Digital bloggers who work at home: earn more than 400% of the average and buy a house on their own

"It's almost the Spring Festival, and it's time to give yourself a holiday." There are still 7 days before the Spring Festival in 2022, after completing a day's work, Liu Xiaoxiao, a full-time digital blogger of the "post-90s", left the computer desk, turned around and went into the kitchen, and fried himself a plate of shredded potatoes, a plate of leeks, and a plate of fried sausages with garlic leaves.

Since leaving a company three years ago, he has been "working" for himself, a LOFT apartment on the Ganjiang River in Nanchang, with his studio on the first floor and his living room on the second floor. He doesn't have to get up early to catch the subway, doesn't have to clock in every day, doesn't have to deal with "office politics", and can sleep until he wakes up naturally and arranges the work rhythm by himself.

In just a few years, Liu Xiaoxiao earned a down payment on a house, and in 2021 he finally owned his own house, paying off his mortgage every month, and in Nanchang, he became a high-paid freelancer.

Enter the industry with interest and break into the "KOL circle"

For Liu Xiaoxiao in 2021, the biggest change in life is to buy a house of more than 2 million yuan through his own efforts, the down payment is basically earned by himself, and the monthly payment is also self-supporting.

Speaking of making money by interest today, the income is also a high salary among peers, but Liu Xiaoxiao's experience on this road is more bumpy.

Many young people in Nanchang yearn for Changsha, the capital of neighboring provinces with more employment opportunities and lower housing prices. When Liu Xiaoxiao just graduated from college in 2016, he also went to Changsha for more than a year to engage in geology work in his major, but after a year, he moved the idea of leaving.

Because of his particular obsession with digital products, Liu Xiaoxiao "mixed" digital forums when he was in college. In 2016, relying on the research caused by interest, he opened his first number on today's headlines.

From 2015 to 2016, it was the rise of ByteDance's "Today's Headlines". In the past, people mainly read reports from the four major news portals and traditional media, they all adopt the "editorial system" without exception, today's headlines took the lead in using the "algorithm system", although it caused a lot of controversy, but relying on accurate content distribution technology, the content consumption based on personalized recommendations to the extreme, today's headlines stand out, ByteDance has also become a new Internet company that can compete with BAT.

Behind the rise of ByteDance, a large number of freelance content creators have emerged, and Liu Xiaoxiao is one of them.

In the initial stage, today's headlines spared no expense to support content creators, in 2015 launched the "thousand people" plan and content business incubator, a year later the total number of headlines rose from 30,000 to 300,000, and in 2016, today's headlines spent 1 billion yuan to support short video creators.

"At that time, I learned in the group playing digital that today's headlines are very 'hot', very suitable for registering as a self-media platform, so I made my own number, all of which are updated with interest in my spare time." Liu Xiaoxiao said.

As a result, Liu Xiaoxiao's headline number that first tested the water attracted the attention of 60,000 fans in more than a year, and he could already earn basic living expenses by relying on this number, so he quit his job that he was not interested in and devoted more time to doing self-media.

At that time, after all, self-media was still a new industry, and as a profession was not widely accepted, so Liu Xiaoxiao went to Zhejiang to help relatives take care of business, and used his spare time to do self-media part-time.

Liu Xiaoxiao has always wanted to find a formal and stable job in his heart, and half a year later, he returned to his hometown to prepare for the civil service examination and applied for a special training class. Later, the goal of the examination was not achieved, he looked for a job in Nanchang, experienced fierce competition, he was admitted to a company, and as a result, he only worked for 15 days, and the company cut off all the business in Nanchang.

Liu Xiaoxiao finally decided to do self-media full-time, and his self-media became more and more handy, which is probably the intention to plant flowers and flowers, and there is no intention to plant willows.

In the words of the industry, Liu Xiaoxiao officially entered the "KOL circle". KOL, which was originally its literal meaning - Key Opinion Leader (Key Opinion Leader), refers to people or accounts that have appeal, influence and credibility in a certain field, and later gradually evolved into a synonym for content creators with "big V" and more fans in China, and KOLs not only create content, but also take brand delivery to help merchants connect products and audiences.

In recent years, KOL marketing has become an indispensable part of the business advertising, advertisers want to get traffic in the mobile Internet era, you must carefully understand which KOLs in their industry, and contact them to cooperate. Liu Xiaoxiao is engaged in digital technology self-media, is a huge market in KOL marketing, many merchants released new mobile phones, computers, wireless headphones, tablets and other products, relying on professional KOLs for introduction, evaluation and "planting grass".

When Liu Xiaoxiao decided to do self-media at home full-time, he gradually deepened into the digital technology KOL circle and became a link in the industrial chain. There are more than 5,000 people in his WeChat friends list, of which nearly 2,000 are peers, and there are more than 100 KOLs familiar to Liu Xiaoxiao, who are distributed throughout the country, and like Liu Xiaoxiao, most of them are working from home, making self-media into a career, and their homes are decorated with studios.

Becoming a high-paying person also has traffic anxiety

The KOL circle is also a jianghu, which has many forces such as brand parties, public relations companies, KOLs, and online platforms, and they both cooperate with each other and game each other.

"KOLs have a variety of groups, and everyone will hug each other and bring resources to each other, such as quotations, industry trends, and need to communicate with each other. Merchants will actively know KOLs, but also through public relations companies. PR firms basically have a list of KOLs they are familiar with, sometimes adding people to the list, and sometimes removing people because of some things. ”

Liu Xiaoxiao's work and circle are online, although he is his boss, his schedule is not healthy, it seems that as a KOL in the mobile Internet era, life irregularity is a must.

Generally speaking, Liu Xiaoxiao will not get up early in the morning, start the day's work in the afternoon, and habitually sleep late at night. His work rhythm basically follows the needs of Party A, and when Party A's task is tight, he has to stay up late to complete. On weekdays, he also needs to stare at hot spots and find topics like a journalist, and when something big happens in the digital technology industry, he has to quickly produce content.

In addition to today's headlines, Liu Xiaoxiao also runs a hundred numbers and Weibo, and currently has 1.06 million fans on Weibo, which is considered to have achieved good results in the vertical field.

Now Liu Xiaoxiao has an annual income of about 200,000 to 300,000 yuan, and the source of income is mainly divided into two parts, the majority of which is the brand's advertising placement, accounting for about 90%; and 10% comes from the revenue of the network platform. On average, there is an income of about 20,000 yuan per month, and liu Xiaoxiao can earn 50,000 or 60,000 yuan in special months such as "Double Eleven".

Since he was the boss, Liu Xiaoxiao also had to keep his own accounts. "When I keep accounts, I feel that I have made a lot of money, but I don't actually get much, mainly because the collection is relatively slow, and the longest account period is more than two years."

But in Nanchang, Jiangxi, where Liu Xiaoxiao lives, he is properly a high-paid person.

According to the data disclosed at the recent press conference on the good start of the "14th Five-Year Plan" for the economic and social development of Jiangxi Province in 2021, the per capita disposable income of urban residents in Jiangxi Province in 2021 will be 41684 yuan, and the average will be 3474 yuan per month. According to the Huajing Industry Research Institute, the per capita disposable income of urban residents in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi Province, in 2020 was 46,796 yuan, an average of 3,900 yuan per month.

According to the above data, Liu Xiaoxiao's monthly income has exceeded the local average by 400%.

Although KOL is a profession that has been on the rise for less than a decade, Liu Xiaoxiao feels the trend of increasing oppression. "The industry is moving really fast, and if you're not careful, you'll fall behind."

At the beginning, daily sending a picture can attract the audience, and then iterate to make a video, for which Liu Xiaoxiao specially built a video scene at home. Originally, KOLs could run several numbers by themselves, but now they have formed a professional team, and the content and form are upgrading. In the past, a certain platform can always suck powder, and as a result, the platform also has a bottleneck period, from headlines to Weibo, B station, And Little Red Book, KOLs need to choose which platform to invest their main energy on according to the changing trend.

In this era of traffic anxiety, the measure of KOL's career success is traffic. The digital big V "He Classmate" on the B station (Bilibili Network) quickly caught fire by making videos, sucked more than 9 million fans at once, and soon gained the opportunity to exclusively interview Apple CEO Tim Cook.

In the past two years, the limelight of KOC marketing has overwhelmed KOLs. The rise of e-commerce live broadcasting has allowed the seller to absorb more eyeballs and capital, and Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya are among the representatives. Unlike the head star Big V, some fans are relatively small, but people who directly carry goods are called KOC (Key Opinion Consumer). KOL and KOC both do marketing with goods, but KOLs are more inclined to self-media and content creators, they are weakly related to sales, and more are exporting content in the professional field. KOCs are more vertical, cheaper, and strongly related to sales, and they directly explain and sell products.

The emergence of sub-health, massage is the bulk of consumption

Due to the choice of full-time KOL, Liu Xiaoxiao's daily life is inseparable from the Internet. "My life is relatively simple and casual, and when I don't want to go out, I play games and chat online at home. Although I always think that cooking my own food is healthier, I usually order more takeaway. ”

Liu Xiaoxiao can basically complete his work and life day after day without leaving his home. Hungry, he will order takeaway at Meituan, buy vegetables on Meituan if he wants to cook for himself, and riders will deliver dishes to his home, "half of the dishes are bought online."

Usually buying clothes for himself and buying digital equipment, he likes JD.com because the logistics are fast. This year he talked about his girlfriend, knowing that girls like to use Taobao, and when he buys gifts for his girlfriend, he will also go to Taobao for a stroll. Tired of work, Liu Xiaoxiao played a dozen mobile games "Glory of kings" and "League of Legends" for recreation.

Liu Xiaoxiao rarely goes out to consume, and mostly goes out for eating and massage. "Massage may be a relatively large amount of expenditure, because of the long-term sedentary work at home, there will be back pain, so I did a massage membership card, recharged ten thousand dollars last year, and pressed it every once in a while."

In fact, more bloggers who are engaged in digital technology KOLs choose to live in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, and can access more resources and obtain higher incomes, but Liu Xiaoxiao has chosen to live in his hometown of Jiangxi, which has made him lose a large piece of income. "The main benefit is that the cost is low, and it is a familiar environment."

He believes there is still a lot of promise in his industry, but he doesn't know how long he can do it. "This industry update iteration is too fast, the Yangtze River back wave pushes the front wave, we are also worried that one day can not do it, will be excluded from the list." Liu Xiaoxiao said.

(At the request of the interviewee, Liu Xiaoxiao is a pseudonym)