Chinanews client, Beijing, September 4 (Gong Hongyu, Zuo Yuqing) "This is a bit far from the promotion fee I imagined. Give this money, I might as well lie down."

　　Two months after the blog post, Adai (a pseudonym), a blogger on a grass-based social platform, sighed after receiving an advertisement invitation for a fee of 3 yuan.

An advertising invitation infographic provided by the interviewee

　　In this regard, the knowledge blogger Xiaofa (a pseudonym) with more than two thousand fans is very envious, "It is good to have money, and I can't receive a single ad."

　　Both Xiaofa and Duan entered the self-media industry with the idea of ​​"using spare time to make money" under the influence of the Internet celebrity economy.

However, a few months later, the lucky stories of fans seeking millions of dollars a month, and endless trial supplies did not come to them as expected.

　　Difficulties in increasing followers, fast falling, low advertising conversion rates, and subdivided tracks are not favored by advertisers. These are the problems that bloggers worry about every day in reality.

　　Dongshu (pseudonym) has been working on a small red book video about heart and emotions from the beginning of August 2021.

After posting 18 original short video works, she has a total of 46 fans, a total of 131 favorites and likes.

　　Speaking of the slightly bleak growth of followers, Dong Shu said that “refreshing the page countless times a day to see how many fans he has, the more I look forward to it, the more disappointed I am.”

　　Dong Shu's anxiety about increasing fans reflects the industry rule that "the number of fans is everything".

　　Huatai Securities analyzes that the profitability of the Internet celebrity economy mainly includes live e-commerce, advertising and marketing, live rewards, knowledge and IP payment.

Among them, the quotations for live broadcasts and advertisements that attract money are directly linked to the size of the fans.

Screenshot of the blogger’s quotation. Data source: Cicada’s mother

　　Only with fans can earn income, but in the fierce fan breakout battle, most of the self-media bloggers "dead" before the dawn of making money and leave the scene lonely.

　　Even bloggers like Xiaofa, who have attracted fans and are not well-known, cannot receive ad endorsements because the content classification is too unpopular.

In Xiaofa's view, the fans of knowledge bloggers do not match the user portraits of businesses with high advertising needs such as beauty, clothing, and food, so few businesses find knowledge bloggers to advertise.

Why is it only 3 yuan?

　　The era of key opinion leaders (KOL) has passed, and the era of key opinion consumers (KOC) has arrived.

　　According to the "2020 China Internet Celebrity Economic Market Prospects and Investment Research Report" by the China Business Industry Research Institute, the scale of the national Internet Celebrity Economic Market in 2019 is estimated to exceed 250 billion yuan. The economic form of Internet Celebrity carrying goods still has room for sustainable development. .

　　However, from choosing celebrity endorsements to inviting KOLs (key opinion leaders) to bring goods, the changes in advertising methods reflect the shift from focusing on public domain traffic to private domain traffic.

With a large number of ordinary consumers and small bloggers sharing content on various platforms, KOC (Key Consumers) has become the new favorite of advertising and marketing.

　　KOL outputs professional content and finely packaged copywriting, but communication with fans is one-way.

KOC's thinking is true expression. Although the copywriting is relatively rough, it is highly interactive and can efficiently convert exposure (public domain traffic) into private domain traffic.

　　Compared with spending 3,000 yuan to ask big bloggers to bring the goods, the unit price of 3 yuan allows 1,000 small bloggers and ordinary consumers to write promotion, which is more credible.

The original cakes in the hands of bloggers were cut into small pieces and diverted.

　　At the same time, there is a natural conflict between content ecology and commercial demands.

Many content platforms have introduced measures to severely crack down on "soft broadcasting".

For example, on Xiaohongshu, notes that are suspected of being "soft and wide" will be directly restricted.

Xiaohongshu also closed the function of recommending good things in notes and the permission of Taobao links in the notes with goods, which makes it more difficult for bloggers to bring goods.

　　In the opinion of many people in the industry, it is imperative to rectify the content of community websites such as Xiaohongshu.

Because if the content is not controlled, it will become an advertising garbage dump sooner or later. Once something happens, it is not a trivial matter.

　　Under the new regulations, a Xiaohongshu blogger said that for every video with advertisements, 4 originals must be posted, otherwise the weight of the account will be reduced and it will not be easy to be distributed. Time and energy make high demands, and part-time bloggers are not easy to do."

Photo courtesy of interviewed bloggers.

　　In the era of "everyone is from the media", the hot track is homogenized and the competition is fierce.

Cicada’s data shows that there are tens of thousands of people marked as “beauty bloggers” on Douyin and Xiaohongshu alone.

On the one hand, the price of a single advertisement on top Internet celebrities is as high as several hundred thousand yuan; on the other hand, small bloggers with less than 10,000 fans account for most of the country.

　　Therefore, despite the "extreme profits" of the industry, in the face of fierce competition and a shrinking market, most people can only leave the market alone.

(over)