Nowadays there are a number of website builders targeting developers who want to direct fans to a specific landing page from their social media profile. If you’ve spent time on TikTok or Instagram, you’ve likely stumbled upon one of those simplistic “link in bio” style websites – like that of Linktree, for example. A new start called beacon is now entering this market with the aim of making “Link in Bio” websites even more powerful. The website builder offers developers an advanced set of tools to monetize their community, including donations, sales, paid requests, affiliate shopping, and more.
After you have signed up for the service, beacon guides the user through a series of questions, many of which can only be answered with “yes” or “no”. For example, beacons can ask the user if they want to accept donations or collect emails from followers, whether they are creating TikTok or YouTube videos and what category they are in with regard to the content they are creating.
This information is used to set up the beacons landing page with the correct sections of content called beacons as “blocks”. To start with, Beacons offers around a dozen of these configurable blocks, e.g. B. Email and SMS capture modules, video embed blocks for TikTok or YouTube creators, music blocks to embed a track or album, a Twitter block to embed a tweet or a Twitter profile and link blocks, among others similar to Linktree.
There is even a “Friends” block that looks like a modern Myspace Top 8. This way you can link to your friends on beacons, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok.
However, one area in which beacons differs from other “Link in Bio” website builders is in the series of “monetization” blocks. Today it has four tools for developers looking to generate income from their online presence. One of them is similar to miniatureas the creator can set up a menu of options to handle fan requests for personalized content. For example, fans could ask a fitness influencer to criticize their routine, or they could pay to have their burning questions answered by someone they admire. The creator can then send a personalized response either publicly or privately.
Other monetization blocks allow developers to accept donations or sell digital downloads – such as e-books or paid video content.
Credit: beacon
The fourth and perhaps the most interesting monetization block is a TikTok shopping feature. Developers can embed their TikTok videos where they recommend products directly on their beacons website. From here, they can add affiliate links to the products in question so that they can generate revenue straight away when fans buy the items they feature.
This particular function comes at an opportune time. Today, TikTok is only just beginning to formalize its plans for e-commerce. In a recent presentation to marketers TikTok spoke of its plans to launch new online shopping tools that will help brands reach TikTok’s younger audiences more directly. TikTok has also partnered with Shopify on social commerce and experimented with live video shopping, including a holiday event hosted by Walmart.
But the developers at TikTok have already driven shopping trends in various categories Fashion, beauty, Home decor, Housewares, Toys and much more, to the point that “TikTok made me buy it” has become a common excuse for the impulse buying triggered by TikTok’s viral content. The next logical step is to allow developers to benefit more directly and financially from these trends now.
Credit: beacon
The idea for beacons comes from co-founders Neal Jean, Jesse Zhang, Greg Luppescu and David Zheng. Neal, Jesse and David met during their PhD program at Stanford and studied various fields of research such as machine learning and AI. Meanwhile, Greg was doing his Masters at Stanford and then joined Apple on the Apple Watch team.
Neal, Jesse and David had teamed up at Beacons and gone through the Y Combinator Summer 2019 batch, repeating ideas and rotating the product several times. Some of these early concepts could return at some point – like a Shopify integration that connects developers with brands selling on Shopify, for example.
However, the broader focus has always been on helping creators make money, says Neal.
“Even before we launched our current product, we really focused on helping developers solve monetization,” he explains. “When we made this mini-pivot into a Linktree-like product, we thought about creating features that developers could actually use to generate revenue – which I think Linktree or any of the existing operators in the room didn’t. Even today, you can’t make money with Linktree, ”he says.
Of course, Linktree is just one of many “Link In Bio” websites on the market today, which means beacons are still facing a lot of of the competition. Other rivals are Linkin.bio, Lnk.bio, Shorby, Tap.bio, Feedlink.io, Link in profile, Milkshake, campsite, bio.fm., url.bio and biolincs.me, for example.
In contrast to some competitors, Beacons offers its tools for free and instead monetizes them via a Premium plan ($ 10 / month) that allows creators to use their own custom domain. It also makes money by using a percentage of the sales for the inquiries and sales blocks that is either 9% of the free plan or 5% of the paid plan. That Rev stock doesn’t make a lot of cash today – just “hundreds” of dollars – but the team believes it will scale as the startup grows and a large user base grows.
“Our strategy is to … expand these different revenue streams for developers,” says Neal. “And if we do that, I think the proportion of transaction revenue to subscription revenue will be higher than it is today.”
Since launching in private beta last September, Beacons has received 90,000 signups and now has over 20,000 people who are considered active users of the product. Most arrived in the last few months as the service began rolling out some of its newer features. So far, beacons have not done any paid marketing. Around 77% of new users came to beacons because they saw it on someone else’s profile.
The team raised a little angel round after the YC of around $ 600,000 but would like to raise funds in the future.