Vestitor:You'd have to be selling the world's most desirable product at a steal, or possibly giving away free gold, in order to cause people to learn a language for the purpose of getting to it.

Imagine a butcher shop with a sign in the window. "10% discount for all orders in Esperanto"
A sign on the wall gives sample sentences and translations for eg "I would like some...please."
All the items in the display cabinets are labelled in the local language and Esperanto.
How many people are going to pass up the opportunity to save 10% by reading some stock phrases that are on the wall in front of them and some words that are on display on the items in front of them as they order?
Once they have shopped there a few times they will have memorised the phrases, no effort involved.

Next door to the butcher is a baker. They offer the same deal. Now the businesses are boosting one another, more customers for both. The multiplier effect is beginning to operate.

Next door to the baker is a purveyor of scented candles, crystals, body lotions etc. They jump on the bandwagon in order to gain advantage of the new repeat customers coming to the neighbourhood. Now you have an Esperanto precinct.

A coffee shop joins in. People come to hang out and practice their new language skills. Now you have an Esperanto community.

Tourists start coming to experience the unique vibe that comes from a community speaking a non mainstream language.

KA--CHING, Esperanto has been monetised.

Of course people can still shop in the mainstream language of the area if they want to pay full price, but who would throw away a 10% discount.

johmue:To me it would be way more interesting if contributing to Esperanto was linked to making money. If we were to find ways to pay people who teach, proofread, make music, podcasts, videos, movies, write novels, plays ... you name it.

Yah. That would be better. Like if there was a big demand for Esperanto content then people would want to learn Esperanto for more than just friendship.

Alkanadi:

It's a particular intellectual disease of the 21st century that people are now convinced that every activity on earth must have a capitalist enterprise behind it...

That is because we live in a capitalist society. You live in a country were the minimum wage is 15 dollars an hour, right? Plus the government pays for you education and there is a lot of government support. For the rest of us in the world, we have to think about money all the time because if we run out of it, we will die.

And I am certain that Esperanto would have an enormous growth if it could be monetized. Until then, we will just keep using it for intrinsic motivations.

We've lived in a capitalist society for more centuries than the present one, but not one where it permeated every spare nanometre and crept into places water can't.

The governments of capitalist societies (or rather the people reaping the benefits of their own tax payments) stopped paying for people's (higher) education some time ago. From policy movements it seems school-age education is set to follow. The minimum wage is not upheld everywhere and in most cases it's not a wage that reflects the cost of living anyway. The "free-market" zealots are making sure of this. And impregnating everything with the idea of commerce is turning culture into "business culture"; they are becoming synonymous.

I have to think about money all the time and I live in a first world country and have a job. Many here have to choose between healthcare payments or housing costs and food.

Esperanto likely could have some growth if it is linked to money, but it becomes another exchange commodity. It gets learned for the wrong reasons and means less. Who is to say that in this economically imbalanced world it will serve the people who need it most? If the richer West can access it (which is already the case) how does commodifying it help? It's a mere amplification of what is already there.

You're looking in the wrong place. Zamenhof didn't gift Esperanto to the world because he was a financial imbecile.

Bemused:

Vestitor:You'd have to be selling the world's most desirable product at a steal, or possibly giving away free gold, in order to cause people to learn a language for the purpose of getting to it.

Imagine a butcher shop with a sign in the window. "10% discount for all orders in Esperanto"
A sign on the wall gives sample sentences and translations for eg "I would like some...please."
All the items in the display cabinets are labelled in the local language and Esperanto.
How many people are going to pass up the opportunity to save 10% by reading some stock phrases that are on the wall in front of them and some words that are on display on the items in front of them as they order?
Once they have shopped there a few times they will have memorised the phrases, no effort involved.

Next door to the butcher is a baker. They offer the same deal. Now the businesses are boosting one another, more customers for both. The multiplier effect is beginning to operate.

Next door to the baker is a purveyor of scented candles, crystals, body lotions etc. They jump on the bandwagon in order to gain advantage of the new repeat customers coming to the neighbourhood. Now you have an Esperanto precinct.

A coffee shop joins in. People come to hang out and practice their new language skills. Now you have an Esperanto community.

Tourists start coming to experience the unique vibe that comes from a community speaking a non mainstream language.

KA--CHING, Esperanto has been monetised.

Of course people can still shop in the mainstream language of the area if they want to pay full price, but who would throw away a 10% discount.

Honestly it all sounds great, but it is not realistic. It places extra costs and burdens on these enterprises, which most companies claim they can't carry. What do you do when the small limit is reached and you're just giving away discounts? Do you test people's Esperanto just to make sure they're not just conning you with few stock phrases to gain an easy discount? Make more complicated advertising?

You'd need people with enough vision in one place and enough of a committent to the cause of Esperanto to sustain it. Language is a medium, people on the whole don't like the effort of learning for such purposes as buying bread on holiday. This is why books like 'Get by in German or French or Italian' exist, so you can learn some phrases to get you through, then forget about them. I admit it may pique the interest of a few, but these are languages with an actual culture (a working daily life of using the language) behind them.

You write 'KA CHING' as if that's the end game. People came and ordered from you in Esperanto and you discounted their purchases. Is that monetization? And will it cause them to chat to their neighbours in Esperanto (the real end game). That remains to be seen.

Alkanadi:I meant, what if the situation in the world was such that Esperanto speakers have a financial incentive for learning the language.

But the situation isn't like that and I can't imagine it ever being like that so I don't see much point in spending a lot of time considering that particular "what if".

What if the parking and traffic around my house would magically get better, would I drive to work instead of using public transport? What if my office went to a 20 hour a week schedule at the same pay, what would I do with all that extra time? So many things in life are just not worth spending too many brain cells over because they simply aren't going to happen.

Alkanadi:Many people will learn a language for even a small incentive.

"The Pasporta Servo has enjoyed much use in the Esperanto movement as a means for promoting Esperanto, and is one reason why people start learning Esperanto."

You've already said in a different thread that you like to quote baseless "facts" from the internet, and this is one. While it is probably strictly true that "people" ( = more than one person) have learned Esperanto for using Pasporta Servo, the number who do this is vanishingly small. Most people would rather just pay for a hotel than spend months of effort to learn a new language. I have not yet met anyone who learned Esperanto just to use Pasporta Servo, and there is exactly zero point of doing so now, especially now that the internet also has Couchsurfing, which is essentially the same thing, except you don't have to learn Esperanto to do it. So why bother?

That is because we live in a capitalist society. You live in a country were the minimum wage is 15 dollars an hour, right? Plus the government pays for you education and there is a lot of government support. For the rest of us in the world, we have to think about money all the time because if we run out of it, we will die.

Everyone works for a living, even in places with a safety net. I assure you that people in the Netherlands care about getting a job and getting work just like people in other countries care.

And I am certain that Esperanto would have an enormous growth if it could be monetized. Until then, we will just keep using it for intrinsic motivations.

It won't be monetized, ever. All factors point away from that at this point, especially now that technology is doing a better and better job of machine translation. There is no point in looking for the money in every single thing in life.

You know what hobby makes more money than Esperanto? Knitting. And how many people do that for a living? 99% of knitters do it out of enjoyment of knitting and make their money some other way, though it is technically possible to knit for a living. Knitting is a fine occupation but you don't have to worry about monetizing every single thing in life.

Bemused:How many people are going to pass up the opportunity to save 10% by reading some stock phrases that are on the wall in front of them and some words that are on display on the items in front of them as they order?

A lot. Most people would say, "Good grief, I don't have time for this nonsense" and order in their usual language. Ten percent isn't a big enough difference to make a lot of difference to most people for the kind of small purchase they'd be making at any given time. You figure, lots of restaurants have coupons posted on their website, 10% off or something. Printing off such a coupon before you go takes no effort but I doubt that a lot of customers do it. Even if you did it, you aren't learning a language, you're reading a phrase off the wall. You aren't spending all kinds of time outside the butcher shop to learn your new language to practice with people.

Alkanadi:

johmue:To me it would be way more interesting if contributing to Esperanto was linked to making money. If we were to find ways to pay people who teach, proofread, make music, podcasts, videos, movies, write novels, plays ... you name it.

Yah. That would be better. Like if there was a big demand for Esperanto content then people would want to learn Esperanto for more than just friendship.

That was not actually my point. My point is that nobody will learn Esperanto out of an economic insentive. So nobody will learn Esperanto because there is a demand for Esperanto content.

What might happen is that more people will learn Esperanto because there is interesting content. For more interesting content to be created it would be good if we were to find ways to support our content creators.

erinja:It won't be monetized, ever.

I agree that some things aren't worth monetizing. But why not dream big just like Icarus. Be like Icarus. Don't be like my school teachers that were always telling us to be realistic. Carpe Diem (seize the day).

Examples of monetization:

I made a short Esperanto comic just for fun and I am now making about 5 dollars per month.

Richard is making $338 per month from Youtube.

Sudanglo said in a different thread that he sold a picture dictionary and made a lot of money.

Lernu! brought in about a million dollars in 10 years.

There was one person that worked as an Esperanto actor in China.

There are people who are making a small amount of money "volunteering" for Esperanto associations in addition to having their accommodations paid for.

Tim Morley is an Esperanto teacher in the British school system.

Captain Kirk made money (I assume) when he acted in that terrible Esperanto film.

Someone wrote the Memoro de la Sxtono. I assume they got paid for their work.

You're kidding me, right? You're conflating the money that lernu raises to cover its programming and operating costs with someone getting rich off of Esperanto? The amount of time and effort that goes into your $5/$300 a month is far in excess of the financial compensation. You would be financially better off spending the equivalent amount of hours working as a greeter as your local Wal-Mart and you'd make more money, and that doesn't require any special language skills.

erinja:You're conflating the money that lernu raises to cover its programming and operating costs with someone getting rich off of Esperanto?

Nobody said anything about getting rich off Esperanto. We were just talking about whether or not it could be monetized.

I make way more money from my English projects but the point was to show that monetization is possible.

You would be financially better off spending the equivalent amount of hours working as a greeter as your local Wal-Mart and you'd make more money, and that doesn't require any special language skills.

You would make more money as a homeless beggar. But that isn't the point. The point of a business is to make money in the long term.

The point of a job is to get paid in the short term.

We were not talking about what is better. We were just talking about possibilities.