IRokoTV to stop offering Free Movies

One of the reasons why I love video streaming sites like IRokoTV is because they have one of the largest online collection of the latest Nigerian movies and even offer a good number of them for free. Yes, for free.

Well, for those who are used to streaming videos on YouTube, getting to watch videos for free is not something new since there are a thousands of channels to choose from and that competition can make it hard for online pay tv services to work. You can even get to watch a lot of other Nigerian movie channels for free besides Nollywoodlove or IrokoTV.

Right from when Jason Njoku started with Nollywoodlove on YouTube, many have been following him till he launched IRokoTV, a brand he carved for himself that has helped change the way Nollywood does business. I guess after making some money from YouTube publishing program, he saw the wider picture and aimed for something higher - An independent video streaming site that makes money directly!

Jason has recently posted in his blog that he plans to stop the free version of Iroko TV, a platform that allows even unregistered and non paying users to watch Nigerian movies online. Yeah, without paying for it. It seems that there are a growing number of users across the world which includes Nigerians that are willing to pay for it and that's probably why Jason is already planning to dump Iroko TV's free version. Besides, who wouldn't do so if subscriptions are becoming more profitable than third party advertising income?

Iroko TV's free version was built as an independent platform that runs a bit like Nollywoodlove's channel except that in this case, Irokotv hosts the videos itself on its own web host but it generates income just like Nollywoodlove from Google's publishing program - Google Adsense.

After running Irokotv for about 2 years, Jason is taking a smart decision to simply migrate all users to Iroko TV plus.

Initially, when Irokotv launched, it was basically a video streaming website that was monetized with Google adsense and offered users free video streaming. Later on, Jason introduced IrokoTV plus, a platform that was meant to also offer video streaming but without the adverts but that meant that users would then have to pay for it, even if it's a small token of $3.5 per month. Well, if you ask me, $3.5 a month is really affordable to pay for video streaming in Nigeria given that a single Nollywood videos are sold for about the same price or less. IrokoTV plus would allow users to pay a single monthly fee and yet have access to thousands of Nigerian movies.

IrokoTV is not the only local video streaming site in Nigeria but they have other competitions such as MTN Dobox, Afrinolly and lately, AfricanMagicGo. I'm pretty sure though that Irokotv would remain in business for the long term.

In terms of revenue, Jason commented that Iroko TV did make money from both the free and paid version of their platform but IrokoTV plus earned more at about $6/user per month than compared to $0.15/user which they got from the free version. With those stats, it's only sensible that they migrate all of their website to a subscription based service.

As at now, there are still lots of free movies on IrokoTV and if you haven't watched most of those movies, you could do so now before it all gets migrated to the paid version.