Google's Area 120 incubator has launched a new website builder and ecommerce platform called Qaya which is now available in beta in the US.
According to a new blog post, co-founder and GM of Qaya, Nathaniel Naddaff-Hafrey came up with the idea while working from home during the pandemic after spending time with creators who said it was difficult and time consuming to build an online business around their content.
This led to the creation of a new product called Qaya which provides web storefronts for creators that want to sell products and services directly to their audiences.
The company has a small and agile team that believes creators are the next generation of entrepreneurs. As the CEOs of their own businesses, they require the same commercial tools as any successful founder.
Building your creator businesses
Qaya first began live testing its new service in early 2021 and since that time, the company has learned a lot from the creators on its platform, their fans and other creator economy projects.
Creators on Qaya can sell everything from workout guides to photo filters, productivity templates, knitting patterns and more. The company currently supports both pay-gated and free products with new features like tipping, subscriptions and other monetization types coming soon.
By signing up for Qaya, creators can use the service as the hub for all of their business activity across the web. Many link to their storefronts from their social media bios and showcase digital products they upload or products and services hosted on other sites. The company provides all of its users with a custom yourname.channel or qaya.store/your-name domain with payment functionality built-in.
At the same time though, Qaya has also developed customer management and analytics tools that creators can use to connect with their fans and understand sales and content performance. The company has also started to integrate with other Google products including YouTube's Merch Shelf and eligible YouTube creators can now promote products from Qaya directly below videos on their YouTube channels.
Qaya is currently in beta in the US though the company hopes to expand to other countries soon.
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