Andrew Adetitun, an educator and media creator, has successfully funded a book on African history through a Kickstarter campaign launched from his personal website. The campaign concluded at the end of last year, with the website serving as the primary hub directing traffic to the fundraising page.
Adetitun operates The King’s Monologue, a media network dedicated to teaching African history. He has amassed over 160,000 followers across platforms like YouTube and TikTok. His work focuses on making historical scholarship accessible to a broad audience, countering what he describes as the underrepresentation and obscuring of African historical achievements.
Building a Digital Audience
Adetitun’s journey began with creating content on social media. A viral video on TikTok, which gained millions of views, significantly accelerated his audience growth. His YouTube channel now has more than 120,000 subscribers. His content library includes documentaries, original research, and accounts of museum visits and academic trips.
“There’s a lot of truth hidden in books. But most people aren’t book enthusiasts; they come across things in their day-to-day life. YouTube is probably the most powerful medium for reaching them,” Adetitun stated. He is a qualified teacher who previously taught high school before focusing full-time on his historical media project.
The Decision to Establish a Dedicated Website
Despite his success on social platforms, Adetitun identified a need for a platform he controlled. He expressed concern about the impermanent nature of social media accounts. “When you’re on social networks, there’s always that thing in the back of your mind; if they one day close or cancel your channel, where is everyone going to go?” he said.
He required a central hub to host high-resolution images from museum archives, publish academic papers and articles, and build independent search engine visibility. A simple link aggregation service was insufficient for these goals, which also included supporting specific initiatives like his book launch.
Streamlining Site Creation
Notably, Adetitun is a former WordPress developer with technical skills to build a website from scratch. However, he chose a streamlined approach due to time constraints. He utilized a website builder to create his site, tkmedu.com, stating the core structure was assembled in minutes without manual coding or complex theme customization.
“It was like working with a theme and being able to customize it on the fly without knowing any code,” he explained. He maintained a simple, consistent design for fonts and thumbnails, which he credited for giving the site a professional appearance with minimal effort.
Website’s Role in Campaign and Future Plans
The dedicated website page, tkmedu.com/book-launch, channeled significant visitor traffic to the Kickstarter campaign, which was successfully funded. “The website was a big part of that. It’s done its job so far,” Adetitun confirmed.
Beyond the fundraiser, the site functions as an educational resource. It hosts articles, original research, and a search-optimized image gallery featuring museum photographs and historical reconstructions. It also includes a feature for accepting donations from supporters.
Adetitun has already hired an administrator to help populate the site with content, such as transcripts from his videos and livestreams. His future plans involve attracting contributing authors to expand the library into a searchable archive containing hundreds, and eventually thousands, of vetted articles on African history. The goal is to create a resource that ranks in search engines and serves researchers, students, and the general public.
Source: Delimiter Online
