Shopify has launched a new program to help creators find partnerships with businesses for free.
Called Shopify Collabs, Shopify is hoping the new tool will “cement” it as “the creator’s commerce platform of choice” as it furthers its social commerce strategy.
Shopify claims that the creator economy can present a new sales channel for its merchants to reach new consumers and tap into the $104.2 billion market that continues to steadily increase.
According to Shopify, the creator gets paid when a consumer purchases a product using the link that the creator has shared. Creators must apply for a Collabs account to gain access to Shopify’s more than one million merchants.
Merchants can install the Collabs feature to make their store and products discoverable. Using the platform, business owners can manage their relationship with creators such as supplying affiliate links or discount codes.
Since Collabs is built on Shopify, metrics such as inventory, orders, and customer information are managed and kept up to date from the merchant’s Shopify admin.
Amir Kabbara, director of product at Shopify, said that Collabs will be fully integrated with Shopify in the future, providing creators with access to more parts of Shopify’s platform.
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Shopify calls Collabs its latest effort in building for creators. Most recently, the company launched an integration with YouTube to allow its merchants to sell their full product suite on the video-sharing platform via livestreams, videos, and a new store tab. An earlier version of this new feature was initially reported in 2020.
As part of its social commerce strategy, Shopify has also established integrations with Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, and Pinterest.
In May last year, Shopify announced that it is expanding its accelerated checkout solution, Shop Pay, to Google to reach customers through Google’s services, including Search, Maps, Images, Lens, and YouTube.
Shopify has also teamed up with digital music streaming service Spotify last year to allow artists to connect their Shopify store on their Spotify profile.
The launch of this creator program comes during a period of slowed growth for Shopify, with CEO Tobi Lütke saying the company made a wrong bet on where the future of e-commerce spending was going during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In its financial results for the second quarter of 2022, Shopify reported a net loss of $1.2 billion compared with a net income of around $900,000 million during the same period last year.
Shopify revealed its earnings report after it made a 10 percent staff reduction across its global workforce. The layoff affected approximately 1,000 employees.
Featured image from AQVIEWS via Unsplash.