11 YEARS OF MUWADO, A NEW LOOK, AND STORY MONETISATION

In early 2013, Muwado the idea came to life as the founder’s blog. That makes us 11 whole years now. Ululations and jubilations!!

To quickly recap what’s happened since then (we recently featured on the Building African Brands where we talked about this journey so check it out ), Muwado soon evolved to be a lifestyle content platform with additional voices from the African continent. One point of view, however ambitious, wasn’t going to effectively capture the pulse of the African experience. That business model became quickly unsustainable when revenue didn’t come in fast enough to keep on paying contributors.

#SOSONETWORKING

Instead of throwing in the towel, we pivoted into an Africa-centric social network in 2015, if you will, building a community of storytellers sharing and enjoying each others content. We maintained the platform but there was no financial gain. Under our new model, we were able to welcome and curate a wide range of brilliant content from African storytellers from all walks of life

In 2019, we decided to give content monetization another go with a different business model this time. We would leverage existing technology, customize it for the African market and provide tools on the platform that enabled existing and new storytellers to earn from their content. We launched this new direction with a party and then embarked on a journey to make it happen.

UNDP SUPPORT

These plans were accelerated by a grant from UNDP in 2022 that made the monetization tools a reality. Additionally, we were also able to give the platform a long overdue facelift. We shall be eternally grateful to them for believing in our idea where many others had said no.

We are therefore pleased to present to you the latest iteration of Muwado and happy to showcase the new tools that will allow our members to earn in what we believe is a more sustainable way. Let’s break it down…

STORY MONETISATION

1. Gifting

As a Muwado storyteller, your audience can now gift you if they are moved by your stories and want to ‘buy you a coffee’. You will notice gifting buttons at the end of every story. Your audience can choose to gift you one-off for a story or choose to gift you monthly if they seriously love your stories and want to pay long-term for consuming your artistry. The video below shows how this works.

2. Ad Revenue Share

We have built an advertising engine for the platform that allows targeted advertising. This way, advertisers are only charged when an advert is seen or clicked on. The advertising engine allows us to track these views and click and which story they appeared on.

This allows us to then easily share this advertising revenue with the storytellers on whose stories the advertisements appear.

The video below shows how this works.

3. Smart Newsletter

We now also have a smart newsletter that lets members customize it to their different tastes and preferences. You can subscribe to different storytellers, categories and tags and you’ll receive a weekly newsletter with the top stories just for you. The video below shows how this works.

4. Policies

You can now take full control of your Muwado profile and upload your stories yourself and monitor your earnings. Have a look at our new policies to ensure you are on board with the new direction before proceeding.

• Terms and conditions
• Privacy Policy
• Payments policy

With these new features, we believe Muwado is well-positioned to serve the best interests of African storytellers, story consumers and advertisers trying to get a good return on investment for their marketing budget.

JOIN MUWADO

However, even with all our innovations, we still can’t do this without you. To those who have joined us along the way, thank you for being part of this journey. And to the new people joining, welcome.

We need you—established and aspiring African content creators—to make this vision for the African creative economy a reality. Whether it’s opinion pieces, short stories, essays, poems, picture galleries, comics, podcasts, audio stories… Muwado is here to be the canvas you use to create your art and make a living from it. We are not asking for exclusivity; we’re inviting you to give your content additional reach with us and reap the rewards.

Beyond content creation, Muwado still offers traditional social features like status updates, groups, events and forums that foster cultural exchange and community.

Thank you for believing in our vision. We’re here to address any questions or feedback you may have—drop us a comment below. If you would like to support our journey as we continue growing the vision, we encourage you to use the gifting buttons below 🙂