Would you like to learn how anyone, especially developers, can easily monetize contributions to open source projects hosted on websites like Github by using Utopian.io because up until today it has been very difficult to actually earn any money off of an open source project without having built-in monetization?
This post is designed to be a case study of how the entire process works because what we are seeing here is an open source contribution based on visibility in the form of a new advertising campaign on Google, Facebook, and YouTube for this exact post and the matching video explaining how this works! 1,000+ viewers already watched the video on YouTube below along with thousands more seeing the original post on Facebook.
Bottom Line Up Front! Up until recently, programmers, coders, and developers have been restrained heavily by the need to make projects profitable. All of us hoping to benefit from these creations have also done without the corresponding new apps, products, inventions, discoveries, and analysis that would have resulted from these contributions which were not created because of no way to make money existing.
Today there is a way to easily monetize open source contributions which will empower a new generation of creativity and I am going through the process to change that contribution into money right here on https://utopian.io/ in this post! Anyone else is free to do the same thing along with me which now unlocks the potential to just create and maintain open source projects that actually do good and help people with built in monetization by posting about it on Utopian.io!
What is even better is that no coding experience is required for many contributions like the one I am making here! Just helping open source projects with visibility like I am doing with this post and the matching ads is enough to make a contribution. I will show you how every single part of the system works here because if you are coding open source projects or if you're thinking of making contributions or you already have, this is a game changer in terms of earning some money.
https://github.com/ is the top website in the world for open source project collaboration and contribution currently.
Now, how do you make money off of this?
Here's a new website powered by the Steem blockchain that essentially turns a Github contribution into a post on Steem, which then pays out rewards.
I will explain all this to make it perfectly clear how it works and I will start with some examples.
https://utopian.io/ was created by developer @elear who I imagine has struggled with the same problem coding online:
How do you turn your service in creating and coding into money?
You can see this is Utopian.io.
It's a list of all the projects that have been submitted. You can browse contributions by Github repositories and you can see the matching contribution on Github directly when it's linked.
Now, you don't have to just use Github for this, but you can link it directly to your Github for best results.
I will show you a couple of examples here.
This is a contribution that earned $124 a few days ago. The author received $109 for this while those upvoting on Steem got $14.
That means the author linked to an open-source Github contribution.
This project right below is "codewithcheese / Steem-mentions" on Github and codewithcheese turned this contribution, which by itself is very unlikely to earn any money at all, into a post on Utopian, which is very useful.
Not only does this process make it possible for developers to actually earn money, but it also makes it possible to get attention and to get users for whatever it is you've developed.
I went through this entire post that codewithcheese made, which I found extremely helpful. This earned $109 for the author and almost $15 for the upvoters.
You can see any of these yourself anytime by going to Utopian.io, and if you've got Github projects you can link any of them up. I would imagine it would be good to do ones you're keeping up with.
Here's another one by MattyIce that I found extremely helpful today. It is a Bot Tracker and he earned $23 on this ten days ago.
When you click on the post in the newsfeed this is what comes up, it's essentially a post that's made on the Steem blockchain, which is submitted through and hosted on Utopian.io.
Then, it's given exclusive rewards and upvotes from Utopian.io’s Steem account, which is funded by sponsors who give it $35 plus as of today, not 10 days ago on the upvotes.
I found this post through Utopian.io and it shows how you can use all these voting bots on Steem to make a profitable upvote purchase.
Now, this is the Github contribution here on the Github page.
Then this is the actual Github project you might say, which is hosted on Amazon Web Services and this tool was extremely helpful for me today.
I just threw in a $14 or so Steem Backed Dollars bid over to @buildawhale and I got a $20 plus upvote on the post from them, which I was able to locate by using this service that got credit on Utopian.io.
I've also located all of these other bots now, which I'm able to use through a service that I previously was unaware of. This is extremely helpful on a larger scale as now any of us can put tools together that are helpful, and it doesn't have to be about Steem.
Now, sure these Steem ones are likely to have a chance to earn much more than $35. If you look at some of these other contributions, this codewithcheese one analyzes the Steem blockchain and it got significantly more than $35, but it doesn't have to do anything with Steem because now the account that is managed by Utopian.io can upvote anything.
You could do any project not related to Steem at all and still earn $35 for the contribution if there's less than 10 submitted that day.
If you are brand-new and you've never heard me mention Steem anywhere before, Steem is a blockchain-based social media platform and blogging website where anyone can earn rewards. The rewards come from the inflation on the Steem blockchain, that's where the money comes from.
There are a little over 200 million Steem available and about 8% new Steem are created on the blockchain every day. Most of that inflation is paid to authors just like me writing blog posts on my Steemit profile. These are the rewards I'm very grateful to have received on my posts, and I try to make a post each day.
This is the same rewards pool that Utopian.io draws from, that when I post something that's where my rewards also come from.
Most of the new Steem that's created is given to posts published on the Steem blockchain, which you can do it straight on Steemit.com as you can see on my blog, or you can do it directly in another app like Utopian.io.
Utopian.io essentially submits to the Steem blockchain, and then has a custom interface for it. You have to have your Steemit account first. You have to sign up with Steemit in order to use this at https://steemit.com/pick_account. Once you've got a Steemit account all you do is log into Utopian.io with your posting key and make a post!
That's a basic overview of what Steem is. If the free account creation process does not work or takes too long, the next best option might be https://anon.steem.network/ to get an account fast in exchange for a little Steem.
I will show you more about the creator @Elear who discovered Steem through finding my "Beginner's Guide to Cryptocurrency Investing" video course on mashable.com hosted through StackSkills. After watching the course, he joined Steem and got my attention with a 10 Steem wallet transfer featuring his post about Utopian after nothing else worked to contact me successfully. Since then I have chatted with him on steemit.chat and am collaborating with him here to promote this amazing project he has launched to solve an incredibly tough problem in the world of open source contributions!
This is his profile on Steem, but it's actually hosted here on Utopian.io..
It's got his custom profile design here from Utopian.io. You can see the followers and following that all come from Steem, and you can see that his posts are available here.
Now, this is his profile on Steemit with his posts: https://steemit.com/@elear
It's the same as my profile except you just go to @elear instead of @jerrybanfield.
Here's where the funding comes from for Utopian.io.
The Utopian.io has its own Steem account and as you can see the voting power right here is at 82% and $35, which should consistently be like this every day.
That means the Utopian.io can vote on about 10 posts a day because you get about 20% voting power a day. Therefore, it can vote on about $350 of posts every single day for any contribution made and posted through Utopian.io. This is possible because right now there's 800,000 plus Steem that's been delegated to this account from sponsors as explained at https://utopian.io/utopian-io/@elear/utopian-now-800k-sp-github-utopian-ready-and-much-more.
This effectively makes this account have about 800-ish thousand dollars of voting power. That's a lot of voting power. I've got a lot invested in Steem and my voting power is maybe like five to ten dollars.
This is a ton of voting power and the sponsors have made this possible by seeing that this is a very valuable project to bring developers over on Steem, to start getting Github developers to submit the projects that each Github developer is doing to earn rewards.
This is very good for the developers, this is very good for the Steem blockchain and this is very good for anyone hoping to use anything created by developers that's not monetized easily.
That, I'm sure, is what motivated these sponsors.
@Freedom is, I think, the top independent holder of Steem that's not an exchange or something like that and @freedom has millions of Steem Power. I'm grateful that Freedom has voted for me through proxy 
@Transisto has also made a huge Steem Power delegation. The two combined with the rest at https://utopian.io/sponsors have effectively allowed Utopian to guarantee now a $35+ upvote even at $1 Steem up to 10 times a day!
Now, if the price of Steem goes up, the amount may go up. As the amount of Github submissions increases, then probably the price of Steem will be higher too, but you can see how all these balance out.
The first big delegation was @xeldal with 20,000 Steem Power and @javybar just gave 10,000. I delegated 5,000 Steem Power and was the fourth largest sponsor for a few days until several more came in!
Here is the full list of sponsors at the time of making this post!
@freedom
@transisto
@johnsmith
@xeldal -> Vote for witness
@cryptoctopus
@furion-> Vote for witness
@javybar
@jerrybanfield -> Vote for witness
@netuoso -> Vote for witness
@kendewitt
@ajvest
@masterthematrix
@elear
@materia
@yabapmatt
@allowisticartist
@agoric.systems-> Vote for witness
@n-ur
@masterofcoin
@iliasdiamantis
@techslut
@cmorton
@dragosroua
@unosuke
@gokulnk
@o1o1o1o
@airmatti
@ippua
@ivysrono
@nesian101
@shreyasgune
@lykkejay
@sircork-> Vote for witness
@rival -> Vote for witness
@kemal13
@hadimemories
@fakire1sadaka
@alexsm
@doodlebear
@lusanamaya
@mrrifat1
@rizal.konoha2
You can see all the current sponsors here: https://utopian.io/sponsors
What I've essentially done as a sponsor, I've loaned my voting power over to Utopian.io. That means I've given Utopian.io about $5,000 effectively of my voting power to use. Now, I haven't actually given any Steem. I've given the voting influence that I have over to this project, which I think has a huge potential to help everyone involved.
If you'd like to be a sponsor, you just click on "Delegate," at https://utopian.io/sponsors.
Now, you have 20% of the rewards generated on Utopian that are dedicated to sponsors. I would imagine that for example if the author rewards are $100 that might mean that $20 of those author rewards goes back to the Utopian sponsors and then 80% goes to the person submitting it.
If you want to delegate, you put your Steem account in here. I put my Steem account in a few days ago and I typed 5,000 in. I used SteemConnect where I put my active key in to delegate, and then it sends the Steem Power over.
Now, anytime I want to un-delegate, I use the Vessel wallet that allows me to just go in and un-delegate whenever I want to. If for some reason this project doesn't work out and no one uses it, then I can remove the delegation whenever I want to.
I'm very grateful for the Steem blockchain, for @elear and his work doing this. What makes the Steem blockchain so amazing is the empowerment of individual users to create things that are so helpful.
The empowerment of say 
He created a platform where it's completely open source and you can see exactly what's going on. It rewards open source contributions and you can see a lot more about it if you read Elear's post.
You can see what kind of contributions you can submit.
You can submit ideas and feature requests, you can submit development, you can do bug hunting, translations, graphics, documentation and analysis, even visibility, which that's the main thing I do.
The nice thing is that Elear lists the sponsors in the post as well, and if you are a witness, then @Elear even includes a witness vote link, which is extremely helpful.
If you're going to SteemFest, @Elear is also going to be there and it's awesome because he just joined. He just joined and now look at how much value he's added within just the first month of his service on Steem.
That's why I think Steem is the most incredible blockchain. I've not seen anything at all that empowers this level of contributions without requiring an investment first. It allows each of us to simply provide proof of brain and contribute.
If you've got an open source Github project, I hope this has been extremely helpful for you to see exactly what you can do to monetize it today. If you're thinking about how you can make some contributions and earn a little bit of money, I hope this has been helpful as a starting point as well because anyone anywhere in the world who's willing to help out can learn the skills necessary, use existing skills and participate using the system I've just shown you here.
To make sure the open source community discovers this new ability to monetize contributions on https://utopian.io/, I am submitting ads to Google's display network, Facebook ads, and Google AdWords for video which shows ads on YouTube. Our advertising campaign on the world's top 3 websites will be targeted to GitHub keywords and related audiences expected to get most excited about this message! The Google display network ads will go directly to this post on utopian.io while the Facebook and YouTube ads will feature the video I made and direct viewers to go to the Utopian homepage to see the newest projects.
For every $100 in ad spend, 50,000 to 100,000 ads should show based on results from previous campaigns as seen at https://airtable.com/shrXuoYTnODWA0QG1. Funding for these campaigns is provided by witness rewards and direct contributions which are listed on the table linked in the previous sentence.
Thank you very much for making it all the way to the end.
I love you.
You're awesome and I hope to see you again soon.
Thank you for reading this blog post, which was originally filmed as the video below.
If you found this post helpful would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript from @deniskj
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PS: Would you please make a vote for jerrybanfield as a witness or set jerrybanfield as a proxy to handle all witness votes at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because 100% of the rewards I receive are spent advertising Steem? Thank you to the 1685 accounts voting for me as a witness, the 674M VESTS assigned from users trusting me to make all witness votes by setting me as proxy, and @followbtcnews for making these .gif images!
