A budding startup called Kit, which serves as a product discovery and ecommerce platform where influencers can share items that they’re loving with followers — while pocketing 100% of Amazon affiliate earnings on every sale — is gaining serious steam within the YouTube community.
Kit is the brainchild of Camille Hearst, a former YouTube and iTunes product manager, as well as Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai. The one-and-a-half-year-old company, which currently counts five employees, landed a $2.5 million seed round last November.
On Kit, digital influencers from myriad content categories — including gaming, photography, beauty, fitness, DIY, and more — can share an infinite number of ‘kits’, or shoppable collections of their favorite products. For instance, tech reviewer Marques ‘MKBHD’ Brownlee has shared kits comprising his video gear and desk setup. Other creators, including Casey Neistat, Tiffany ‘iHasCupquake’ Garcia, and Claire Marshall, are also on the platform. In addition to kits comprising creators’ go-to videomaking gadgets, some creators, like Garcia, are making kits that correspond with individual YouTube videos.
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Given that Kit enables creators to keep all affiliate earnings, Hearst tells Tubefilter that the company is “pre-revenue” right now, but in the future may explore offering its own products or collections of products for sale.
Several of Kit’s creators, on the other hand, are already making serious bank. The Brooklyn-based YouTube filmmaker and reviewer Kraig Adams, whose Wedding Film School channel teaches viewers about wedding videography, counts a relatively modest 70,000 subscribers. But Adams says he noticed a 25% increase in affiliate income and conversion rates after he joined the platform. Today, he says, he’s making $1,000 per week, and is on pace to earn $100,000 this year on Kit alone.
“Kit makes what would be a gear page on a niche personal website into an open community where anyone can discover, interact with, and share products,” Adams says.
