Monetize your websites/apps with hCaptcha: A demo with WPForms

Last Updated on October 6, 2021 by Rajeev Bagra

Captcha is kind of a distraction with online forms but crucial for putting a security check in place. I have been using Google reCAPTCHA with satisfaction for some time. Here is an article regarding my experience with reCAPTCHA while integrating with drag & drop online form builder WPForms on WordPress websites: Captcha revisited and Google reCAPTCHA for your WordPress website with WPForms.

Recently, I thought of taking a close look at an alternative hCaptcha (h stands for human), which unlike Google’s reCAPTCHA, is open source. It became clear that hCaptcha can make our forms more interesting with its captcha challenges while helping us monetize from our websites/apps.

Both Google’s reCAPTCHA and hCaptcha are free to use. This article on Cloudflare further raised my trust in hCaptcha:

The term “rewards websites” further motivated me to Sign Up as I operate a number of WordPress websites and any extra income from them in a legit way always welcome.

For Individuals

(a) Accessibility

First of all, I begin with Accessibility. hCaptcha is meant for individuals as the purpose of hCaptcha is to make sure that instead of bonafide individuals/users, malicious software/robots not accessing the web page/form. The visual challenges presented with hCaptcha though convenient, it may not be possible for all to solve visual problems.

By signing up as an accessibility user, you bypass the hCaptcha visual challenges presented from any site.

(b) Earn Money

It might be intriguing to press Work as an individual data labeler button and expect a freelance earning opportunity.

You are a bit on a back foot with this: We do not recommend anyone try to use hCaptcha as a source of personal income.

For Companies or Websites

(a) Add Captcha to Your Service (Free)

However, there is an extra earning opportunity under Publishers for individuals in the form of bloggers, freelancers who own websites/apps. Opt the first option under For Companies or Websites.

During my initial use, I signed up as an accessibility user under For Individuals. With that login credentials, you cannot access the service For Companies or Websites. You need to sign up once again as both are different account types.

https://dashboard.hcaptcha.com/signup

Just like crowdsourcing marketplace Amazon Mechanical Turk has two parties, Workers getting paid for performing simple tasks and Requesters (companies) harnessing work from a freelance workforce, so is the case somewhat here. Companies paying a fee to hCaptcha under Labeling Services for improving their AI and machine learning models, augment data collection and analysis, machine learning.

And publishers receiving a fee for hCaptcha activated on their websites/apps and the number of captcha challenges undertaken.

(b) Enterprise Security Solutions (Paid)

For high traffic websites/apps, this is a paid service which too will provide the same service of presenting hCaptcha challenges like (a) above.

(c) Data Annotation

This denotes software companies who will be sourcing their annotations or visual challenges that will improve their machine learning models. As the other side of the coin, they provide visual challenges to hCaptcha which will be delivered to websites and apps under (a) and (b) above. A part of the revenue collected from software companies distributed to (a) Add hCaptcha to your service (free).

As a small publisher operating WordPress websites, I opted for option (a) Add hCaptcha to your service (free).

Now, coming to WPForms on WordPress websites, hCaptcha is now integrated with WPForms.

Demo of hCaptcha with WPForms

It is assumed that you have already activated WPForms on your WordPress website. If not, there is both a free version and paid version. hCaptcha is supported on both. I referred this while doing for the first time: How to Set Up and Use hCaptcha in WPForms.

Click Add New in order to start with a new form.

Will be creating Suggestion Form that is available as template (yes, even in free version). Paid versions under Templates Gallery have more choices and options including accepting payments from PayPal and Stripe.

Since earlier I was using Google reCAPTCHA, I need to press CAPTCHA button in order to change.

As evident, reCAPTCHA currently activated.

How to access Site Key and Secret Key for the above fields? First of all, need to generate new set of hCaptcha keys from your hCaptcha account. Sign up or login under Publisher (https://dashboard.hcaptcha.com/signup).

To access Secret Key, on top menu, click Settings (leftmost on header after Overview and Sites) and copy code.

Paste Secret Key code in WPForms Secret Key field as above.

Now, hCaptcha can be added to any existing or new WPForms.

Will be adding hCaptcha on Suggestion Form. Just press hCaptcha as above.

hCaptcha Enabled mark on top right denotes hCaptcha activated for the form.

WPForms has a feature that can create a new page right within WPForms dashboard. This is convenient for the current demo as the new page that will have Suggestion Form will be created without quitting WPForms dashboard.

Suggestion form on front end (https://worksplendid.com/suggestion).

hCaptcha visual challenge for this demo instance.

Successful form submission after passing the hCaptcha visual challenge.

After 2 days, here is the statistics for the Suggestion Form.

I believe any earning will be marginal as the aim is to make websites/apps secure, protecting the privacy of users while augmenting machine learning/AI algorithms at competitive pricing for software companies. Interestingly, with my hCaptcha publisher account, I also by default gets a referral link that will help me earn tokens.