learn.
Paywalls completely suck 99% of the time and are antithetical to this idea.
Here's an old blog post...
Medium Was Never Meant to Be a Part of the Developer Ecosystem
Ben Halpern ・ Jun 3 '19 ・ 5 min read
I could see us coming up with some kind of functionality that is monetized-only, but for us it wouldn't be straight up content. It's possible that some other Forems could be web-monetized only if it fits the purpose of the community, but again not DEV.