Monetization via Paid Certification
June 19, 2022 ยท View on GitHub
AKA: Paid Trainings
Payment offers made by companies or individuals to get training or certifications for using or interfacing with the OSS. Often one-time payments for one certification or training session, but companies might need continuous flow of certifications for new employees.
Requires:
- Setup of a payment mechanism (hosted or self-build)
- Setup of online communication platform to conduct paid trainings
- Collection and description of one or more certification levels
- Time to conduct the certification or training
Variants & Options:
- Training: Maintainers works with client directly to teach the use of the software
- Personal Certification: Maintainer conducts or oversees the certification of one or more candidates (people)
- Interface Certification: Maintainer conducts or oversees the certification of a software interfacing with the OSS
Platforms
- Forma Lms (Paid Courses & Certificate Management)
- DomainRacer (Paid Courses & Certificate Management)
- Accredible (Certificate Hosting)
- Sertifier (Certificate Hosting)
- Open Badges (Certificate Hosting)
Evaluation
| Characteristics | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Effort to set-up | Weeks | Might require training materials, Course System and/or Certificate Hosting. |
| Effort to maintain | Medium | Constant reminders to certify might be necessary. Updating certificates and training material might be necessary |
| Cost to set-up | Low | Maybe cost for a designer to design certificates |
| Cost to maintain | Low | Hosting of certificates might cost |
| One-time Income | Medium | Probably based on hourly wage - but can grow with demand for training or importance of certificates |
| Recurring Income | Low | Only for longer training projects with companies or mult-level certificates |
| Income Predictability | Low | Too complex --> no users; Too easy to understand --> no income |
| Full income Threshold | 100+ | clients per month; |
| Recipient | I/C | Certificate recipients probably want a certificate from an organization - not an individual. Payments might go to an individual certifier |
| Additional Work | Medium | Extra work to conduct certifications and/or trainings |
| Visibility | Medium | Easy to forget, ignore, or overlook, but certified people might talk about it |
| Necessity to pay | Low | Might increase with the wide-spread use of the software |
| Entry Threshold | Low | Credit card is sufficient |
| Countervalue | Work | |
| Scalability | Low | Scales to the time available to certify or train |
| Effort for marketing | High | |
| Competitors | M | Other maintainers might be competitors to certify. |
| Software types | Big SW | Better for big, complex and widely-used software |
NOTE: Potentially, "unofficial" certificate can also be issued by non-maintainers (i.e., just expert), which could increase the competition (or income by "licencing" the right to certify).