Dive Brief:

• Social media influencer network FameBit has teamed up with multi-commerce platform provider Shopify to give its roster of content creators a pathway into e-commerce, according to a press release.
• Through the collaboration, FameBit's 31,000 content creators will have the possible opportunity to leverage Shopify's technology to set up their own digital storefronts.
• "Influencers have become the new celebrities and their influence has created incredible shortcuts to building positive brand affinity not only for other brands' products and services that they love but also their own," FameBit Co-Founder and COO Agnes Kozera told Marketing Dive.

Dive Insight:

For influencers, many of whom make their living off the content they produce online, moving into e-commerce is a natural next step in their evolution. Digital storefronts provide these content creators with another avenue to monetize their personal brands.

For Shopify, the collaboration will benefit its merchants. FameBit will provide them with the resources to link up with influencers, which could help them grow their own brands and businesses.

"Our partnership with Shopify highlights the importance of influence marketing in e-commerce and we expect it to not only turn more influencers into retailers but also to expose a lot more merchants to the power of these influential personalities," Kozera said. "Moreover, once more influencers establish their own product lines, we anticipate that they themselves will turn to influence marketing to spread the word further, since they understand the value of these types of collaborations firsthand."

FameBit has made other recent moves that recognize influencers as multi-pronged creators, including expanding their own influencer marketplace from just YouTube to Instagram, Vine, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter. Kozera explained to Marketing Dive earlier this year that she sees the influencer space becoming a more multi-channel, multi-platform environment.

Influencers are a growing opportunity for brand marketers. Although influencer marketing can be hard to measure, marketers are turning to collaborations with content creators in increasing numbers. A recent eMarketer study of marketing and communications professionals found that 67% of respondents reported using influencers for content promotion and 59% reported using influencer marketing for product launches and content creation.