(CCTV Finance "China Financial Report") What is the posture? Knowledge is power! Knowledge is wealth! Just in the past year, some people have achieved financial freedom just by selling knowledge online! There are also people who made 100 million just by posting a voice message a day! What kind of knowledge makes money? Who earns the money from paying for knowledge? If you want to make money with knowledge, what are the channels? Why should we emphasize knowledge in the Internet era? What exactly is knowledge payment, which is known as being at the forefront? If we want to continue to be at the forefront and earn money for paying for knowledge, what kind of time, place, people and people are needed? Come on, let’s collect the three major elements!
[1. The so-called timing: why is it this year]
On the way to work, mobile phones and headphones are the two most indispensable things for Shen Jia. It looked like he was riding the subway alone and didn't speak quietly. In fact, at this time, he was switching audio content back and forth between different knowledge payment platforms.
Even when eating, Shen Jia has to find the latest audio to listen to. The one he is listening to now lasts for 6 minutes, which is exactly the time it takes to eat a bowl of noodles.
The advantage of listening to audio is that you can use fragmented time, free your hands and eyes, and listen anywhere. Shen Jia's mobile phone has no less than ten software related to payment for knowledge installed, almost all of which are audio products.
Mobile phones have become an indispensable and important tool in people's lives. They are not only used to transmit information, communicate feelings, and make purchases and payments, but now they can also be used to obtain and pay for knowledge. In fact, paying for knowledge is nothing new. The entire education industry has been doing this for thousands of years, but today’s payment for knowledge is mainly based on the mobile Internet platform.
Mobile payment has become more convenient and wider, and people's awareness of payment and copyright has quickly awakened, allowing some intellectual capital that originally existed in the form of intangible assets to burst out.
According to the "2016 China Online New Media Users Research Report", 33.8% of new media users have already paid for new media content, and 15.6% of users have the intention to pay but have not yet paid. This means that nearly half of the new media users have now developed the awareness of paying for knowledge.
Knowledge payment not only rides on the trend of mobile payment, but also catches up with an era of knowledge explosion. More and more people have a strong thirst for knowledge and take advantage of the demand.
Shen Jia works as an operator on an e-commerce platform, and her daily job is to mechanically refresh and sort out massive data and information manually. The most common thing at his workstation is coffee, and working overtime is his normal work routine. The office walls are covered with slogans. Competition and efficiency seem to have become keywords that Internet practitioners dare not forget at all times.
The Internet has brought rapid changes to life. The massive amount of information often makes Shen Jia feel unable to keep up with the rhythm, and her anxiety doubles. Even when she was resting, Shen Jia would turn on Wu Xiaobo's audio and listen to it to recharge herself. He feels that this is a bit like attending a cram school when he was a student. He may not run faster than others, but he must not be left behind. The future is full of too many uncertainties. Only by constantly updating and supplementing knowledge can he feel safe.
The Wu Xiaobo audio subscription purchased by Shen Jia is an annual paid subscription, which costs 180 yuan for the whole year. Shen Jia thinks it is worth it to quickly obtain financial knowledge and news opinions for an average of only 5 cents a day.
The economy is developing rapidly, new things are constantly emerging, and all kinds of unfamiliar knowledge are rushing towards us. What will happen in the future and how to keep up with the pace of social development? People hope that someone can guide them in their confusion and anxiety.
Spend money to learn about it and find some direction. There are many people who have the same idea as Shen Jia. Wu Xiaobo’s personal public account clearly shows that more than 170,000 people have paid for his paid audio.
The payment of these 170,000 people allowed financial writer Wu Xiaobo to achieve his small life goal of 100 million in less than a year. Wu Xiaobo’s RMB 100 million was only generated by the membership fee of three price points for his WeChat subscription account. This does not include the split of the secondary dissemination and sales of his audio on other platforms.
Paying for knowledge in the Internet era made Wu Xiaobo truly feel that knowledge is wealth.
This is an era of knowledge explosion. A 2016 report showed that 70% of online learners had paid for knowledge in the past year. This number was only 26% in 2015. Among them, the post-80s generation had the highest proportion of paying for knowledge, with 30% of them paying more than 1,000 yuan for knowledge last year. Moreover, the learning methods they are most willing to accept are text and audio. Text is more intuitive and audio is faster. These are the two forms that young Internet users are most willing to pay for.
[2. The so-called platform: Where do you put your knowledge and sell it to make more money]
Recently, Chu Mingyu has become an Internet celebrity by answering netizens' questions.
He has to answer questions raised by netizens in the form of voice within one minute. Questions need to be paid, and he can collect money if he answers.
In April last year, this one-minute paid voice question and answer platform began to appear. The people who participated in the initial responses were almost all leaders in various industries. They priced the questions they answered, ranging from tens to thousands of yuan, and made money by answering questions online like sending WeChat voices. This novel way of playing attracted many people to participate, and for a while, the voices of various celebrities flooded the circle of friends.
Since then, in less than a year, people from all walks of life have entered the field of knowledge payment, using column subscriptions, paid courses, content appreciation, paid Q&A, communities, etc. to realize knowledge monetization. On the 28 knowledge payment platforms that have emerged, at least 50 million people have registered. On these platforms, as long as you think you have a skill, you can sell your knowledge. Knowledge here is a commodity with a clear price tag.
Chu Mingyu is the answerer on two paid knowledge platforms at the same time, one by voice and the other by text. The more than 1,000 voices he has sent have been listened to by 190,000 people. On the text question and answer platform, the questions he answered have more than 600,000 paid viewers, ranking first in the popularity ranking on the entire network.
The knowledge quiz is very similar to the traditional consulting industry, except that it takes the form of "paid listening" online, and the respondents play the role of online consultants. Now, Chu Mingyu charges 398 yuan for a voice message and 2,698 yuan for an article to answer questions.
Chu Mingyu's platform has eavesdropping and onlooker functions. Compared with the 2,698 yuan and 398 yuan that the questioner has to spend to get the answer, many netizens are more willing to spend one yuan to eavesdrop on Chu Mingyu's answer. The profit of this one dollar is divided between Chu Mingyu, the questioner and the platform.
Chu Mingyu earns more from watching than from answering questions. It can be seen that you can also make money by asking a good question. So what kind of question is a good question?
Ji Xiaohua, whose online name is Ji Shisan, was the first to start this one-dollar-watching game on his audio knowledge question and answer platform. These questions on the big screen are the ones that have been overheard and watched the most this year.
Now, many paid knowledge platforms have this kind of secondary sales, which not only expands the influence of the platform, but is also the main source of their income.
On the knowledge payment platform, even if you are not a person who can provide knowledge, as long as you can ask questions, you still have many opportunities to create profits. "Asking questions" can also become part of the sharing economy. How to bring the concept of sharing economy to its extreme in the field of knowledge payment? All major domestic knowledge payment platforms have started thinking about this.
In May, the four major players in the field of paid knowledge celebrated their first birthdays. As a way to celebrate their birthdays, some of them launched "paid communities" and began to try community operations. Some launched new knowledge products; others opened "Member Days" to seize more users.
At 10:30 p.m., most companies get off work, but this is the time that Yu Jianjun and others are most concerned about. The hour or two before users fall asleep is also one of the highest peaks in the continuous listening rate of their audio software. Who is paying for knowledge? Each platform has a big data of knowledge consumption.
Yu Jianjun already has 350 million registered users on their audio platform, but currently only 3% of people purchase paid content, which has huge potential.
[3. What is most important when paying for knowledge: Talent]
There are more and more payment platforms for knowledge, and people’s thirst for knowledge is growing, which makes content providers even busier in 2017.
Today, Wu Xiaobo will record a video program that will be broadcast every week. Once a week, the audio version of the program will also be put online for everyone to listen to for free. Last year, the program was listened to more than 130 million times online, four times more than the video.
Hundreds of thousands of listeners hope to continue to learn knowledge from Wu Xiaobo. Wu Xiaobo must maintain the activity and update speed of audio content. He needs to constantly update his knowledge reserve. Wu Xiaobo is now under a lot of pressure.
As soon as the video program was recorded, Wu Xiaobo had a meeting with his team to study the theme of the audio program for the next week.
After becoming a content provider, Wu Xiaobo's time cycle for launching knowledge products was constantly refreshed. Writing a book would take Wu Xiaobo at least a year, but now he has to produce a video program a week and even send out an audio clip every day.
Not only is the creation itself changing, in the past two months, Wu Xiaobo and the knowledge payment platform he signed have begun to enter a period of anxiety.
The platform is the link between consumers and content providers. Starting in May, the one-year contract between Wu Xiaobo and other content providers and the platform is about to expire. In the next year, it is uncertain whether the contract will be renewed and whether the content providers will continue to send audio content every day.
While Wu Xiaobo was still worried about what to do in the next year, in Shanghai, the largest audio payment platform was planning which content providers should remain on the platform in the next year.
Tian Yimiao is a professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She is also a content provider. The audio knowledge Tian Yimiao outputs every day is about classical music.
In one month, Tian Yimiao's one-year contract with the platform is about to expire. Today, Zhang Yongchang asked Tian Yimiao to see the latest live broadcast room and recording equipment, hoping to renew the contract with her.
Tian Yimiao's audio lessons have been played more than 7.8 million times since August last year, bringing revenue to the platform exceeding tens of millions. Entering 2017, the content that users pay for knowledge has changed. In 2016, paying users mostly purchased finance, investment, and workplace audio. But by 2017, the demand for opera, classical music, and art history began to rise, and content providers are no longer just financial celebrities.
In the tide of paying for knowledge, who else has the right time, location, and people? Who has achieved more small goals in life? In what other industries does knowledge payment extend? Which traditional industries has it brought new vitality to? In this year of paid rise, what other incredible things are happening?
At 21:50 on the evening of July 8, CCTV-2's "China Financial Report" column will open a question mark for you.
