Web Monetization and the Passion economy are in their infancy. With Web Monetization and Interlegder, Builders are currently exploring products and solutions that provide fair, transparent, and alternative revenue models for content creators. On the other hand, Content Creators are exploring processes and methods for owning their content, earning revenue, and building a community around the content that they create.

The Passion Economy arose because of people's desire and the opportunity to generate revenue from doing things they love and good at. In the last few years, the previous era, we saw Influencers who made money by sharing their lifestyle, process, and experiences. Today, Creators are rising. Creators that create content (video, articles, games, and more) around their passion are starting to take influencers' place.

In the next few years, I predict that it will be Creators over Influencers, Micro-payments over ad revenue, and Communities over followers.

I like to describe the phase that we are in now as the early days of the internet—the days when there were no Facebook, Google, and others. Hence, I see opportunities for builders to create new business lines and new revenue models and opportunities for creators to own their content and leverage open standards like Web Monetization and Interledger Payment pointers (ILP) to monetize their content.

Getting started with Web Monetization can be a challenge: many do not know where to start because the resources are all over the place. That is why we created the Web Monetization for the Passion Economy program at AfricaHacks (See Cohort 1). Below, you will find an abridged curriculum of the 6-week program outline, links to a few program resources, and weekly deliverables. I hope this serves as a starting point for anyone looking to get started with Web Monetization and for programs looking to design educational materials for Web Monetization.

Week 1: Introduction to Web Monetization

Reading and learning:

• Stefan Thomas @Coil Web Monetization An Alternative to Ads, hacks.mozilla.org
• https://developers.coil.com
• https://webmonetization.org
• Web Monetization like I'm 5

Action Items:

• Summarize your understanding of Web Monetization in the form of a blog post, video, sound
• Monetize the content you created
  • See DEV is now Web Monetized
• Report how much you have made in a Twitter post tagging @GrantForTheWeb and @Coil
• Set up a Coil account to support creators

Week 2: Analysis of current content space and revenue models

Reading:

• Ads and Privacy economics
• Content monetization strategies

Action Items (pick one)

• Revenue modeling
  • Create a calculator using JS, Sheet/Excel to compare different monetization strategies. Compare new (less than 1k subscriber) vs. established.
• Create content about different revenue models for online creators
  • Summarize your finding of revenue opportunities for new creators vs. established using different monetization strategies

Week 3: A case study

Reading

• A detailed study of Content monetization. Consider:
  • How
  • Benefits
  • Downsides
• Resources:
  • 6 Strategies Publishers Can Use To Monetize Digital Content
  • Chaintip Creator Unveils New Tipping Tool Sharetip
  • https://www.chaintip.org/

Action Items

• How might an under-monetized content benefit from Web Monetization and Interledger payment pointers, especially for creators from Africa and for Africa-focused content

Week 4: Hackathon: User-centered design for content Builder & Creators

Reading

• The User-centered Design process

Action Items

• Submit:
  • User interview summary
  • Sketches or low-fi prototypes
  • Present your potential solution/idea in the form of a video demo of the project for builders and content for creators. Include how talking to users/your community informed your decisions

Week 5: Hackathon for the Web

Action Items:

• Builders:
  • Enable new revenue model or
  • Enable content discovery or
  • Enable easy monetization of content
• Creators
  • Curate and monetize content or
  • Create and monetize content
  • Develop a process to repeated share monetized content to your community

Week 6: Project wrapup, Awards, and graduation to Startup Sandbox program

Reading

• Web Monetization and Interledger
  • https://interledger.org/overview.html
• Future opportunities
  • Builders: Building a Web Monetization provider
    • https://developers.coil.com
  • Creators: Building a community
    • http://hackingcommunities.com

Please, note that the suggested program is very early-stage and we are currently refining the content and structure as we run Cohort one of the AfricaHacks Web Monetization for the Passion Economy program. I encourage comments and feedback, please, and encourage you to use this to develop content for teaching about web Monetization.