{"id":3578,"date":"2025-11-07T23:10:50","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T22:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.tomayac.com\/2025\/11\/07\/using-the-web-monetization-api-for-fun-and-profit\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T23:10:50","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T22:10:50","slug":"using-the-web-monetization-api-for-fun-and-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/2025\/11\/07\/using-the-web-monetization-api-for-fun-and-profit\/","title":{"rendered":"Using the Web Monetization API for fun and profit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t

I recently spoke at JSConf Mexico<\/a>, where\nspent a lot of time with the Interledger Foundation<\/a>\nfolks in the hallway track and at the after party events, namely with\nIoana<\/a> (Eningeering Manager) and\nMarian<\/a> (DevRel) to talk about\nWeb Monetization<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Web Monetization gives publishers more revenue options and audiences more ways\nto sustain the content they love. Support can take many forms: from a one-time\ncontribution to a continuous, pay-as-you-browse model. It all flows seamlessly\nwhile people engage with the content they love. Publishers earn the moment\nsomeone engages, while audiences contribute in real time, using a balance they\ncontrol.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I encourage you all to give it a try! Install the\nextension<\/a>\nthat polyfills the proposed Web standard, get a wallet (I went with\nGateHub<\/a>, which works in US Dollars and Euros), and then\nconnect it to the extension.<\/p>\n

You need to have funds in EUR (\u20ac) or USD ($). If you have crypto, it won't work,\nwhich I've found out by trial and error, as I was part of\nCoil<\/a>, the Web Monetization predecessor, which paid out in\nXRP.<\/p>\n

Just to clarify, while you need a wallet\u2014that typically is used for crypto\u2014the\nactual transactions are all in real fiat money, Euro in my case.<\/p>\n

As an extension user \ud83d\udd17<\/a><\/h2>\n

Connect your wallet, and browse to a page that supports Web Monetization. You\nwill notice whether a page is monetized when the extension has a green\ncheckmark. My blog happens to be monetized.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

You can adjust how much you want to pay the site per hour and also send one-time\npayments. The money is "streamed" every minute, which you can observe in\nDevTools.<\/p>\n

\"Chrome<\/p>\n

We actually have\ncode in Chromium<\/a>\nto make native Web Monetization happen, implemented by Igalia and funded by the\nInterledger Foundation. I hope they can share the experiment results soon.<\/p>\n

As a publisher \ud83d\udd17<\/a><\/h2>\n

On your page, add a\npayment link<\/a>. You get\nthe personalized payment pointer from your wallet. The following snippet shows\nmine.<\/p>\n

<<\/span>link<\/span> rel<\/span>=<\/span>\"<\/span>monetization\"<\/span><\/span> href<\/span>=<\/span>\"<\/span>https:\/\/ilp.gatehub.net\/348218105\/eur\"<\/span><\/span> \/><\/span><\/span><\/code><\/pre>\n
Then you're ready to receive payments. Here's me browsing my blog and seeing\npayments go out from and come in to my GateHub wallet. This is of course\neffectively a zero sum game, me paying myself. The 0.01 cent are the streamed\npayments that go out and then come in again. I tested a one-time payment as\nwell. The 0.50 cents (not shown) was a successful one-time payment.<\/p>\n
\"The<\/p>\n
window.<\/span>addEventListener<\/span>(<\/span>'monetization'<\/span>,<\/span> (<\/span>event<\/span>)<\/span> =><\/span> {<\/span>\n  const<\/span> {<\/span> value,<\/span> currency }<\/span> =<\/span> event.<\/span>amountSent;<\/span>\n  console.<\/span>log<\/span>(<\/span>`<\/span>Browser sent <\/span>${<\/span>currency}<\/span><\/span> <\/span>${<\/span>value}<\/span><\/span>.<\/span>`<\/span><\/span>)<\/span>;<\/span>\n  const<\/span> linkElem =<\/span> event.<\/span>target;<\/span>\n  console.<\/span>log<\/span>(<\/span>'for link element:'<\/span>,<\/span> linkElem,<\/span> linkElem.<\/span>href)<\/span>;<\/span>\n}<\/span>)<\/span>;<\/span><\/code><\/pre>\n
For testing purposes, you can observe these monetization<\/code> events in Chrome\nDevTools by pasting in the snippet above in the Console.<\/p>\n
\"Chrome<\/p>\n
This way you could, for example, remove ads, or unlock an article when you\nnotice a one-time payment. On my blog, I just show a "thank you" message for\nnow.<\/p>\n
\"Thank<\/p>\n
I'm really bulli$h on this proposed standard. Hopefully someone else will try it\nand let me know how it goes. I truly and honestly believe that this could be the\nfuture for making the Web of tomorrow financially sustainable for publishers,\nbig and small.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t
\t\t\tI recently spoke at JSConf Mexico, where
\nspent a lot of time with the Interledger Foundation
\nfolks in the hallway track and at the after party events, namely with
\nIoana (Eningeering Manager) and
\nMarian (DevRel) to talk about
\nWeb Monetization.<\/p>\n
Web …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"intlwemo_wallet_address":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3578"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3588,"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578\/revisions\/3588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\t\t\t\t\"Thomas\n\t\t\t\tThis post appeared first on https:\/\/blog.tomayac.com\/2025\/11\/07\/using-the-web-monetization-api-for-fun-and-profit\/<\/a>.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There's also a\nJavaScript API<\/a>, so you can\nadjust the content of your page when your page notices that the user is paying.<\/p>\n