Chat app Line rakes in $1.5m in just one month of users creating and selling their own stickers

Messaging app Line opened a marketplace in April that lets anyone create and sell their own stickers, with sales starting on May 8. Today it announced that the Line Creators Market has drawn over 80,000 creators and 12,000 sticker sets since it opened up to users, of which a total of 1,200 sticker sets went on sale.

In the first month since the service went live, 1.7 million sticker sets were sold in all, with total sales reaching 150 million yen ($1.47 million). The average sales for the top 10 selling ones on the market reached 4.7 million yen, while 61.7 percent of sticker sets available for purchase have passed over 10,000 yen in sales, which shows that users are attracted to a wide variety of stickers and not just a handful of top ranking ones.

How the market works is that creators can sell sets of 40 stickers at 100 yen (about $1) per set once the graphics are approved by Line, and they will receive 50 percent of the proceeds. Stickers from the Creators Market can only be bought by users in an initial four countries – Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, where Line’s Web store is operational — but there are plans to widen the reach eventually.

Line reveals that users who purchased stickers from the market sent over 81 million messages featuring creators’ stickers, which forms a type of organic marketing for the initiative.

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The Japanese messaging company, which arguably pioneered the concept of stickers, kicked off the idea of democratizing stickers on its platform in a bid to accelerate Line’s global expansion with further localization. Stickers also contribute to Line’s revenue — it sells over $10 million worth of stickers per month.

At the same time today, Line also launched a new iOS app that combines selfies with stickers. The app is reminiscent of Chinese photo app MomentCam, which went viral worldwide. Line Selfie Sticker lets users take a picture of their own face first, and choose their favorite character from over 130 illustrations including Line characters. After fitting their face into the illustration, users can then send their original stickers to their friends on Line.

As Line continues experimenting with content in a bid to engage users and increase stickiness on its platform, brands will likely be more convinced of its potential as a marketing channel — which explains Line’s partnership with Salesforce to build on that momentum.

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