Google has launched a new app designed to help creators monetize their online presence, with direct links to a digital storefront where you can sell whatever you like, via various payment methods.

As you can see here, the new app, called ‘Qaya’, enables creators to put together attractive, responsive digital storefronts, which they can then link to from other apps and platforms.

As explained by Google:

“Creators use Qaya as the hub for their business activity across the web. Many link to their Qaya storefronts from their social media bios, and showcase digital products they upload or products and services hosted on other sites. We provide custom yourname.channel or qaya.store/your-name URLs, with payment functionality built in.”

Google says that creators on Qaya can sell anything – “from trapeze workout guides to wellness training videos, photo filters, beat packs, ASMR read-alouds, productivity templates, knitting patterns and much more.” The app supports both gated and free products, as well as creator tipping, while Google’s also developing subscription and other monetization options.

Which could be a handy accompaniment for creators – though every social app is also developing its own integrated systems to facilitate creator monetization, which likely negates the value of linking to a third party platform for such, in many cases.

But then again, Qaya will be directly linked to Google-owned properties, like YouTube, where creators will be able to promote products from Qaya directly below their YouTube clips.

There are also customer management and analytics elements, which could help to optimize sales performance, which add further value to the offering.

But again, with so many platforms also offering their own monetization tools for creators, it’s hard to see many adding Qaya links to their profiles, when they could directly monetize using more integrated means directly in each app.

Still, it’s another consideration, and there may be valuable use cases for Qaya that could simplify the monetization process.

The app is currently only available in the US, with Google looking to bring it to more regions soon.