We recently reported BattaBox switched from a free to paid offer for its videos on the web, as confirmed by the founder, Christian Purefoy, due to the cost of sourcing and producing premium local content. It did so by setting up a pay wall so as to monetize offering subscription that go for $1/month and $10/year for the United States based diaspora market, and N160.00 and 60p for those in Nigeria and the UK respectively.
It did feel ballsy to have made such a decision of putting up a pay-wall, but BattaBox offers valuable and quality content, and that must have been convincing enough to get users open to paying a very affordable subscription fee. With really interesting videos like: The Osun Oshogbo Festival and Made-In-Nigeria Rocket Car, such an assumption seems logical but how solid is the monetization strategy altogether, especially with iROKOtv and other subscription based content platform all experiencing a downfall of users.
Nonetheless, BattaBox has decided to go back its original freemium model as it has now pulled down the pay-wall. Christain Purefoy tells us not to look too much into the decision as the strategy now is “just an aligning of a few financial stars” – perhaps exploring alternative sources of revenue such as advertising and sponsorship. One thing is for certain, the founder does have a real desire to keep BattaBox open.
So get back to enjoying amazing content on BattaBox, while they figure out how to make a profitable business out of it.
