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Shopify Announces New "Developer-Friendly" Revenue Sharing Model

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Following Shopify’s meteoric rise to the top of the e-commerce industry, the Ottawa-based retail technology company is putting their money where their mouth is by allowing developers to keep 100% of their first $1 Million of revenue on the Shopify platform. Previously, their revenue sharing model required developers to give Shopify 20% of all of their revenue earned on the platform. With this recent change, developers will only be required to give Shopify 15% of their revenue that exceeds their first $1 Million. This $1 Million benchmark resets annually.

This change is a testament to Shopify’s desire to become a “developer-first” company. Fatima Yusuf, their Director of Ecosystem Partnerships, added that Shopify’s hiring goal for the year is to fill 2,021 technical roles, further amplifying their support for their developers. Shopify Canada’s managing director Ian Black added that Shopify sees developers as the “key to the future of Shopify and to the commerce infrastructure that [they are] building together.” Black emphasized the importance of promoting the success of smaller developers in an increasingly competitive market; giving them a bigger cut of their early earning aims to do just that.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced technological stragglers to move online to survive, sparking an acceleration in the development of online retail technology. Along with their new revenue sharing model, Shopify also recently unveiled new checkout extensions that aim to make checkouts more efficient and a new Storefront API to allow developers to build custom storefronts quickly.

Shopify hopes that its focus on becoming increasingly developer-friendly will allow more developers to use their platform effectively and without economic or technological barriers to success. These recent announcements are certainly steps in the right direction.

Author: Tommy Friedlich, 2021 Summer Student-at-law

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@pickawood

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