Bluesky has added a Links section to user profiles that places websites, newsletters, other social accounts and payment pages directly below a person's bio, according to a post on the company's blog dated October 22, 2026, and signed by Alex Benzer. Links to payment platforms such as Patreon and Ko-fi appear automatically as green buttons, and the company describes the feature as "a first step toward a broader vision of creator monetization across the Atmosphere," its name for the group of apps built on the AT Protocol.

In Short

Bluesky now lets people pin a short row of links under their profile bio, so visitors can jump straight to a website, a newsletter or a shop without going through a separate links page. If one of those links goes to a tipping or membership site like Patreon or Ko-fi, Bluesky turns it into a green button so it stands out. The company says this is the start of a longer plan to help creators earn money in ways that are not tied to any one app.

What the feature does

The mechanics are short enough to describe in full. According to Bluesky, a user opens their own profile, selects Edit Profile, finds the new Links section and adds a URL. A custom title is optional. Several links can be added and dragged into a different order. Once saved, they sit "directly below your bio where anyone visiting your profile can easily find them," according to the post.

One detail concerns safety rather than design. People on mobile devices can tap and hold a link to preview the full URL before opening it, according to Bluesky. Custom titles make that preview relevant: a button reading "Art Shop" says nothing about where it goes, and the long-press is the only way the post describes for a visitor to check the destination.

The post positions the feature against a familiar workaround. "Unlike traditional 'link in bio' pages, which require visitors to click through a pop-up or another page before visiting your links, Bluesky's profile links send your followers directly where you'd like them to go," the company wrote. The result, in Bluesky's words, is that "people who visit your profile are just one click away from reading your work, subscribing, or supporting you."

The example profile Bluesky published with the announcement belongs to Sarah McAnulty, a squid biologist and science communicator with 58.4k followers on the platform. Under her bio sit buttons labelled "Support our work!", "Science Merch!", "Skype a Scientist" and "Art Shop," followed by a "+1" marker that suggests further links are collapsed behind a tap. The surrounding artwork shows the kinds of destinations Bluesky has in mind: Patreon, Etsy, Dribbble, Behance, Twitch, Buy Me a Coffee, Bandcamp and a podcast.

What the post does not say

Several practical limits are absent from the announcement. Bluesky gives no maximum number of links per profile, and the "+1" marker in its example does not say how many are visible before the rest are folded away. The post names only Patreon and Ko-fi as payment platforms that trigger the green treatment, describing them as examples ("payment platforms like Patreon and Ko-fi") without publishing a full list. In the company's own illustration, the Etsy and Buy Me a Coffee links are also shown in green, but the text does not confirm which services qualify or how they are detected.

There is also no statement on whether links are checked for malicious destinations, whether they carry tracking parameters, or whether they are exposed through the AT Protocol in a way other apps can read. Bluesky did not say whether the feature is available on all platforms at once; the instructions are written for the profile editor without distinguishing between the iOS, Android and web apps.

Payment buttons, not a payment system

The green buttons are the part of the launch most relevant to anyone who sells to an audience. "We want to make it easier for creators to build a subscriber base and earn a living from their work," according to the post. "That's why links to payment platforms like Patreon and Ko-fi automatically appear as prominent green buttons on profiles."

Bluesky is not processing payments itself. The buttons, according to the company, "take people directly to creators' existing payment pages, where they can subscribe or contribute using the services creators know and trust." Bluesky takes no stated cut, sets no prices and handles no transactions. The money moves on Patreon, Ko-fi or whichever service the creator already uses.

That choice sets Bluesky apart from platforms that have built subscriptions inside their own walls. Spotify, for example, began rolling out podcast Memberships in 34 markets on October 20, 2026, with creators keeping 90% of revenue but only if their shows are hosted on Spotify's own tools. Bluesky's post states its preference in the opposite direction: "We're excited about helping creators grow their audiences and build businesses beyond the platform, rather than trying to keep all that activity inside Bluesky."

Patreon, the first service the post names, has been building out the destination side of this arrangement. PPC Land reported in April 2025 that podcasters on Patreon earned more than $472 million in a year from over 6.7 million paid memberships, the platform's highest-earning category at the time. A visible button on a social profile is a top-of-funnel feed into exactly that kind of business.

The Atmosphere and portable memberships

The most forward-looking passage of the post is also the vaguest. "Profile links are also a first step toward a broader vision of creator monetization across the Atmosphere, the open ecosystem of apps built on the AT Protocol," according to Bluesky. "Over time, we want to explore ways for creators to offer memberships and other benefits that work across apps, so their businesses aren't dependent on any single platform."

The verbs are cautious: "explore," "over time." No dates, partners or technical specifications are given. Yet the direction matters. The AT Protocol is the open standard underneath Bluesky, and PPC Land's coverage of Openvibe's multi-network reader in August 2025 described it as one of the protocols that let separate decentralized services exchange content. A membership that could be recognised by any app on the protocol would be a form of interoperability applied to fan revenue rather than to posts, and the question would then become a commercial one: who verifies a subscriber's status, and which app gets to show the perk?

Bluesky's post answers none of that. It frames profile links as a step, not a destination, and it says the goal is for creators "to build sustainable businesses on their own terms."

Why this matters for marketers

Outbound links have become one of the more political design decisions a social platform makes. On X, users spent years moving URLs into replies in the belief that linked posts were demoted. PPC Land's analysis of X's open-sourced ranking code in January 2026 found no explicit URL penalty but argued that engagement prediction could suppress link posts indirectly. Elon Musk later said X had not penalised posts with external links for over a year, a claim made in a reply thread on July 29, 2026.

Instagram has moved in smaller steps. It raised the number of bio links from one to five in April 2023, and in March 2026 PPC Land reported that it was testing clickable links in post captions for some Meta Verified subscribers, a feature that would sit behind a paid tier. Bluesky's version is free, attached to the profile and explicitly designed to send people elsewhere.

The post's direct comparison is with "link in bio" pages, a category of third-party tools that host a single landing page of links for creators who are otherwise limited to one URL on a profile. Bluesky's description of those pages, as something that makes visitors "click through a pop-up or another page," is a competitor's characterisation rather than a neutral one, and the post offers no data on how many clicks are lost in that extra step.

There is outside evidence that the destination of a social link matters. A Bitly survey of 1,006 US consumers, published in September 2026, found that 79% had abandoned an action after a social link sent them to a generic homepage rather than the product they expected. Bitly sells link-in-bio and link-tracking tools, so the figures come from a company with a stake in the outcome, and the survey measured homepage routing, not intermediary pages. Still, the friction argument Bluesky makes is the same one link vendors use to sell their products.

For brands and agencies, the practical effect is narrower than for individual creators. Profile links give a brand account several clickable destinations above the feed, without a third-party page in between. What they do not provide, on the evidence of the post, is any measurement. Bluesky says nothing about click counts, referral reporting or analytics for profile owners, so attribution would depend on whatever tagging the account adds to its own URLs.

Bluesky's commercial position

The launch also says something about how Bluesky itself intends to make money, or at least how it does not. When Bluesky named Toni Schneider as interim chief executive in March 2026, the company reported more than 40 million registered users and stated that it does not rely on advertising or engagement-driven metrics. No ad product has been announced since. Profile links, as described, generate no revenue for Bluesky at all.

The creator economy has been the commercial frame Bluesky has returned to, and this post makes it explicit. Whether a platform that does not take a cut of creator payments, and does not sell ads, can fund itself from the activity it is sending elsewhere is a question the announcement leaves open.

The feature arrives three days after Bluesky set out its moderation rules for the November 3 US midterm elections, including removals of impersonation and fake account networks. The two posts address different problems, but they meet on the profile page: a verified-looking account with a green "Support" button is a more valuable target for impersonators than one without. Bluesky's verification system, which added blue checks in April 2025 on top of domain-based handles, is the existing safeguard; the profile links post does not mention it.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Bluesky, the social network built on the AT Protocol, in a blog post signed by Alex Benzer. The feature affects creators, brands and anyone with a Bluesky profile, and the payment services Patreon and Ko-fi, which are named in the post.

What: A Links section in the profile editor that displays websites, newsletters, social accounts and other destinations directly below the bio, with optional custom titles, drag-to-reorder and a long-press URL preview on mobile. Links to payment platforms such as Patreon and Ko-fi appear automatically as green buttons. Bluesky handles no payments itself.

When: The post is dated October 22, 2026.

Where: On Bluesky profiles. The post does not limit the feature by country or app version.

Why: According to Bluesky, the aim is to help creators build audiences and businesses "beyond the platform" and to reduce the extra step of link-in-bio pages. The company calls profile links a first step toward memberships and benefits that work across apps in the AT Protocol ecosystem, without giving dates or details.