Shopify Debuts New Tool That Aims to Help Content Creators Make More Money
For the hundreds of thousands of beauty and fashion influencers and brand ambassadors out there creating content, Shopify says it’s making it easier for them to hook up with merchants to earn money faster.
On Wednesday, Shopify introduced “Collabs Network,” an application that any Shopify merchant can install for free, enabling them to build up a database of creators to work with to acquire customers and build sales, while enabling creators to search for products and connect with brands and retailers they feel best suited to partner with.
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The roots of the Collabs Network are in the Shopify Collabs app, launched in August 2022.
Through Shopify Collabs, “We’ve built up a huge supply — hundreds of thousands of creators that are willing to work with merchants, and merchants that are willing to work with creators,” explained Mike Schmidt, head of product for Shopify Collabs. “So naturally, we’re at this stage where we’ve got both supply and demand on both sides. And now we’re opening up this network (the Collabs Network) so any creator can jump in and work with our Shopify merchants.”
Schmidt, an entrepreneur, started Dovetale.com. Shopify acquired Dovetale, and brought Schmidt in to start Shopify Collabs. He also started Listn.co which merged into Beatport.com, the largest digital electronic music marketplace.
He said through Collabs Network, creators can get an affiliate link without signing up for individual affiliate partnerships often handled by middlemen or agencies arranging contracts, and therefore can quickly start promoting products to share with followers and earning commissions. Creators can sign up at Shopify.com/collabs free of charge.
“This is probably the first time a creator can partner with a Shopify merchant directly without getting approvals or asking for specific instructions or anything else like that,” said Schmidt, emphasizing how Collabs Network simplifies the matchmaking process.
According to Shopify’s 2023 Commerce Trends report, 30 to 40 percent of consumers under 35 years old consider themselves content creators. The total creator economy is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion, yet only 4 percent work full-time as creators. Shopify also cited statistics from Accenture indicating that by 2025, it’s expected the social commerce opportunity will nearly triple to $1.2 trillion.
Collabs Network, Schmidt noted, offers new tools to help creators. “We have search and categorization features so a creator can come into the network and search yoga or beauty or other categories. This is really important because there’s tons of unique products in the Shopify world they can instantly access.”
He also said that the network allows creators to see what brands their followers are buying, and brands can see which creators are driving the most sales.
Commissions from product sales for the content creators working with Shopify merchants “are much higher on average than any other affiliate network. It’s a really important distinction because they’re going directly to the merchant. There’s no middle man,” said Schmidt. “So you see the majority of commissions above 10 percent on average which is a very large anomaly in the industry.”
Schmidt also said creators get paid their commissions on product sales faster via Collabs. The timing is tied to return periods allowed by retailers, which are typically 30 days, or sometimes longer. “We try to pay them out as soon as we can, according to that return period,” said Schmidt.
With the Shopify Collabs app, each merchant has been developing their own network of creators. The Collabs Network, as Schmidt said, “essentially opens up the floodgates and allow those creators to jump from merchant to merchant. Before it was very siloed. Today, they can access a much bigger community.
“Let’s take Kyte Baby for example,” Schmidt added. “It has an application page where creators can apply to work with them. Kyte Baby can accept working with or decline working with each individual creator. That’s been our business for the last year through Shopify Collabs. Now Kyte Baby has a couple of hundred creators that partner with them on YouTube videos, Instagram reels and things like that. And many other merchants do the same thing using Shopify Collabs. So we’ve gotten to this place where we have literally hundreds of thousands of creators selling products for individual merchants, and we’re saying, let’s let those creators see the other merchants and products in our database, not just the one that they’re already working with on the Shopify Collab app. That’s the innovation behind this.”
The new network gives merchants full control over who promotes their products, Schmidt said. “We have an operating principle inside Shopify that gives merchants control because that will equal trust.”
To participate in Collabs Network, creators must have at least 1,000 followers and be in a location where a merchant sells products. For example, if a creator is in the U.K, they won’t see merchant products unless the merchant wants to sell and promote in the U.K. Creators do not need to have any kind of involvement with Shopify prior to be part of Collabs Network.
Schmidt noted that the Shopify Collabs app helps merchants organize and screen creators. For example, a merchant may only want to partner with people that promote beauty or have a certain number of followers. “We give you all those kind of dials and knobs to accept (or reject) people or just put them on a wait list or something like that. That’s actually a huge key to how this thing has grown so quickly.”
Shopify does have a transaction processing fee of 2.9 percent charged to merchants to cover costs associated with the company’s automatic payments feature via Shopify Billing, though Schmidt said, “It is not designed for us to really make any money. It is designed for us to process the transaction.
“We are actually more concerned about the process of lowering customer acquisition costs. That’s our number-one concern for merchants. And number two, we want to ensure that creators establish good partnerships so they can make more money.”
Apparis, Then I Met You, French Connection, Popflex, Shop OXB, Kyte Baby, Firebelly Tea and Timeless Skincare are among the brands cited by Shopify that are available for creators to partner with.
Among the many creators that have signed up for Collabs Network are Hannah Kling, Remy Park, Trey Bryant, Shenae Grimes-Beech, Hetal Vasvada and Morgan Willet.
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