Since the public account "Luo Ji Siwei" launched a paid membership system in 2013, the term "knowledge payment" has jumped into the public's field of vision.

In the following 10 years, the "blue ocean" of my country's paid knowledge industry has expanded at a dizzying speed.

Data shows that in 2021, the market size of my country's knowledge payment industry will exceed 67.5 billion yuan, with nearly 500 million users, and the growth rate will remain above 40% for a long time.

Under the influence of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, many people are passively stuck at home and have nothing to do, and their motivation to learn by themselves has also increased.

Under this opportunity, the knowledge payment industry relying on the Internet seems to usher in a "little golden period" of development.

　　However, on the other side of the boom, doubts about this paid industry have never ceased.

Many people suspect that paying for knowledge is "cutting leeks", and some scholars believe that related companies are actually selling "placebo" disguised as knowledge by creating anxiety.

Recently, the IPO review process of “Think Creation”, an industry leader in the field of knowledge payment, was suspended again because “the financial information has expired.”

This is the third time that “Think Creation” has suspended its listing review due to expired financial information.

Previously, Tong Zhe, the founder of the well-known knowledge payment institution "Wanmen University", lost contact, and the mobile application and official website operated by the company could not be logged in and used normally.

This series of events has pushed knowledge payment to the forefront.

One can’t help but ask: Is paying for knowledge a new wave to expand lifelong education, or an “IQ tax” that sells anxiety?

　　Whether due to curiosity or the need for professional development, people always want to learn more, but what hinders them is often the time cost of acquiring knowledge and the barriers to entry.

The rise of knowledge payment is based on its characteristics of fragmentation, entertainment and interaction.

Product makers "soften" relatively "hard" knowledge by combining video, audio and picture presentations, enabling users to easily use fragmented time to learn knowledge.

It is aimed at the interface between formal education and self-study: unlike school education, which has structured classrooms, homework, and assessment mechanisms, it has more guidance and interaction links than self-study, saving people the trouble of self-study.

With the convenience of the mobile Internet, it can also help people make use of their spare time, build up sand into a tower, and integrate learning into life, which is exactly the meaning of "lifelong learning".

　　Although the original intention of paying for knowledge is good, from the perspective of the effect of people's learning, it is indeed not satisfactory.

According to the statistics of "Get", the average completion rate of various paid courses on the platform is less than 35%, and the completion rate of courses in the field of natural sciences is only 8%.

To a certain extent, this data is also a microcosm of the knowledge payment market.

After the early market dividends subsided, the low repurchase rate and the loss of users have become a huge problem for the knowledge payment platform.

Many users have not completed or even opened the course after buying it, indicating that they are not really buying knowledge, but are paying to ease the knowledge anxiety that keeps emerging in their hearts. "Buying is equal to knowing".

　　In addition, discontinuation may also be a way for users to express dissatisfaction with the poor quality of paid content.

Some studies have pointed out that among consumers who have paid for knowledge, less than 30% of users expressed satisfaction with the experience, and about 50% said that the experience was average, which means that there are many shoddy paid knowledge products on the market that make consumers dissatisfied.

These products are either filled with content, have no "dry goods", or are scripted and lack guidance.

Users need to be effectively guided in learning to overcome difficulties and continue learning, but many courses are not designed in this way.

The courses purchased by users are difficult to convert into knowledge, and many knowledge payment platforms do not allow refunds, so consumers can only "vote with their feet".

This is also what the paid-for-knowledge industry must think about after the "window period": when the content production of various topics is close to saturation, what is the core competitiveness of paid-for-knowledge?

　　After paying for knowledge, what do we get?

For most people, it may just be a "short-acting placebo" to ease anxiety, but there will always be "pearls" in it.

This "pearl" may be the first step to realize the ideal of life, it may be a tailwind in the journey of growth, or it may be a burst of ecstasy after learning new knowledge.

No matter what the answer is, we must remember that growth or learning requires our own motivation, not just "payment".

　　Luo Guangyan