Our vision is that Marketplace is a powerful place for brands and creators to connect with their audience and sell diverse collections of avatars, clothing, and accessories.
We recently opened up Marketplace to more creators, and they’re now creating more items and earning more than ever.
We will soon allow creators to make, sell, and share avatars complete with bodies, clothing, and accessories.
Every day on Roblox, 79.5 million* users play and connect with friends. Creators make nearly everything people enjoy on our platform and they find much of it on Marketplace, our main destination for shopping and discovery. The wide variety of avatars, clothing, and accessories on Marketplace make it easy for people to express themselves on our platform.
Until earlier this year, those wanting to create items to sell on Marketplace had to be part of our UGC Program, which was invite-only. But in April, we opened up Marketplace creation to more creators******. This has been an essential step in making Marketplace more personal, dynamic, and accessible for everyone. Plus, it’s led to a steady increase of great avatars and avatar items available for people on our platform.
Our vision for Marketplace is that it’s a powerful place for creators and brands to connect with their audience and market their wares. And that’s only more true now. Since opening up creation in April, our creator community has made 22% more 3D avatar items**. In total, more than 4,800 new individual creators*** have joined and continue to be part of our community. Creator accounts**** that were established after we opened up creation in April already made up as much as 8% of total creator earnings in June.
More Creating, Buying, and Earning Than Ever
Thanks to these changes, creators are making more avatar items now than ever. In turn, people on Roblox can find and buy more of what they like. Which helps creators earn more and make more, fueling our economic flywheel. We have already seen the emergence of many brilliant creators on Roblox, such as yirusuo and Evaekoo.
“I just launched my hairstyles group and immediately started uploading a ton of different hairstyles and the group pretty much just took off, which was super exciting,” says yirusuo. “I was so excited to see how much I could do and how much I could create, and so it really motivated me to keep going.”
As we opened up creation, we also introduced new economic levers designed to foster a healthy economy and help boost creators’ businesses. These included dynamic price floors and publishing advances. We are already seeing positive impacts from these efforts: The number of creator accounts earning 50,000 Robux a month increased by 85% in June compared to the same time last year, and total monthly creator earnings have increased 61% year over year*****. In the past year alone, more than 7,500 of the 5.5 million U.S. creator accounts monetizing on Roblox earned more than $650.
And it’s not only new creators who are benefitting: Creator accounts that existed before opening up our UGC Program in April, have seen their total earnings growth accelerate from 30% year over year in March to 50% in June.
An example of someone whose business has grown since we opened up creation is bad_b0y. He’s a fan of the initiative after initially being wary. “It actually fueled my passion for creation for Marketplace,” he says. “The ability to create bodies of all shapes and sizes is…huge.”
What’s truly exciting is that these efforts are driving a virtuous cycle that’s generating fresh opportunity throughout our entire creator ecosystem. It’s also driving enthusiasm in our user community because they love what creators are making and that they’re constantly refreshing their offerings.
In fact, in June, 12% of peoples’ avatar Robux spend was on new items (created within the previous 30 days), up from 9% in March. After all, with a wider variety of items available, people have been able to choose more ways to express themselves.
Making Marketplace More Personal, Dynamic, and Accessible
One undeniable sign of our community’s hearty response is that nearly 18% of all the avatar items ever created by our community and published to Marketplace have been published since we opened up creation in April.
At the same time, another result of opening up creation is that doing so unleashed an inspiring range of innovation across all categories of content on Roblox. Indeed, the ingenuity of our full creator community has led to a huge influx of new fashion and style trends people are using to express their true selves online. Some examples include brat summer aesthetic, Western-inspired, and Y2K nostalgia.
“The big thing I really like about Roblox is how there's so much creativity that goes into creating your avatars,” says Evaeko (@Evaekoo). “There's just an endless amount of different accessories and items you can wear. Growing up, the main thing I really loved about video games was character customization, so seeing how I can create all these different kinds of UGC for other people to wear and stumbling across them wearing it as well makes me really happy to see.”
Expanding Avatar Creation
As we look to the future, we’re always searching for new ways to help creators grow their businesses and engage the passionate communities in their experiences. Currently, creators can only publish and sell individual items separately in Marketplace and inside experiences. But in the coming months, we’ll begin allowing creators for the first time to sell avatar bundles — consisting of bodies, clothing, and accessories — in Marketplace and within experiences. This is a big step forward for creators.
Selling avatars and items as a bundle is much more convenient for people, as they’ll be able to shop for full looks all at once rather than piecemeal. We recently launched a new way to search for avatar bundles and have already seen a positive uptick in people shopping for full looks, rather than individual accessories. For creators and brands alike, that means new ways to showcase their full creative vision, build connections with their audience, and grow their earnings.
We know that the Roblox ecosystem is stronger when our community has more avenues and incentives to make and sell their creations.
We’ve been excited and impressed by the many ways creators have enhanced their ability to earn since we opened up creation in April. And we can’t wait to see the many more ways they’ll do that — and give people more ways than ever to express themselves — in the months and years to come.
