Image source @ Visual China
Text | The Internet refers to the north
In 1998, "Truman's World" was released, a film that has become a classic in the hearts of countless fans, satirizing a world that has been infiltrated by the media. 24 years later, the main idea of the film is realized in another way: self-media.
The era of one smart phone per capita has allowed the monopoly of traditional media on content to be rapidly dissolved, "reading" has rapidly grown from the living habits of a few people to a mature industry, "media people" have increasingly become the career choice of ordinary people, "content consumers" have also begun to become a realistic concept, and paying for high-quality content has become a trend worth showing in the circle of friends.
Taking the online text market as an example, just recently on New Year's Day 2022, ByteDance announced the launch of the paid novel APP "Tiktwen Novel", and the words used by the industry media when reporting this matter are: Byte's network text matrix has begun to take shape, and it is about to "stir up the network text".
Tencent, which is often targeted by bytes, has tasted the sweetness of paid content earlier. The data for the first half of 2021 is that the average monthly number of paid users on the reading platform is 9.3 million, and the average monthly revenue per paying user increased by 6.7% year-on-year to 36.4 yuan.
Our content has also gone overseas, iResearch released the "2020 China Internet Literature Overseas Research Report" shows that the number of overseas users of Chinese online literature has reached 31.935 million, the overseas market size has reached 460 million yuan, 91.0% of overseas readers will follow Chinese online literature almost every day, the average reading time is 117 minutes, 87.1% of overseas users are willing to pay for Chinese online literature.
Looks like the situation is pretty good, right?
But content entrepreneurship is still a matter of success. When we really talk about business, when we talk about a profession, practitioners in the content industry will still emphasize the status quo: creators are difficult to make money.
Even ByteDance, which has accumulated a lot of big data and seems to be more able to make rational judgments on the basis of evidence, thinks so. The above-mentioned "Jitter novel", the interpretation direction of a large number of industry media is that the current reading platform is "serious homogenization, low user retention rate and conversion rate", and ByteDance can "enhance the willingness to pay" after entering the market.
ByteDance also often plays the "let creators make money" card, and the slogan does often poke the creators' pain points. For example, in 2015, when grassroots creators did not have too many commercialization opportunities, they proposed "thousands of people"; in 2016, when short videos have not yet proved their commercialization value, they shouted "1 billion support short videos"; after a year, everyone shouted that content was homogenized, and generally felt that growth was weak, they proposed "thousands of millions of fans"; when everyone began to be vigilant about the algorithm mechanism and complained about the information cocoon, in 2019 they talked about "the bigger world"...
These slogans do correspond to real money and silver, but even the inconspicuous page of PPT in the marketing department of a large company can become a decisive hard cost after the micro to the individual. Especially for grassroots content creators, in the face of survival pressure, they have to discipline their "creative ideas" according to the "phased needs of giants", but they are too late to consider a premise - these "phased needs" are not the actual market environment.
What is the history of these people over the years, and what kind of mentality do they have towards content entrepreneurship after several years of tempering?
The creators who want to tell us their stories today are still a small achievement, and the "back-ups" team created by one hand focuses on football-based sports content, and has set up columns on many platforms and built websites, which collect and sort out a lot of football statistics, which has become an important tool for many football media people today, but now he is also confused.
The following is a compilation from his own statement.
A media person who graduated from a criminal investigation major
Now many self-media practitioners have little to do with the major they originally studied, but I obviously have a larger span, and when I was in college, I studied criminal investigation - according to the path of most of my classmates, I should become a criminal police officer after graduation and fight to defend the happy life of the people until retirement.
But when I graduated, the wind of public opinion was extremely contemptuous of this kind of life that "can be seen at a glance", and young people tacitly believed that "choosing to enter the system is like eating and waiting for death", and I really did not like legal work. Coupled with the fact that I like football, I gave up my major after graduation.
Since then, China has had one less detective and more football editors.
On this road, my starting point was not "unexpectedly" low, and my first job was in football club magazine. The magazine is no longer published, but it was very influential at the time. With this job as a foundation, even if I change jobs two years later, some sports websites such as Hupu will still send me requests for manuscripts, so that my spare time can also be interested and wealth blossom.
(This magazine is the youth memory of many fans)
Probably because the quality of the article is really good, in 2016, there was a headline operation in the tiger puff private message me, invited me to go to the headlines to open an account, so there was "supine support".
Monofilaments do not form lines, and lone trees do not form forests. Under the guidance of the operation, the headline number became my base, and I began to have expectations for the content entrepreneurship: it is difficult to rely on one person to achieve continuous output, and I need to contact the writers and invite them to write or translate (high-quality football content on the extranet) as "Football Club" and Tiger Poker did in the past.
From understanding the Ball Emperor to the Qingyun Plan
In fact, people who have done self-media entrepreneurship know that unless they sign a contract, most people are working on several competing platforms at the same time. Sports, which is not a basic disk, is even more vertical field that relies on the outlet, and insiders will joke with each other as "three surname family slaves".
The same is true of backslash. First under the guidance of the operation, the headline number was opened, and then it also went to another football field head APP to understand the ball emperor, and took the understanding of the ball emperor as the most important position.
After all, the overall volume of today's headlines is very large, and the subsidy policy looks richer. However, at that time, the atmosphere of "supporting self-media" was very strong, and The Zhiqiu Emperor, who also started a business in Zhichun Road, also proposed a series of subsidies and drainage plans. Coupled with the fact that the emperor of the ball itself belongs to the football vertical category, so it gives us a high degree of autonomy in content - as long as it is good to write football, what content is written specifically, the operation will not be too questioned - for content creators, it is a happy thing to be able to express freely.
(Find a logo designed by a friend)
In addition, my concept of back-ups at that time was to do a self-media with in-depth content, understand the ball emperor as a vertical field APP, user portraits are basically fans, very hardcore, and even (in the comment area) often see fans say that they have more than twenty years of football age, which is exactly the readership I want.
At that time, my business model was to distribute content on various platforms, make money through as much traffic as possible (such as the conditions required by the support plan), and part of the income was used to pay for writing manuscripts, and I also had to take on some other work to maintain the team's expenses, just like Guo Degang in the past, by hosting and writing scripts to support the Deyun Society.
However, with the increase in the pressure of realization (industry environment), the subsidies given to us by Zhiqiu Emperor will be much less in 2019. At the same time, in order to attract creators, today's headlines opened the Qingyun Plan, (so the focus began to shift slowly).
When it comes to the Qingyun plan, the self-media big Vs may feel too shabby to see these subsidies, but for most of them, it is a life-saving money.
But the premise is that making money will have to pay a certain price, especially the headlines and the understanding of the ball emperor are two tones. Understand the vertical platform of the ball Emperor Tiger, most users are experts, you (in the content) use the term, what tikitaka, swing bus, inner cut, the user will understand at once.
But today's headlines are different, (personal feeling) most readers do not understand football, you say too deep they do not understand, there is no interest.
And the content of the headlines is varied, and the users who brush the headlines are just casually looking, which title can make them interested in which one to watch.
As for traffic, whether the platform gives you a crucial role in pushing the flow, sometimes you feel that you have a long analysis article in a simple way, and you have a lingering afterscent after writing it, but the platform does not push, and in the end there is not much revenue - this kind of well-intentioned but empty makes people feel very frustrated, and (from the operational level) the cost performance is also very low.
Deep long articles are difficult to support our operation, so we can only adjust according to the market environment, previously mainly in-depth articles, now also added some short and fast football information news content, such as some GIFs of the day's game, or similar to the kind of short messages on Weibo, and even began to dabble in some NBA content, the wording is more grounded, and the title has begun to "headline style".
What is the headline style, that is, to catch the eye on the title, increase the number of clicks, and increase the "tag" as much as possible (used to distribute drainage). For example, tiger sniff has an article titled "The Golden Age of China's Big Chips", which is not very good in the headline number, according to the headline style, the title should be like this -
rise! In 2022, China's chips will burn to the world!
(Back-ups are now titled in style, and there must be enough tag to be long)
Overall, during that time, I and the account had a fairly good time, when the good times can get tens of thousands of dollars a month, when the bad time to close the manuscript fee is nothing left, but at least overall has been making money.
What happened later everyone knows, the epidemic came.
China has no football soil, and the football media even less
For sports competitions, where players fight closely on the field and spectators are in contact with each other at close range, the epidemic of infectious diseases is fatal. However, in the beginning, for content creators like us, the impact was not so big, after all, a computer can even work on the Internet, compared with the real economy such as factories and restaurants, the impact is not large.
But then European and American countries also began to fall into trouble, the major Leagues in Europe have been suspended, the European Cup and the Olympic Games have been postponed, which is undoubtedly a disaster for our international football-based account.
Even the game is gone, what else can we write?
My counterparts abroad have suffered a similar dilemma, and I remember an article on the Tiger Translation Group about how British freelance writers and photographers made a living after the Premier League was suspended.
(Sports media around the world have suffered because of the epidemic)
That was the most stressful months for me, sometimes I could get thousands of dollars a month, sometimes even living expenses were not enough, and I also hoped to be able to go on in the same boat as the hard-to-build team, so sometimes in order to be able to publish the fee, I had to take some out of my previous savings.
At the end of 2020, the headlines canceled the Qingyun Plan, which is also a blow. But this is within my expectations, after all, the platform can not manage you for a lifetime, and I am increasingly realizing that (without subsidies alone) through football content monetization, itself is very difficult.
Judging from the years I have been working in the football media, although football is the world's first sport, it is actually quite niche in China.
First, there is actually no football culture in our country, from the establishment of professional leagues to now it has been more than 20 years, like the football powers in Europe and South America, all have a history of one or two hundred years, many club fans are grandparents and grandchildren often go to the ball, football is a part of their lives. And football in our country is just one of many entertainment projects.
The second is that there is a certain threshold for daily physical exercise through football. (Personally believe) The first sport in our country is basketball, now it may be e-sports, basketball can also shoot a basketball, e-sports only need a mobile phone or computer. It's too hard for football to form a game.
(After the celebration of EDG's victory, football can not achieve such a scene in a short period of time)
Fewer people play football, and fewer and fewer people watch the ball.
We all know that this is an era of severe fragmentation of time, and many people do not even have the patience to listen to a song in its entirety, let alone watch a 90-minute game, and the wonderful moments of a game may be only five minutes together, which makes it difficult for young people to be interested in football.
It can be seen from the manuscript fee given by the head football platform that it is not only far less than the self-media in the field of business and finance, but also the remuneration of the social science self-media in the waist is also much less.
We've also thought about embracing new situations, like doing short videos or something, but it's still a big problem to conceive.
If you do football short videos, it is nothing more than goal highlights, star style and the like, but the ceiling of video quality is placed there, you are unlikely to surpass CCTV's "World Football", and this kind of content homogenization is very serious, anyone can do it, unlike papi sauce or the old four, only they can perform that effect.
Football games are played every week, to put it bluntly, this is a fast moving consumer goods, the other side of fast moving consumer goods, that is, high replaceability and low threshold.
In addition, how to monetize, most of the self-media want to really make money, need to rely on advertising implants, but compared with other fields, sports self-media", the "advertising space color" is the worst - there are not many advertisers, user portraits are not pleasing, and the production materials are also facing copyright risks. The contrast is that the implantation of maternal and infant pets, cutting into the periphery of pets or maternal and child products will be very natural, can be performed, can be spoken out, and football is difficult, unless I am a plot short video account at the beginning.
Experiences and lessons learned over the years
Although I belong to the loser of content entrepreneurship, I can't say that I failed, so I can't do this business, there are still many successes in the industry.
For example, Ned Yuze, who has successively contributed to the football emperor and the tiger poker, they are the pyramid spire in the football self-media circle. Of course, they also have their own jobs, the contract is only to make extra money, and their personal ability traits are also unique.
Ned has enough in-depth football interpretation ability, just like the football magazines of the past, but the most rare thing is that he has a particularly good sense of netting, he writes a post-match review, in addition to explaining the techniques and tactics, he can also integrate various stems into it, even if you are a layman, you can watch it and enjoy it.
Yu ze seems to have been abroad for many years, learning finance, so he writes football not only stuck to the game on the field, but can integrate his own financial knowledge, such as their book "Premier League Storm", from beginning to end to analyze the Premier League industry clearly, so this is beyond the fan group out of the circle of content, you may not know who Guardiola, Ferguson is, but those who are interested in finance and industry can also look at his things.
But if you think about how many people who are now engaged in self-media have such qualities as Ned or Yu Ze? And it just so happens that two people can work together to form a group?
As I said just now, football in our country belongs to a niche sport, so the cake capacity is limited, plus most of the fans are straight men, is the worst group of people in the Internet consumption power, so to C side wants to rely on content monetization, Ned Yu is this is the ultimate.
There are also some numbers that do the B-end, such as lazy bear sports, sports big business and sports industry ecosystem, this kind of account is much more moist than us, many have also received financing, but the threshold of this kind of self-media is much higher.
Some founders themselves graduated from Beijing Sports University and then returned from studying in the United States, and sports students mean that they have enough contacts in the sports world, so they have a huge advantage in customer resources and content creation.
Looking at the fact that there are more and more people taking the exam now, the first choice for many graduates to find employment is within the system or in a large factory, I can't help but feel a little vicissitudes, maybe I chose to enter the system when I first chose to live much more stable than now.
But regret can not be talked about, after all, I chose this road in the first place, and I am indeed relatively free. No need to be bound by working hours, no need to clock in and out of work, but the boundaries between private time and working hours are also blurred, sometimes I have to take a computer with me when I go out to play, waiting for the news anytime and anywhere, especially the Europa League is playing on weekends, I have to be on call at any time.
Because there is no unit to pay me, so I just work a day to earn a day's wages, friends joke with me that I am a camel Shoko, a day without pulling a car, a day without food.
To say that the biggest gain is to know a group of like-minded friends, some people really take the content of football as a mission to do, a god I know through the foreign library past newspaper query search, stunned is the Champions League from 1991 to 2000 assist data through the past news briefing statistics, and UEFA official Champions League assist statistics from 2001, that is, we (self-media) people have advanced these data by a full decade.
Others have counted the assists of Di Stéfano (who was active in Real Madrid in the fifties and sixties) in La Liga, which is really a bit of an archaeologist feeling.
Of course, there are lessons.
In the past few years of doing back-ups, I have almost put all my energy on the work of bringing the team to life, and my writing ability has not been too high, even if the writing is mainly based on the draft, it needs to cooperate with Party A, and there is no opportunity to speak freely, so my own level improvement is also limited.
In the past few years, I have upgraded from an unmarried young man to a grandfather, and the need to make money is greater, so I will definitely seek transformation after that, fortunately, some friends I have known over the years have given me a lot of advice and help, and also let me have more options to try, and I may try other areas of content in the future, or short videos.
Think about the future, just like He Wei said: Success in life is only temporary, failure is the main theme, but how to face failure, but people are divided into different looks. Some people will be defeated, some people can continue to climb up and continue to move forward, I think the real maturity should not be the pursuit of perfection, but face their own shortcomings, this is the essence of life!