Get paid to write on Airpen: Earn revenues from your publications

Monetization has always been at the heart of our objectives by building Airpen. Great monetization is about having the entire control of how much, how, when and where you want to get paid.

✨ This is what we are releasing today ✨

Introducing for the first time in the publishing industry a fully user owned and decentralized monetization system which allows you to create your own:

Renewable content membership: readers will pay at a recurring time to keep access to your private content
Micro-payments: readers will pay once to get access to the gated content

How to monetize your content?

First of all, as a writer you should have written a valid article to be able to publish it. It should contain a title, cover image and tags.

Then, click on "Continue" at the bottom right of your draft to get access to the publication settings.

From there, get to the "Private Content" tab to modify the gating settings for your publication.

You will have 2 options to gate your content and make it accessible only for users who meet your requirements:

Make email required: People will have to enter their email and verify it to read your publication. They will now be subscribed to you and will receive email notifications when you publish on Airpen.
Make publication paid: People will have to pay once or pay for your membership to get access to your current or future publications.

But what "gating" means?

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"Gating" means creating a barrier to access certain content. In this case, it refers to make your publication accessible only to users who meet certain requirements, such as entering their email or paying for a membership. This allows you to monetize your content and control who can access it.

That being said,

Let's set-up your first private content

Step 1: Check "Make this publication paid?"

Step 2: Fill-in form to create your first pass or membership.

Here, you will have to set:

Network: You can set either Ethereum or Optimism

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More networks will be added in the future, depending on the needs

Name: This is the name of your pass or membership which will be displayed to your readers when they pay to access your content.
Currency: This is the currency on the chosen network that you accept. Chose it carefuly.
Price: This is the price for your pass or membership that readers will have to pay.
Be careful and keep in mind that your content should be worth to pay for this amount

Want to create a membership rather that a one-time payment access?

Yes you can, just check the below switch, set the duration of your membership and you're all set!

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The duration (in days), is the amount of time your content is accessible for the readers who pay for it. After this date, the membership will renew, just like any other basic membership.

Review what's displayed in the summary to ensure you've set everything as you wanted 👆

Now just click on "Create Membership" or "Create Pass" depending on your settings. Your wallet will open up to pay the fees for the creation.

As said before, all of this is entirely decentralized and powered by Unlock Protocol, which means that YOU are the complete owner of the pass or membership you are creating. We will detail it later below.

Step 3: Set-up the referral rewards settings

Referral rewards, for what?
As a creator, Airpen allows you to share your revenues with people who help you generate more incomes.

If someone on Airpen clicks the "Share" button inside your publication, it will be shared with a referral id in the url to track who shared your publication.

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Don't put your wallet address manually in the url. 1 - Connect with the account you want to receive the rewards to. 2 - Just click the Share button on the publication page 3 - Now you get an valid url

Use the share button to share a publication with your referral identifier in the url

Let's get an example:

Bob liked your publications and shares it on Twitter. Your membership costs $10 and you've set up below a referral fee of 20%.

Marie, a friend of Bob, have seen the preview of the publication and knows that if Bob shares it, it is that it's worth it!

Marie pays for the publication, and Bob who initially shared the publication will receive instantly 20% of $10, equals $2!

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If you used Unlock Protocol before and already created passes or memberships using their system, you can connect them on Airpen by clicking on "Connect one of your pass to this publication"

Once everything is set up, you can review the paid summary and click the Publish button!

How to get access to paid content?

Now that you require a payment to access your publication, let's see what the readers have to do to unlock it.

When arriving on your private publication gated by the pass or membership you have created, here is what your readers will see 👇

In this case we've locked this publication using the Monthly (30 days) membership that we created above. Click on the "Buy access" button to get access to this publication and the other ones gated by this membership.

This window opens-up, telling you that you are going to pay for "Airpen News - Monthly membership" for 0.006 ETH or $10.03.

The author has enabled only payment via cryptocurrency, so you will have to pay the 0.0055 using Ethereum cryptocurrency.

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Note that you can also enable payments by stripe (credit card) alongside payments in crypto.

For this purpose, please refer to our documentation.

Next, review the payment you are going to proceed.

Click "<b>Pay using crypto</b>" — Click "**Pay using crypto**"

Your wallet will open to pay for the membership, review the transaction and click confirm.

We are now creating your pass or membership, and sending it directly to your wallet (so you get what you paid for). Just wait for the transaction to proceed, until you see the next screen.

Boom 💥<br>You have now successfully <b>paid</b> and <b>received</b> your membership in your wallet!<br><br>You can now close the payment pop-up and read your publication!<br> — Boom 💥
You have now successfully **paid** and **received** your membership in your wallet!

You can now close the payment pop-up and read your publication!

How Monetization Works on Airpen?

We are using Unlock Protocol to handle all the monetization process. Unlock helps us handle memberships, in-app stripe payments, token gating content and more.

That's why, as an author, if you created your own passes or memberships and want to properly manage them, you will have to go on your profile, click the "Paid Stats" tab and click on "Unlock", or directly go on Unlock Protocol page.

Conclusion

Airpen is proud to release a fully user owned and decentralized monetization system for writers to take control of their earnings. With renewable content memberships and micro-payments, writers can make their content accessible to readers in a way that meets their needs while also maximizing their revenue. By using Unlock Protocol, Airpen ensures that writers maintain complete ownership over their passes and memberships. With this new system in place, writers can focus on creating great content while also earning what they deserve.

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