domeet webmaster

Below, I will discuss the features of paid graphics from the perspective of the author (traffic master) , WeChat platform, and the entire Internet content distribution significance. This article has not been officially recognized by Tencent, so it cannot represent Tencent’s next stage of product development ideas, it is just my personal observation and guessing.

(all this is obviously the choice of the gate of fate stone)

The main angle of traffic: the limitations of paid graphics are very obvious

Any self-media author (traffic master) has two core benefits: the first is to get traffic (Make Popularity) , the second is to earn income (Make Money) . WeChat public account is a large-scale self-media platform with high user quality and strong user stickiness. Unfortunately, it has some defects in the above two aspects:

• In terms of earning popularity, most public accounts are “information islands”, which can only be promoted through circle of friends and WeChat group forwarding. Especially for the author of the personal public account, the initial traffic is almost all from the people around him; unless you can bet a 100,000+ explosion, it is even more difficult to achieve rapid proliferation of traffic. Before 2019, WeChat did not have a centralized diversion mechanism at all, and the threshold for advertising promotion was too high.

  
  

• In terms of making money, the “regular source of income” for public accounts is bottom ads, interstitial ads, and rewards. All three are inefficient. For the PUGC public account with thousands to tens of thousands of fans, the daily advertising fee may not buy a lunch, and the reward income is purely random. Of course, head traffic owners can earn money by receiving advertisements or writing soft texts, but this has nothing to do with most traffic owners and has nothing to do with WeChat platforms.

  
  
  

  Now, WeChat has finally launched a third monetization model in addition to advertising and rewards. However, for the vast majority of trafficThe main limitation of the “Paid Graphic” model is very obvious:

  • First, paid graphics cannot be reprinted. You know, one of the biggest traffic sources for personal public accounts is the reprinting of other public accounts. If your original article is reprinted by large media, it is likely to bring thousands or even tens of thousands of fans overnight. Taking the Internet industry as an example, Tiger Sniff, 36 氪, Sina Technology, Entrepreneur State … are all important content distribution platforms. Is it worth sacrificing influence for a little paid income?

    
    

  • Secondly, paid graphics are not compatible with rewards and advertisements, that is, you cannot “eat more fish” . This brings a pricing problem: if you set your pricing too high, it may hurt readers’ motivation; if you set your pricing too low, you may make a lot of money. It is a bit difficult for traffic owners to find the “market clearing price” themselves.

    
    

  • Finally, there are some shortcomings in the initial paid graphics functions. For example, foreign Apple mobile phone users cannot pay, cannot pay for friends, and occasionally cannot refresh after payment; these are minor issues, and it should take time Can solve.

    
    
    

    
    

    (The income status of the last paid graphic of this strange bandit)

    Some original traffic owners told me that based on early experience, the “Paid Graphic” feature may be more applicable in the following cases:

    1. The number of followers is already very large. I have seen a situation in which a current affairs review article pays tens of thousands of people. Even if the price is only 1 yuan, it also means tens of thousands of income. The problem is that there are too many ways to make money on the head public account, even if you take a hard ad, you can make it.Tens of thousands; for them, paid graphics are just icing on the cake.

       
       

    2. Some dry goods with a high level of professionalism and high prices, especially financial / investment dry goods. I personally saw an article discussing investment strategies in the A-share market priced at 208 yuan, with at least 300 people paying. This is actually a kind of knowledge payment, but there are too few eligible content categories.

       
       

    3. The “impulse payment” content of emotional / voicing, that is, “pulling hatred, selling anxiety” content . If Mi Meng hasn’t been banned, content like “To Bitch” and “Your peers are abandoning you” is likely to win tens of thousands of people. However, the self-media that has this ability to instigate is generally the super head traffic master, and this money is nothing.

       
       
       

       To sum it up: At this stage, paid graphics can be icing on the head traffic master, and have little significance for waist and grassroots traffic masters. (Chat is better than nothing) . All traffic owners must choose between “influence or money”: Considering the limitations of paid graphics functions, head traffic owners may still make the most important original content into ordinary graphics. Can ensure the spread of (reproduced by a large number of secondary) , but does not necessarily hinder making money (You can earn it through advertising, rewards, etc.) .

       Some people also told this strange group that paid graphics may encourage original literary authors to publish content on the public account-after all, the biggest attraction of authors, Jinjiang and other online text platforms is to make money. I doubt it-the attraction of Jinjiang and Jinjiang lies not only in making money, but also in forming a “content system” where authors can get traffic, get instant feedback, and even get support for IP adaptation. Even in terms of making money, it is not easy for WeChat public accounts to reach the starting point and the level of Jinjiang. It is not uncommon for new VIP works to be subscribed more than 1,000 times on the first day, which means a few hundred or even thousands of first-day authors. Revenue; public accounts are difficult to provide paid revenue of this magnitude.
       

       
       

       (Yes, the public account paid income is subject to channel account and income tax)

       WeChat platform perspective: paid graphics is a tactical maneuver in a big strategy

       We have every reason to believe that the WeChat team is aware of the problem of WeChat public account (information island, limitation of realization) , trying to pass a series of ambitious However, it is careful to iterate on the functions to solve these problems thoroughly. The WeChat public account has always been the largest self-media platform in China, but in recent years, with the rise of emerging forms such as short videos and the growth of other aggregation platforms such as Toutiaohao, its status seems to have declined somewhat. If the growth of the public account can be “reactivated” successfully, making it attractive to both users and traffic owners, then WeChat and even Tencent can play chess in the field of content ecology.

       Tencent’s (not only the WeChat team) at least made The following tactical maneuvers:

       • Strengthen the “Look at” function, so that “Friends Are Watching” has become the most efficient public account content transmission path after the circle of friends and WeChat group;

         
         

       • Through the “Select” page in “Look at” and the “Public Account Discovery” push in the public account information stream, an algorithm-oriented centralized push system is established inside WeChat, thus breaking WeChat’s long-standing (but this is only supplementary) ;

       • Open the “Tencent Live” function module to almost all public account and small program traffic masters, and encourage them to strengthen user stickiness, receive rewards or bring goods through live broadcast. Although the entrance to “Tencent Live” is deep, so far No unified traffic entry on WeChat;

         
         

       • Gradually strengthen the “search and search” function, especially iterative trial and error of the “circle” function, although the “circle” is obviously not yet a mature product;

         
         

       • Efforts to increase the conversion rate of embedded advertisements in public accounts, greatly reduce the threshold for traffic main ads, launch the product rebate function, and provide more monetization space for waist and long tail traffic masters;

         
         

       • Grayscale test the “Pay graphics” function.

         
         
         

         It can be seen that the “Paid Graphic” function is only a recent tactical maneuver in Tencent’s “WeChat-based content ecological strategy”, which has a limited scope of influence, but has attracted a lot of media attention; it must be combined with other tactical maneuvers Only then can it work. Maybe tomorrow, we will see that Tencent solves some problems in the early stages of paid graphics testing through iteration; however, Tencent can also choose not to promote or even disable this feature for the time being. After all, as long as the strategic purpose is achieved, any tactical maneuver itself may be unimportant.

         
         

         (Any tactical maneuver is for battle and strategic victory)

         Investors often complain that WeChat is too slow and cautious to miss some emerging areas. They have obviously not been product managers, especially product managers of WeChat-like head apps-for any one billion DAU products, (Global Only WeChat one) , functional iteration must be slow and cautious, because the impact is too large and the uncertainty is too much; not to mention, WeChat’s early rise was because of minimalist design ideas.