Beacons: The Storefront for the Multi-SKU Creator that's Growing 3X Monthly

The multi-SKU creator isn't all-in on just one product, though one product may wind up being the most lucrative for them. Instead, they apply their skills across various domains and use the various platforms and tools in the creator economy to put together multiple different product or service offerings.But while this unbundling of the value chain ... See more

Five years ago, a YouTuber ago might have run their entire ‘business of 1’ through YouTube. Today, that same creator might chop up clips of their content for TikTok, redirect traffic to their personal site through Beacons, sell their own branded merchandise via Shopify, and offer fan interactions via Cameo.

Creators still use the big platforms for discovery because they offer the best opportunity to get in front of people and find new potential fans. The difference is that they’re no longer reliant on the platforms for monetization, which ultimately puts them in better alignment. By decoupling the content they make in order to get top of funnel traffi... See more

But what has emerged from this strategy is a highly skewed distribution of income where a few creators make millions and most of them make barely anything at all. A good deal for platforms and a handful of creators; a bad deal for everyone else.

By focusing relentlessly on the consumers of content, platforms like YouTube were able to build huge user bases and eventually, huge profit-making advertising machines.

One of the big differences between Beacons and a page generator like Linktree is the fact that the core abstraction of the product is the "block", not the "link". A link is a piece of text you click to get somewhere else; a block is embedded in the page, and as such can have additional functionality beyond acting as a redirect.

And rather than rent an audience on social media in exchange for ad revenue, they can control their own relationships. TikTok, Instagram and Twitter may help them get attention, but they monetize that attention with the Beacons links in their bios, bringing their fans back to where they can engage more personally and get paid directly.

Instead of selling their time in the form of a single SKU, they’re productized and diversified. They record videos, and they do paid fan shoutouts, and they sell merchandise—or they write an email newsletter, and they do consulting, and they run an online course.