2020 saw huge strides for the Web Monetization Standard (Nelson, 2021), a newly proposed browser API standard that allows for the generation of a payment stream from the user directly to the website being viewed. (Melendez, 2019) For the open educational community, this represent a potential new funding source to allow educators and creatives to build sustainability behind their projects and the open educational resources that they craft. (Parameswaran, 2020) Part of the appeal of the Web Monetization Standard for the open educational community is that it gives content creators the ability to monetize content without advertisement, affiliate links, freemium models, or paywalls (although that is still possible with the Web Monetization Standard). Thereby giving the content creator the ability to make their educational resources open, while still earning money from the open educational resource to pay for the costs of crafting the content, as we recognize that not all open educational resources are funded by institutions and all creators need to earn a living wage.

Much of the headway seen in 2020 has been from the investment of Coil and Mozilla in Grant for the Web, which is helping to fund and educate educators, creators, and technologists in what the web monetization standard is and how it works. This is fostering the beginnings of a thriving community.

In this session, we will discover how the web monetization standard works and explore one educational association’s experience with the web monetization standard through their participation in Grant for the Web, and how they have been utilizing it to build open educational resources. In the process, we will explore the current challenges facing the web monetization standard, as well as the opportunities.