The Interledger Community 🌱: Power Plays Podcast

Tutorial: How to Web Monetize a Webflow Website

Power Plays Podcast — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 20:19:22 +0000

Webflow is a drag-and-drop tool that allows creators to create beautiful, responsive websites without writing a single line of code. Its interface resembles Adobe Photoshop and it writes clean, semantic code that is compatible across all browsers and devices. But Webflow does not natively support the proposed web monetization standard.

In this tutorial I will show you how I have been able to web monetize my website in Webflow.

First, open your Webflow project and then go to Project Settings.

Go to Custom Code. Under Head Code, paste the following code:

<meta name="monetization" content="PAYMENT POINTER">

Where PAYMENT POINTER is your payment pointer.

Press Save Changes.

This will allow you to receive micropayments whenever a user with the Coil browser plug-in installed visits your website.

Now that our website is monetized, we will hide content so that it is only visible to Coil members.

In order to do this, go to the Designer View.

Click Pages and select the page that you want to have content hidden on. Go to Page Settings.

Go to Custom Code. Under Head Code, paste the following code:

<style>
   .hidden {
     display: none;
   }
</style>

<script>
   if (document.monetization) {
     document.monetization.addEventListener('monetizationstart', () => {
       document.getElementById('exclusive').classList.remove('hidden')
     })
   }
</script>

Now, find a part of your page where you’d like the content to only be visible to Coil members and go to the Settings tab for that element.

For example, if you have text, click the text and go to Text Settings.

Under Style, go to Selector and type the word “hidden”. This will create a new style called hidden - you do not need to adjust it any further.

Go to Element Settings. Under Block Settings, the ID field is blank. Type the word “exclusive” into this field and choose the Tag “div”.

That’s it! This element is now hidden and will only be visible to paying subscribers.

Note that this only hides content on the client side. A user could pretend to be web monetized by using the developer console in their browser. But, I like to think that most people are honest and wouldn’t resort to doing this.

POWER PLAYS Podcast — Grant Report #2

Power Plays Podcast — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 17:20:43 +0000

Hello friends,

Project Update

Since our interim report, we’ve continued to work on producing the POWER PLAYS podcast and the good news is, we’ve finally launched our second season! All eight episodes can now be streamed over Cinnamon, and transcripts are available exclusively to Coil subscribers through our website. You can find all our web monetized content here.

(This particular page is not behind a paywall, so non-Coil subscribers can navigate to it and see what content is available, but if you click on any of the episode titles, access is restricted to those with Coil memberships.)

A few episode highlights include:

Grammy-nominee Kokayi Issa speaking about how Black creators can benefit from web monetization
Nathan Schneider proposing that we combine the rich heritage of cooperatives with the promise of 21st-century technologies in order to create a new kind of online economy, one free from the economics of monopoly, exploitation, and surveillance
Lior Zalmanson sharing brand-new research into how small creators have monetized their work and looking particularly at which strategies most entice content consumers to pay for the content they view
Richard Whitt, who until 2018 was one of Google’s most senior attorneys, on rethinking ad tech and how we can create a future where the Artificial Intelligence lurking behind our various digital interfaces doesn’t harm us
Amber Case, a futurist, on what she predicts the Internet of 2031 will look like, and why Interledger, Unlock, and the InterPlanetary File System protocols excite her so much.

We were initially supposed to have these episodes ready by April, but we weren’t able to meet that deadline unfortunately. We are very grateful to Grant for the Web for being so understanding and flexible and granting us an extension.

Project Achievements

Our primary objective was to produce eight audio episodes about the web monetization ecosystem and its technology. This has now been accomplished.

We said that one episode would be released each week, over eight weeks, free of charge on all major podcast listening platforms, but that users who didn’t want to wait would be able to 'buy' immediate access to all eight episodes on the podcast's website using web monetization technology. We are pleased to say that this is now possible - users with a Coil subscription who head to our website are able to listen to episodes, and read transcripts of these conversations, up to eight weeks earlier than everyone else.

We set ourselves the ambitious goal of having at least 5% of our listeners head to the podcast website to 'buy' immediate access to all of the episodes, thereby trying out web monetization technology. This hasn’t yet happened, but our episode catalogue has only been online for the past three days. In total, over the grant period we raised €86, or about $102, through web monetization technology, which was less than we budgeted for (we hoped to raise $220) but nonetheless has proven to us the utility of Interledger and shown that it really can be a revenue stream. As awareness of the technology grows, we are hopeful that we will convert more listeners into Coil subscribers, and thereby grow our revenue achieved through web monetization technology.

We also created a legal entity in Delaware to be a home for the podcast, now and into the future, following advice from our counsel.

Key Activities

Podcast

Our primary activity was producing our podcast episodes, which included scheduling interviews with guests, doing prep to inform the conversations, briefing guests and editing conversations, and then distributing these episodes through various listening platforms and on Cinnamon. All episodes were then transcribed for accessibility purposes.

Website Upgrade

We upgraded our website to include our new brand assets (such as our new podcast cover), to include popup windows that raise awareness of Coil, and to include a special portal that is entirely web-monetized and hides transcripts and episode audio files behind a paywall for a period of exclusivity. Our website runs on Webflow, which unfortunately is not friendly for web monetized creatives, so we intend to publish a blog post on this forum later this week which will be a tutorial into how to web monetize a Webflow website.

Communications and Marketing

We have primarily been raising awareness of the new season of POWER PLAYS through low-cost, high-reach advertisements that have run in various email newsletters.

All of these advertisements ran on or after July 6, when we published our first new podcast episode. We have more newsletter advertisements scheduled to run in different newsletters once a week for the next seven weeks as we find that one $25-50 ad can attract 150 to 200 new listeners, and these are listeners whose backgrounds match the audience we are trying to attract.

We do have a small presence on social media, but to say it is not a significant source of listeners for us would be an understatement. Our conversion rate of social media posts to listeners is next to zero.

However, we do ask our interview guests to share a link to their interview on their social media profiles, and in some cases this can generate 5,000 to 10,000 downloads of that particular episode. For example, when we interviewed Mance Harmon in season one of POWER PLAYS, we received 10,000 downloads in a day after his company, Hedera Hashgraph, shared a link on social media.

We intend to ask our guests this season to share links, too, but we will do this once the exclusivity period for an episode ends and it is now freely accessible via Spotify or Apple Podcasts. This may seem counterintuitive given our podcast series is intended to promote web monetization technology, but we are seeking to raise awareness of Interledger during our audio conversations, and then encouraging people to try out Coil to hear the next episode of our podcast earlier. This is our experiment, and it might not be the right one, but we think removing the friction in order to learn about what web monetization technology is, is really important before we can realistically expect a passive listener to try the tech out.

What’s Next?

POWER PLAYS isn’t over. We will develop a third season later this year, and we intend to keep it web monetized just like this season was, with exclusive early-access to content for Coil subscribers.

We will also publish a couple of ‘bonus interviews’ with Grant for the Web grantees on our Cinnamon channel over the coming weeks. We interviewed some other creators for this season, but ultimately the conversations didn’t feel right to publish to our current audience which largely consists of policymakers and investors. We’ll instead repackage these interviews, cap them at about 10 minutes, and upload them to Cinnamon to see if they resonate with the audience there. Cinnamon seems to have a more creative audience, so it’s very possible that’s the best place for those particular conversations.

Community Support

Please consider listening to our podcasts or reading the transcripts, and sharing links to the episodes with your friends or professional network.

We’d also appreciate a review in the Apple Podcast player, if you have it, as Apple’s algorithm has really grown our audience and every five-star review we receive seems to translate into a few more listeners.

More than anything, you can help us out by helping us grow our reach so that more people can learn about the Interledger protocol and the proposed web monetization standard.

Relevant Links

POWER PLAYS Podcast — Grant Report #1

Power Plays Podcast — Fri, 30 Apr 2021 14:19:21 +0000

POWER PLAYS is a podcast that charts how important decisions about the Internet’s infrastructure and institutions have been made. In season one, the podcast spoke with Internet pioneers like Erika Mann, Stephanie Perrin, and Sarah Deutsch.

With the support of Grant for the Web, POWER PLAYS has been developing a second season that imagines a future era where the web is monetized in different ways.

Project Update

Over the past few months, we have conducted structured conversations with various subject matter experts exploring the web monetization ecosystem, most recently angel investor and philanthropist Esther Dyson and economist Richard Hill. We are continuing with these interviews over the next week and are almost ready to put a wrap on recording.

We’ve thought a lot more strategically about how to produce POWER PLAYS, planning out episodes, identifying growth goals, and exploring new growth and distribution mechanisms to expand our core audience. Among other new ideas, we connected with Danny Holman from Cinnamon and launched a new distribution channel for the ‘outtakes’ of our podcast.

We also participated in On Deck’s eight-week podcasting fellowship, from February to April, which allowed us to cross-promote our existing episodes with podcasters with larger followings to raise awareness that we exist, to take part in storytelling masterclasses where we refined our editing skills, and to collaborate with influencers and others to build our brand.

On May 26, 2021 we will publish every episode of season two of POWER PLAYS on Cinnamon and on our website for Coil subscribers to exclusively binge listen to. One week later, we will begin distributing these episodes one week at a time through podcasting apps like Apple Podcasts and Spotify to POWER PLAYS’ existing audience and other non-Coil subscribers to consume and to become acquainted with web monetization technologies.

Progress on objectives

We have made progress on our core deliverable of producing professionally-produced podcast episodes. The eight episodes will be between 40 and 60 minutes once edited. We have also been expanding our audience and now have approximately 3,000 downloads per episode. The goal is to expand this number significantly.

Key activities

Aside from the basics of producing new content (which is by far the most time consuming component of this project), we commissioned new cover art for season two of POWER PLAYS, designed by the Argentine artist Nahuel Bardi. We are in the progress of redesigning our website to match this new branding. We thought it was important to adopt a new cover for season two of POWER PLAYS because it’s what every listener sees on their mobile device and our previous cover didn’t communicate ‘web monetization’ at all. In the new cover, it is more metaphorical about the future of the Internet but includes a coin motif to make a clear reference to the season two theme.

Communications and marketing

We will primarily begin marketing season two of POWER PLAYS on the day it is available on Cinnamon and to Coil subscribers. However, one week ahead of this, we will distribute a two-minute trailer to existing subscribers across monetized and unmonetized channels in order to raise awareness of the existence of the launch of the new season.

We have also connected with product managers at Apple to formally request that POWER PLAYS be listed as ‘podcast of the day’ in the U.S. Apple Podcasts app on the day that episode one of season two is distributed on the platform. At this time, we are pencilled in for June 2, 2021, but this could change and the exact scheduling is outside our control.

We have purchased an advertisement in Netflix writer Sonia Weiser’s industry newsletter - which reaches over 6,000 journalists a week from top-tier publications across the U.S. and Europe - to promote the podcast on July 6, 2021. Unfortunately, no earlier slots were available, but the intention here is to source new listeners and raise awareness of the web monetization ecosystem and not to generate press. (As of February 2021, this newsletter has an average open rate of 45.9% and average ad click rate of 18.3%. It only has one ad per newsletter, right at the very top of the email.)

What’s next?

There is still a lot of work to be done on this project -- podcast episodes need to be edited, some interviews still need to be conducted, and we need to make contact with podcast industry blogs to try to generate some more buzz for the season launch. But while we are a little behind schedule, we’re on track for a successful season two launch.

What community support would benefit your project?

I’m looking for a few more guests to interview. In particular, I’d like to speak with an economist who can speak about Interledger specifically, rather than more generally about the economics of the Internet. I’m also looking to speak with someone using Coil in a really quirky way -- there’s a lot of room for interpretation there, but basically not just blogging. Using Coil like no one else is.

And while there’s almost a wrap on season two of POWER PLAYS, there’s no harm in interviewing more people for season three! If you - or someone you know - would make a great interview subject, please consider completing this super short form to add your/their details to our bank of potential guests. Thank you!

Finally, if you could leave POWER PLAYS a five star review on your favorite podcasting app, that would help us immensely in growing our audience. Those algorithms and recommendation engines really respond well to positive reviews! (You can find us here on Apple Podcasts.)

Additional comments

Thanks for supporting POWER PLAYS.