To help the Web Monetization Community, and past, present and future Web Monetization projects with the need for educating others about the Web Monetization Standard we've created this series, entitled Educating Your Community About Web Monetization.

Visit the links to the series above to explore pain points and community tips to educating others about Web Monetization.

Community Tip #3 on Educating Others on Web Monetization

Share a Story that Illustrates the Potential of Web Monetization

Rather than simply telling people what Web Monetization is, share a story that illustrates the potential of Web Monetization. Stories tend to stick in our minds, capture our attention, and inspire us to take action.

Research shows that people are more likely to remember a story than a statistic. In a program at Stanford University, students were asked to give one-minute speeches that contained three statistics and one story. Only 5 percent of the listeners remembered a single statistic, while 63 percent remembered the stories. ~ Karen Friedman

Leading with the following story is what got me excited about Stephanie Rieger's Three futures: A whitepaper that explores the future of web monetization. Her opener pulled me in:

Welcome to the future. It’s 2030…

You’re surfing the web and come across an interesting website. Perhaps it contains a collection of gluten-free recipes or a unique multi-episode knitting course, or maybe it’s a community for people learning to speak Spanish. Now imagine being able to easily send its creator money as a token of your appreciation. Rather than subscribe to that site specifically, you use a service that automatically streams tiny payments as you browse. The donations you make are paid in real-time to that creator’s digital wallet, and they may choose to reward you with a thank you message or small piece of bonus content.

This is the vision proposed by the creators of Web Monetization, an API and proposed web standard that enables users to stream tiny payments (usually fractions of a cent) to websites as they browse the web. In exchange for this payment, websites can provide users with a “premium” experience such as free access to exclusive content or removing advertising. All of this is made possible by Interledger, an open protocol that applies many of the principles of network design, to payments.

Storytelling is also what is so effective about Akita's A Web Monetization Story. Have a read if you haven't previously done so.

What Web Monetization Stories Have Resonated with You

Do you have a Web Monetization Story that you like to share when explaining what Web Monetization is or have you heard one shared by someone else that we haven't listed above? If so, we'd love it if you'd share it with us in the comments below, so as to inspire others among us here.