On May 25th, I got the APP’s CTO Knife Tsing Yi, and I got a picture in the circle of friends. The accumulated users have exceeded 20 million on the same day, and the distance has been officially operated for 2 years. That is, in this month, Shenzhen Nanshan, 2,300 kilometers away from Beijing, has been on the line for more than a year of knowledge-paid technology service provider Xiaoyuetong, and the flow exceeded 1 billion.
On the other hand, many early entrepreneurs who paid for knowledge sighed that the dividend period was disappearing, the business became more and more difficult to do, and they began to abandon the line, the transformation was done offline, and even began to leave. In 2017, everyone was talking about the payment of knowledge, suddenly entered the turning lane, and the industry entered a big reshuffle stage.
Three-country killing pattern of knowledge payment
In the now traceable information, the official proponent of the concept of knowledge payment is the founder of the shell, Ji XIII. However, the history of development is very early. Since 2013, Luo Zhenyu has tried to introduce paid members in Luo Ji thinking. It is considered by the industry to be the bud of knowledge payment. The whole industry started to develop in 2014?2015 until the first half of 2016. The voice product was released, Wang Sicong’s blessing, Luo Zhenyu’s getting on the line, the whole industry was ignited and detonated, and in 2017, knowledge payment was a big year into the whole industry.
The popularity of 2016? 2017 has given birth to countless players, and it seems that everyone is a paying user. Including content entrepreneurs, content platforms, technical services, traffic distribution, course promotion, payment docking and other types. However, just like any Internet industry, it will experience a spiraling path of germination, development, climax, reshuffle, and redevelopment. By 2018, the entire industry has entered an inflection point. According to the 36-inch report, one knowledge is paid. Steven, the entrepreneur, knows that the highest monthly income can reach 20,000. But after one year, the income was less than 3,000 yuan. Many media and the outside world are discussing, is the knowledge payment already yellow? Or is the whole industry more calm? According to the current development of the industry, there are three main modes:
Content Department: Mainly to linearize the content publishing model. The main representative is to get, and to do it (points and answers). Whether it is getting or not, or a centralized platform, the platform provides traffic, not only to provide a content creator to sell classes, to interact with users, but to participate in the platform, including author development and screening, topic selection , planning, brand packaging, sales process participation. It is a platform that has a deep content-oriented model. The advantage of doing this is that the quality of the content is guaranteed. At the same time, personnel and time costs have also increased dramatically. Taking the head as an example, the current membership has more than 200 people.
Technology Department: A one-stop solution for content payment through technology + services. This is a typical representative of Goose. Xiao Getong founder Lao Bao is the original Tencent T4 expert. The biggest feature of this model is decentralization, no absolute center, no backflow, and user traffic belongs to itself. As a third party, it does not participate in operations, mainly providing solutions for content payment, user management, marketing, etc. It is a closed-loop technology SaaS service tool. After the goose pass, there are many similar products. At present, the goose has more than 1 billion water flowing through it, occupying the head position of the industry.
Traffic system: mainly for the distribution of content. Use the platform’s own traffic to continuously develop and sign authors to help content creators distribute. Typical representatives include Himalayan and others. The characteristic of this model is that the platform is centralized, the traffic is concentrated on the platform, mainly the partial operation and promotion, and there is less intervention for specific content. Content creators need to rely on the platform’s traffic and resources, and must have a greater grasp of content production.
But between the big V and the centralized platform, there is actually a paradox. Content creators want to rely on the platform to pull traffic and increase revenue, but from a platform perspective, the platform also hopes that Big V can bring more new traffic. If this effect is not achieved, the platform’s support will be greatly reduced.
Knowledge payment or knowledge service?
As a well-known Weibo Technology V, a well-known critic, he has his own Weibo fan community, providing them with a list of technology news and a brief review every day. After more than a year of care, there are currently more than 5,000 paid members on Weibo, each with more than 300 membership fees per year. In other words, his income has exceeded 1.5 million. All of this is his own operation. In this year, Weibo began to gradually operate vertically, focusing on supporting some large V to take the idolization route. On the same day, Xi’an decided to make the community that originally played the ticket long-term and comprehensive operation. In addition to Weibo, he also prepared to use Xiaoyuetong. Services, expand the community to platforms such as WeChat.
“Knowledge payment is actually an act that does not represent the whole phenomenon. A more reasonable formulation should be knowledge service and knowledge economy.” Wu Yunfei, the marketing director of the market, said that at this stage, knowledge is paid. The reference is no longer applicable. In fact, not only concepts, including industry and content, business models, etc. are changing.
The first is that users are changing, early IP payments and brand payments, more to pay for individuals, paying for the worship and fan economy, after market education and baptism, began to rise to the real pay for knowledge and growth. After more than a year of practice and observation, after the reshuffle of the first wave of paid courses, the user entered the stage of two-way selection. “There is less and less anxiety about selling now. Like many topics before, the class is solidified, you are abandoned by your peers, but now you see, Douban time is a lot of literature, including classical music appreciation, people are willing to regard it as knowledge. The window of learning.”
The content is also changing. In the view of the lecturer of the quality class and the career of the media entrepreneur Spenser, many platforms, including, in the early days, are more general education, such as economics, aesthetics, etc., relatively large and poorly operational. The content, in addition to the relationship with the platform users, more importantly, this time period, the user did not figure out what is needed, and then more is to ease their anxiety, at this stage, the user cares about triggering the purchase of this Behavior, the key things learned, not the key, the user is in the blind stage.
And entering the knowledge service stage, “knowledge is sinking”, Xiao Gou Tong co-founder, COO Fan Xiaoxing feels that practical content is more popular, large and empty classes, slowly landed in vertical and subdivided industries And courses. Vocational education and technical services have begun to rise. On Goose Pass, the highest monthly income is the wealth management course. “The most popular wealth management shop can sell tens of millions of water in a month.” At the point of the line (the answer), the original theme is that it is suitable for one minute. Light information, such as stocks, finance, health and other content, and now transform to sell courses, dozens of minutes of big lessons or ten minutes of small tips.
At the same time, the platform is changing. As the earliest technical service provider, Xiaoyuetong not only helps the self-media in the WeChat ecosystem to realize the content realization, but also helps the content realization group to link with other platforms, and open the bottom interface of other APPs including Douban time. . In Xiao Got Tong, the original entrepreneurs who started to do content courses began to differentiate. They are good at making content and focusing on content and courses. They are good at packaging products and help people who do content to spread.
What the platform did earlier was pure technical support, helping users complete the transaction, and basically terminated. But now, in addition to the basic technology, it is more and more innovative to iterate new technologies based on the needs of the content entrepreneurial group, and provide more comprehensive services. “Pay paying users are difficult to complete on their own, and they need to be accompanied and supervised.” Generally, after the course is purchased, in the later period, the paying user opening rate will fall down in a cliff-like manner, that is, buying a class and not attending classes. Although the user payment behavior has been completed, it is not a good thing for the content brand side. One is that the overall course value is not displayed, including brand communication, and the other one will greatly affect the user’s subsequent repurchase rate.
For the technology platform, operators have raised new challenges and requirements, and services have become core competitiveness. Goose is optimized and developed for marketing, bargaining, coupons, etc., including viral marketing methods, using technology and marketing to wake up users, and further strengthen operations and liquidation through data analysis and financial management.
In Spenser’s view, knowledge payment is not just about imparting knowledge. More is actually a social upgrade. A group of like-minded people find their own group, so he started to develop online private courses from the online, one person from the original The online 699 upgrade is 7999 yuan, and each city can train up to 100 people. From the content, we will transform overseas financial management and education, and there will be e-commerce in the future.
Knowledge payment is beginning to be fully upgraded to knowledge services. People who change people are not necessarily knowledge. Many times they are role models and incentives for those who teach. In his view, the difference between the two is that knowledge payment is a short-term outbreak, knowledge payment needs to be long-term; knowledge payment threshold is low, instant satisfaction, and knowledge payment requires long-term investment; knowledge payment is more partial marketing, and knowledge It takes more time and effort to pay.
Is there still tomorrow for knowledge payment?
With the concept of knowledge payment falling, many media are screaming the entire industry. Some content entrepreneurs began to shut down projects and transform into other industries. However, in the view of Wu Yunfei, the marketing director of the market, he expressed his absolute confidence in the industry: “There is no reason why the industry will not go up.”
In his view, the existing knowledge services combine the characteristics of the three major industries of education, publishing, and media, but they are different. At present, the online education market has already produced several listed companies including New Oriental, Good Future, and Xueda. The overall volume is far above 10 billion. As lifelong education and competition become more intense, the demand for knowledge services is growing. According to the current development of online education, natural is scattered, there is no Matthew effect. New Oriental only accounts for 2% of the entire market. The market share of knowledge payment is compared to the education industry, which is expected to exceed 10 billion or more. It can be seen that there is no oligopoly situation in knowledge payment.
As the payment of knowledge gradually returns to normal, the industry gradually becomes more rational, but the concept of knowledge payment itself is also expanding, from graphic to video, audio, live, from online to offline, from simple training. Beginning to expand to a variety of modes such as question and answer, training camp, etc. In the future, the content and service will continue to be iterated, and more business models will be cultivated.
Dong Shuai, an investor in Wutong Tree Capital, believes that knowledge payment is a product of the mobile Internet era. It is a migration of the needs of publishing and training. The knowledge-paid 1.0-era KOL and the large-scale mobile-based solution solve the user’s purchase of courses. Trust issue. However, in the 2.0 stage, the user’s trust utility to KOL is diminishing. In addition to purchasing the course to alleviate anxiety, the company really needs to get the content that can be promoted. The company development course itself needs to bring self-feedback to the user, and the second is based on word of mouth. Marketing communication capabilities will test the important factors of knowledge paying companies.
From the perspective of market size, there are about 20 to 30 million knowledge-paying users in China. In the next few years, this number may be multiplied several times, and the annual payment amount of users also has a lot of room for improvement. The overall trend is a growth trend. . In the first- and second-tier cities, the knowledge is paid, and many still have to evolve to the education and training industry to make high customer unit prices. At the same time, user payment itself is a particularly good user screening. Paying content is more likely to gain user trust and influence user decision-making. If the paid content and the traditional industry can be grafted well, it will be a bigger story in finance and real estate. In the industry, there are already companies that are doing this kind of experiment.
In the context of saturated first- and second-tier market knowledge, how to more effectively cover mobile Internet users (especially female users) in the third- and fourth-tier markets is the key to making such a $1 billion company. In that market, users are more versatile and more price sensitive, and their content requirements are not exquisite, but easy to understand.
“Now some classes are still too much. By harvesting fans and playing with various cool concepts, in the future, those grounded and practical classes will become more and more popular and the market will be big enough.” The next BAT, but the birth of a $1 billion company is very likely, and getting it is the best example. “These projects are well-flowed and have cash income. In fact, there is no need to worry too much about survival. The key is how to solve marketing and continuous content production capacity.”
In Fan Xiaoxing’s view, with the diversification of content distribution forms, from graphic to audio, video, live broadcast diversification, with the evolution of technology platforms, including the rise and maturity of WeChat applets, including the diversification of communication means On the whole, knowledge payment is in the initial stage, and there are still opportunities in the middle and long tail.
In the Apple sub-account, in addition to the game, the scale of payment is in the top ten, which is enough to show how attractive this market is. “Valueable knowledge needs to be edited continuously and will not explode, but it will continue to grow.”
