Using the Web Monetization API for fun and profit

> You can adjust how much you want to pay the site per hour and also send one-time payments. The money is "streamed" every minute, which you can observe in DevTools.

I guess the era of being able to leave a tab open without worrying about it is long over. Now you'll need to be careful to close every tab the moment you're done with it - perhaps after taking a screenshot of the page so you can read it more cheaply.

You can also add OpenAlias DNS TXT record with your cryptowallets, also web monetization of another kind.

https://openalias.org/

Not to be confused with the already existing Payment Request API: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Payment_Req...

Web monetization looks so promising. The big hang up for it to work is users have to have an account somewhere shared or penny transactions and payment streaming are too expensive. The cost of bank transfers kills it otherwise. Does this require a GateHub account to send and receive? The benefit of Coil was that there was no central account issuer. It works directly with the XRP ledger. The catch with that one is payments in anything other that XRP must be tokens on the ledger.

I like the idea but so far I keep seeing lack of adoption, in the case of Coil, or a shared institution requirement. If either of those get fixed web monetization will take off like wild fire.

still, the problem is people have to implement it and people have to assign wallets and the like. wrong idea for the problem at hand.

This is the first time I've heard of this standard and it looks interesting, but it doesn't seem like the payment processing is well standardized. I see in the W3C draft that the "Interledger Protocol" should be utilized, but looking at the wallet limitations (https://webmonetization.org/wallets/#limitations) it seems like there are no wallets that allow cross-wallet payments. Is that something thats planned in the future, or will wallets be allowed to lock down who can pay who?

You can also add OpenAlias DNS TXT record with your cryptowallets, also web monetization of another kind.

https://openalias.org/

I like the idea but so far I keep seeing lack of adoption, in the case of Coil, or a shared institution requirement. If either of those get fixed web monetization will take off like wild fire.

Not to be confused with the already existing Payment Request API: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Payment_Req...

still, the problem is people have to implement it and people have to assign wallets and the like. wrong idea for the problem at hand.

> You can adjust how much you want to pay the site per hour and also send one-time payments. The money is "streamed" every minute, which you can observe in DevTools.

It only streams money when the tab is in the foreground and active. But yes, if you are on a monetized tab, get called for lunch, and don't lock your computer (what's wrong with these people , it could be that you stream all your funds to that one tab. I think the extension and the final browser UI once it's natively supported needs a way to let you limit the maximum amount of money, and also show you stats about where your money went so you can more easily adjust each site's amount.

When Coil did their demos years ago the payment streaming examples were videos and music. A pay per minute kind of deal. Payment streaming for read content does sound abusive especially for slow readers.

I guess if it would reach the higher level of adoption there would be a very easy way to charge back for the auto- requested stuff.

Also there could be mandatory confirmation required for any amount set.

Want to remove ads? Click and confirm.

For just donating 1c per minute of reading you could have those queued somewhere and still have a chance to explicitly approve it once a month / a week / a day

What happens if you block network for the tab once it's finished loading? Does it delete the page if payments aren't going through anymore?

This makes it obviously a pain in the ass that nobody normal will tolerate; dead on arrival, waste of time

This is not a "standard." From their documentation[0]:

  Browsers already know how to interpret certain rel
  values because of web standards.

  ...

  The monetization link type, however, isn’t a standard yet.

And nothing about the "Web Monetization" primary intent[1] is appealing as a standard worthy of being adopted:

  Web Monetization gives publishers more revenue options ...

0 - https://webmonetization.org/developers/link-element-webpage/...

1 - https://webmonetization.org/

I guess if it would reach the higher level of adoption there would be a very easy way to charge back for the auto- requested stuff.

Also there could be mandatory confirmation required for any amount set.

Want to remove ads? Click and confirm.

For just donating 1c per minute of reading you could have those queued somewhere and still have a chance to explicitly approve it once a month / a week / a day

This makes it obviously a pain in the ass that nobody normal will tolerate; dead on arrival, waste of time

Here's the docs for how and when continuous payments are being sent: https://webmonetization.org/developers/link-element-webpage/....

What happens if you block network for the tab once it's finished loading? Does it delete the page if payments aren't going through anymore?

I think this would technically be possible, but less practical once it's supported natively in the browser.

Web Monetization supports multimedia content monetization as well (you place the `link` in your `audio` or `video`). Don't forget that you are in control. If you're a slow reader, adjust the site's amount, so when you spend a long time on a page they don't get excessive payments.

This is not a "standard." From their documentation[0]:

  Browsers already know how to interpret certain rel
  values because of web standards.

  ...

  The monetization link type, however, isn’t a standard yet.

And nothing about the "Web Monetization" primary intent[1] is appealing as a standard worthy of being adopted:

  Web Monetization gives publishers more revenue options ...

0 - https://webmonetization.org/developers/link-element-webpage/...

1 - https://webmonetization.org/

I think this would technically be possible, but less practical once it's supported natively in the browser.

Here's the docs for how and when continuous payments are being sent: https://webmonetization.org/developers/link-element-webpage/....

Here's the docs for this: https://webmonetization.org/developers/link-element-webpage/.... You can monetize `audio`, `video`, and `picture` as well.

For the sake of completeness, you can also monetize your Atom, RSS, and JSON feeds: https://webmonetization.org/developers/rss-atom-jsonfeed/.

I recently spoke at JSConf Mexico, where I spent a lot of time with the Interledger Foundation folks in the hallway track and at the after party events, namely with Ioana (Engineering Manager) and Marian (DevRel) to talk about Web Monetization.

Web Monetization gives publishers more revenue options and audiences more ways to sustain the content they love. Support can take many forms: from a one-time contribution to a continuous, pay-as-you-browse model. It all flows seamlessly while people engage with the content they love. Publishers earn the moment someone engages, while audiences contribute in real time, using a balance they control.

I encourage you all to give it a try! Install the extension that polyfills the proposed Web standard, get a wallet (I went with GateHub, which works in US Dollars and Euros), and then connect it to the extension.

You need to have funds in EUR (€) or USD ($). If you have crypto, it won't work, which I've found out by trial and error, as I was part of Coil, the Web Monetization predecessor, which paid out in XRP.

Just to clarify, while you need a wallet—that typically is used for crypto—the actual transactions are all in real fiat money, Euro in my case.

As an extension user

Connect your wallet and browse to a page that supports Web Monetization. You will notice whether a page is monetized when the extension has a green checkmark. My blog happens to be monetized.

The Web Monetization extensions's popup window.

You can adjust how much you want to pay the site per hour and also send one-time payments. The money is "streamed" every minute, which you can observe in DevTools.

Chrome DevTools Network tab showing a POST request for a payment.

We actually have code in Chromium to make native Web Monetization happen, implemented by Igalia and funded by the Interledger Foundation. I hope they can share the experiment results soon.

As a publisher

On your page, add a payment link. You get the personalized payment pointer from your wallet. The following snippet shows mine.

<link rel="monetization" href="https://ilp.gatehub.net/348218105/eur" />

Then you're ready to receive payments. Here's me browsing my blog and seeing payments go out from and come in to my GateHub wallet. This is of course effectively a zero sum game, me paying myself. The 0.01 cent are the streamed payments that go out and then come in again. I tested a one-time payment as well. The 0.50 cents (not shown) was a successful one-time payment.

The GateHub wallet showing incoming and outgoing transactions.

There's also a JavaScript API, so you can adjust the content of your page when your page notices that the user is paying.

window.addEventListener('monetization', (event) => {
  const { value, currency } = event.amountSent;
  console.log(`Browser sent ${currency} ${value}.`);
  const linkElem = event.target;
  console.log('for link element:', linkElem, linkElem.href);
});

For testing purposes, you can observe these monetization events in Chrome DevTools by pasting in the snippet above in the Console.

Chrome DevTools Console showing a event.

This way you could, for example, remove ads, or unlock an article when you notice a one-time payment. On my blog, I just show a "thank you" message for now.

Thank you message in the footer of my blog showing how much the user has paid.

I'm really bulli$h on this proposed standard. Hopefully someone else will try it and let me know how it goes. I truly and honestly believe that this could be the future for making the Web of tomorrow financially sustainable for publishers, big and small.

Hacker Times

Hacker Times

Using the Web Monetization API for fun and profit

Discussion

Discussion

As an extension user

As a publisher