# FlipToons - WebComic Platform Monetized with Coil Research

## Definition of Terms
* comic - any comics including but not limited to manga, manhwa,web toon
* episode - in web toons, an episode is a unit of the story(similar to chapters in manga but usually shorter)

## Research & Background
Based on Coil’s payout rate of 0.36$ per hour and a 4.5$ cap to be paid out to creators, the user would stream payment for 12.5 hours before the user’s wallet is depleted. After that, the wallet would stream infinitesimal(almost zero) payments distributed over the remaining time in the month ([Spivak](https://forum.grantfortheweb.org/t/basic-questions-for-coil/1049), 2020). While this may prove profitable for the creators in the first 12.5 hours, this becomes problematic when the usage time goes beyond that as server resources will continue to be spent whilst receiving negligibly small payments. (Only applies to creators that also serve their own content). In order to use Coil’s monetization model profitably, one must ensure that their content is consumed only up to 12.5 hours per month while maintaining regular customer engagement. Thus, the ideal customer is one that consumes content daily and streams payment at about **25 minutes per day** (12.5 hours/ 30 days = 25 min/day). This assures a virtually lossless operation and, at the same time, regular customer engagement.

Based on this ideal customer usage, personal interest and experience it was hypothesized that web comics would be a great fit for this user behaviour. Preliminary research was done to attempt to prove this hypothesis. A survey was done to profile the usage of readers on one of the top web comic sites to date, webtoons.com. The survey included the following questions:

1. Do you visit WebToons daily?
2. How many different comics/toons are you currently subscribed to?
3. About how many minutes do you spend reading each episode?
4. About how many minutes do you spend on the site per day?
5. About how many hours do you spend reading webtoons per month?
6. Are you a paying user? Have you ever bought coins?
7. If yes, how much do you pay per month?
8. Do any of your subscribed comics have a Patreon listing?
9. If yes, are you supporting any of them (their Patreon)?

The survey was posted in interest groups on Reddit, Discord and shared on Facebook. The survey gathered a total of 32 respondents(so far). By no means the results of this survey would represent real numbers in the real world but it should give us a rough idea. Here is the summary of the results of the survey:

* 78% of the respondents visit WebToons daily.
* 43 comics is the average amount of user comic subscriptions
* 4.6 minutes is the average time user spends on an episode
* 34 minutes is the average time user spends on the site per day
* 20 hours is the average time a user spends on the site per month
* 34% of the respondents are paying users
* 1.65$ is the average amount spent on the site per month per user

Majority of the WebToons users use the site daily and that they spend 34 minutes per day on the site. This isn’t too far off from the ideal 25 minutes per day. Therefore a web comic reader monetized with Coil should, in theory, be a great application to Coil’s monetization model. The overarching goal of this project is to test that hypothesis and assess the viability of Coil's micropayment stream model on a web comic reader platform.