14-year-old station B came to the crossroads of "capital ebb and flow"?

(Data map) Station B is the Bilibili two-dimensional pop-up park set up in Shanghai's Xujiahui business district, and the mascot of Station B in various animation shapes "Selling Meng". Photo by Chen Yuyu by China News Agency

Text/Chen Haoxing

The video website bilibili (referred to as station B) serving young users encountered "growing pains". In the year of entering the age of 14, the B station appeared up master "stop the tide".

Recently, the topic of "stop and change the tide of station B" has topped the Weibo hot search list. Many B site users found that some up owners (B station video creators) notified that they would temporarily stop updating videos. It is not uncommon for multiple UP owners to publicly announce the suspension of updates. When asked about the reasons for the suspension of updates, most UP owners said that the reduction of platform revenue and the difficulty of balancing income and expenditure were the main reasons for stopping the update.

Is it true that "stop the tide"? Why do the UP masters stop changing? Can I still make money now as an UP owner?

Behind the "stop tide" is the "ebb of capital"

With nearly 50,<> fans, the high-quality up master of the B-station knowledge field, "_Carbon Twelve_" (referred to as Carbon), told China News Service that he believes that the expression of "stop the tide" is not accurate, and the phenomenon of stopping the change is still an isolated case. But for the current ecology of Station B, he does not recommend becoming a full-time up master.

In Ah Carbon's view, except for a few tracks, even if an UP owner with 4.5 million fans is still not optimistic. At present, there are only two ways for the UP owner to monetize: one is the commercial launch of Party A (including advertising revenue + platform incentive money), and the other is to monetize from Party B (that is, the fans of Station B) through a certain business model.

As for the video creation traffic incentive, Ah Carbon bluntly said that subject to the incentive rules gradually adjusted by Station B in the middle of last year, it is no longer realistic to rely on traffic incentive income to support itself.

For example, although a small number of UP owners can profit by selling courses, live streaming tips, etc., he himself does not have the time and ability to build a similar business model, and the income from Party A is very unstable. Compared with the content zones that advertisers prefer such as the automotive zone, digital zone, and beauty zone, the knowledge zone is a category with relatively weak commercial monetization, and it is more difficult to receive advertisements. So he has long made it clear that "I still have to find a class." However, he also admitted that compared to the ghost animal area and other divisions, the knowledge area is already a relatively good track in station B.

Another problem is that station B, which focuses on the characteristics of long video content, is experiencing the impact of short video.

With a large number of short videos pouring into the B station, the content of the long video up master is being "drowned". According to Carbon, from the perspective of the launch volume of various brands, it is obvious that Party A's delivery preference is being transferred from Station B to Douyin and Xiaohongshu.

Station B has come to the crossroads of "capital ebb and flow"?

Guosis Through Train learned from "A Ginger Tea", another popular science up master with nearly 70,<> fans at Station B, that the age level of Party A's customers is relatively high, while the age level of Station B users is generally low. Therefore, customers who can really determine the advertising budget do not use station B, and they will naturally not invest money on station B if they do not watch videos on station B.

Customers not going to station B will also lead to a more concentrated head effect. Because customers do not look at station B and do not know which up owner, let the MCN agency recommend, MCN naturally recommends the top 100 up owners of station B in the head, so it is more difficult for the up owners in the middle waist to survive.

The impact on the team up master is the most obvious

Station B has a fairly stable user group, and the introduction of a large number of diversified content and new creators has also made content creation begin to move towards traffic logic. In order to eat this "cake" of creative income, team UP owners and individual UP owners have sprung up in recent years, and the two compete on the same "track".

However, according to the 2022 financial report data, Station B lost 75.10 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.<>%. With the expansion of the UP main group, the cost of site B for incentive content creation has also begun to be stretched, station B has made a series of incentive rule adjustments at the beginning of the year, coupled with Party A's advertising is not so good to receive, many interviewed up owners said that the biggest impact is the team up owner.

The UP master "A Ginger Tea Tea" was one of the first team UP masters to stop. According to her description, her B-site account has been suspended for half a year. The reason is simple, because the current video revenue can no longer feed the entire team.

"I hired 2 copywriters and 2 editors, salary, social security, and office rent. The total cost is about 7,2 yuan per month. Because it is a popular science UP master, we need to read a lot of materials, and fans have sharp eyes and can't make mistakes. When it is updated normally, it is generally updated 5000 times a week, and each manuscript is about 10000-<> words. The amount of work involved in making long videos is really a lot. Only those who have done it know how tired it is. "Up the main "one ginger tea tea" said.

The mode of long video makes it impossible to reduce personnel expenses. Therefore, receiving the client's advertising has become a very important part of the video. Within a year and a half of the normal update of the video, it takes an average of 2 to 3 months to receive an advertisement for 6,2 yuan. In the last calculation, I didn't make money for <> years, and I even lost money.

Ah Carbon, who is still working part-time as an internship, is a personal UP master, and he bluntly said that he will not stop changing at present, because as a personal UP owner, there is no burden to support the team, and the cost is zero.

But Ah Carbon also said that it is difficult to receive advertisements in the near future, and it has not been "opened" for three months. "Generally, I can receive an advertisement in three or four months, and the average is actually only a few thousand yuan per month, but for the team up owner, the frequency of receiving ads like me is something that the team up owner cannot afford."

How to break the ice?

Chen Rui, chairman of Station B, once talked about community management in 2019, saying that Station B is like a "community property", which needs to ensure the normal operation of the community, and must consider the long-term healthy development of the entire community when making its own decisions.

With the incentive of the B-site platform gradually decreasing, and the long-form video content being affected to a certain extent, what changes need the "community property" and "community owner" of the B-station and up owners to make to break the deadlock?

"561X", a veteran user who has been mixed in the B station platform for many years, told Guosis Express that among the up masters who announced the stoppage, such as the up owner of the game area, "Xu Dawang who eats by his face", at the beginning, he attracted a large number of fans with a funny style, but its main "Mr. Xu Comes to Patrol" series, from 2015 to the current 8 years of video style has hardly changed, content submission lacks innovation, and the richness of the video itself is not as rich as before.

For UP owners, the spirit of innovation is the "foundation of standing". In fact, many B station top 100 up owners said that after encountering bottlenecks, they pay more attention to innovation, such as opening a "new pit" every period of time, and through innovation, the data such as click rate, playback volume, and completion rate return to the original level.

A carbon bluntly said, "At present, the overall self-media industry is still in the exploration stage, and the 'capital ebbate' of the B station may only be a very small thing, maybe in a few years, the popular short video platform will also face the 'ebb period'." In the end, the most important thing as an UP owner is the work, not to make a lot of money by increasing fans, and it is always not wrong to do your own video content steadily. What's more, the team-based UP owner with many fans stops and stops, which is also a good thing for the individual UP owner, small steps and fast running, not necessarily slow. No matter how capital influences self-media, someone likes it is the biggest driving force to support our insistence on updating videos. ”

For the platform, Sun Yu, a relevant industry practitioner who has been paying attention to the B station platform for many years, said that in view of the phenomenon of the main judgment of up, the platform should make early warnings and make timely response strategies. For example, improve the algorithm recommendation of UP owners, increase the paid conversion rate for users with different preferences, and provide UP owners with more diversified and commercial revenue generation methods.

Sun Yu also mentioned that station B can learn from the business model of foreign mainstream video websites to enrich its own profit model, and reasonably launch advertisements by expanding advertising categories (such as interstitial ads, display ads, guide ads, search ads), and UP owners can also choose to join patch ads to increase video revenue.