Two years ago, we launched Kit Commerce to give creators like you the easiest path to offer and sell your digital products online. Whether it was your first or next launch, with Commerce, you could build your product page and market it to your audience—all within the same platform.
Your success as a creator is what we look forward to and what we love celebrating most. And this $10million earned milestone is SO exciting for us to see. Want to know more about how it happened?
The road to $10 million
Since the beginning of 2022, we had 5,732 creators earn an income with Kit Commerce, bringing in a total of over $10 million dollars in revenue.
Breakdown of Kit plan type:
- 7% Free users
- 77% Creator plan users
- 16% Pro plan users
Breakdown by product type:
- Standard 66.7%
- Recurring 27.27%
- Installments 3.09%
- Pay what you want 1.70%
- Tips 1.34%
Breakdown by earnings amount:
- $100K+ 11 creators
- $50K+ 19 creators
- $10K+ 182 creators
- $5K+ 166 creators
- $1K+ 707 creators
- $5+ 4,647 creators
How creators grow their income with Commerce
There are so many different products and services you can sell with our Commerce feature. Whether it’s a paid newsletter or a coaching package, you can do it through our platform even if you’re on our free plan! Plus, there’s no limit to how many products you can create or sell.
Take a look at what some of our creators have utilized commerce to grow their income:
Paid newsletters
What if email isn’t just a revenue generator as a sales and marketing channel, but is the revenue stream? Whether you’re a journalist or a content creator, creating a paid newsletter could be a new income stream you didn’t expect.
Our inboxes are a sacred place. If someone has opted-in to receive your emails, they want to hear from you. Whether it’s your opinion they care about, or research they trust you’ll do, they are willing to trade their email address for the content you’re providing. https://kit.com/features/commerce/paid-newsletter
Ebooks
Amazon and other self-publishing marketplaces are a great source to help you market and expand your reach. But if there’s a way to save on commission, wouldn’t you want to take advantage of that?
You can not only use our landing pages to build an early-bird list, but also use our email marketing features to launch your ebook directly to your subscribed fans.
Templates and digital downloads
People love PDFs that give them structure and information. It may seem like such a basic product, but if you’re able to deliver high quality content, you can’t go wrong with a digital download. Already offering free downloadables as an incentive to get your audience to subscribe? Build an email funnel to upsell them with more advanced templates that can continue to make an impact.
Workshops + Events
Selling a seat to a virtual workshop or an event is another exciting way we’ve seen our creators generate an income. Virtual events have unfortunately become a norm in today’s climate, but it’s also benefited creators and their audiences because virtual events allow more people to attend from all over the world.
Coaching
There’s a reason why most people who have used Commerce are coaches—they don’t require creating as much content upfront to sell their services. Most coaches typically have a framework they work with and build their plan based on the needs of their clients. That’s why our Commerce set up makes it easy for them to put up their coaching packages and sell it to their audiences.
On top of that, with our email marketing abilities, it’s easy for coaches to build an automated funnel so their clients receive the necessary information to set up and be prepared for their coaching sessions.
What Kit Commerce has to offer
In the last year, we’ve also rolled out a lot of improvements and new features to continue to make Commerce the easiest and best way for you to generate more income. On top of that, we’ve also released a lot of new features that help make marketing your products and generating sales that much easier:
Product embeds: Show off (and sell!) your Kit Commerce products right from your emails. Instead of linking to your Kit Commerce product in your email, you can now add a rich embed of that product.
Recurring payments: We knew that supporting recurring payments so you can sell paid newsletters or any other subscription based products was essential. It was the first feature we released after Commerce was fully live and available to everyone.
Discounts: What better way to drive incentive than to offer discounts on your product? Whether you’re looking to take a percentage or an amount off, you can do so on any product you create in Commerce. You can limit it to any number of uses and grab the URL so the discount shows directly on the product page and on checkout.
Billing cycle options & variants: Subscription-based products are the bread and butter of a lot of creators’ business. It’s a great way to build recurring predictable income and build a tight-knit community. To give you more pricing flexibility, we also rolled out different billing cycle frequency—monthly, quarterly, or annually—and gave you the option to display up to three different subscription prices for a single product.
Pay what you want: Pay what you want is an interesting pricing strategy that comes in handy for a lot of creators. It gives you the power to set a minimum price, but leaves the price ceiling for your audience to decide. This is especially helpful for creators to help make their products more affordable to their audiences.
Payment plans: With payment plans, you get the guaranteed commitment of one-time payments and the predictable recurring income of subscriptions. More importantly, it can expand your customer demographic and increase sales.
Multiple quantities: Giving your customers the option to choose their quantity means you can sell multiples of products such as:
- Event tickets
- 1:1 sessions (consulting/counseling/mentoring etc.)
- Digital assets
- Licenses
- and much more!
Currencies: You can expand your reach and increase your sales with access to sell in other currencies: British Pounds, Euros, Canadian Dollars, Australian Dollars, and New Zealand Dollars.
A digital tip jar: Not all creators are alike and many depend on third-party platforms, like YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and Instagram, for their income. While all these streaming and social media platforms are how they grow their fanbase, they lose a lot of their monetization, including donations and tips through superchats, bits, badges via the commission these platforms take. That’s why we also rolled out a digital tip jar feature, so creators can take back their 30% in commission fees.
Substack importer: Outgrowing Substack? Maybe you’re looking to do more than just a premium newsletter. Maybe your newsletter is doing so well that your commission costs are too high. You can now migrate your newsletter to Kit with just a few clicks. We’ll automatically bring over all your subscribers and their purchase history, so you can stay focused on creating and sending them great content.
Countdown timers: Got a Memorial Day sale? Or a workshop that’s about to start? You can now add dynamic, customizable countdown timers to your Kit emails and landing pages. They add instant urgency to any offer by adding a deadline for your audience to take action.
Postal codes & subscriber filters: Selling something that requires geographical targeting? Filter your subscriber based on their location so you can promote tour dates, book signing events, or in-person events.
What’s next in Kit Commerce
Over the next few months we’ve got some exciting new features coming out to help you sell more.
VAT
Taxes are about to get so easy! We’re rolling out a feature to help creators manage VAT requirements in the EU/UK for all Commerce transactions. This feature allows you to:
- Validate the location of your buyers
- Determine the correct amount of VAT for each transaction based on the buyer’s location and the product type
- Provide you with the necessary reporting for you to file VAT
Upsells
Want an easy way to increase your average order value? We’re about to release upsell options at checkout.
That means you can package your companion products and add a discount that can only be redeemed at checkout to make for a very tempting offer
Improved reporting for products
This has been a big feature request! With this improved reporting, each of your products will have a new Reports page, accessible from the product builder page and the product tile. The reports page will include a new transactional table with key insights such as:
- Gross and net revenue for each transaction
Discounts applied
The status of your customer
… and more!
And for a cherry on the cake— this report can be exported to CSV to make your bookkeeping even easier.
Cheers!
Too all creators doing the work, pushing through the hard times and realizing your dreams- we celebrate you!!! We know you’re just getting started and we’re so honored to be a part of your journey.
