Is writing novels in Zhihu a reliable side hustle?
Text | Li Ying
Edit | Yu Le
Q: What is it like to share a room with the opposite sex?
A: My girlfriend and I live in the master bedroom, and one day my roommate came knocking on the door and said I had mistakenly taken her courier. I found the courier to return it to her, and a few minutes later, she came knocking on the door again in a very exaggerated dress...
Normal questions, normal answers, and first-person narration, look like a real strange roommate story. But if you read further, you will find that the style of painting is wrong: derailment, murder, suspense and other elements come one after another, which is clearly a novel cloaked in answers. Sure enough, pulled to the end of the article to find the author's statement, which is a suspenseful short story created by his sudden inspiration after seeing the news such as "Buying a House in the North Drift" and "Buying a Murderous House".
Novels like this are not uncommon in Zhihu. From love affairs to marital emotions, from workplace stories to crime mysteries. This kind of fictional story content embedded in ordinary questions is constituting a new platform ecology. Short length, many reversals, and a strong sense of first-person substitution are all characteristics of "zhihu body" novels that distinguish them from other platforms.
Many people complained: I thought it was interesting to share my own experience, it took ten minutes to read half of it, only to suddenly realize that it was a novel, is this not cheating on my feelings? However, there are also many readers who like to watch "Zhihu Body" and are willing to pay for it and become a salt selection member of Zhihu.
People who watch are willing to pay, and people who write can naturally profit from it. At present, Zhihu has formed a relatively perfect monetization system based on "salt selection column", attracting more and more content creators to settle in. Under the zhihu monetization system, many high-yield author groups have been born, including many with hundreds of thousands of monthly incomes, and some people have successfully published books and sold film and television copyrights. Ordinary people can also rely on 20,000 or 30,000 words of short online articles to monetize thousands or tens of thousands of pieces.
Guided question and answer novels
Beiqi, a senior author of Zhihu, once said in an interview with Interface that the creation of novels in the Zhihu community can be traced back to the period from 2016 to 2017. However, at that time, when I was writing novels, I was still spontaneous and interested in writing.
In March 2019, Zhihu officially launched the salt selection of members, and the online article was placed in the "salt selection column" of the member ecology. Zhihu also launched an annual story contest to encourage and guide the creation of fictional content. Beiqi once mentioned that Zhihu seemed to have discovered the commercial value of the novel business at this time, and even began to re-recruit online authors from various channels to return to Zhihu.
At this stage of knowing, many questions are to guide the respondent to "make up stories", such as "If you cross into a vicious female partner, what will you do?" "If you were the heroine in the sweet text, what would you do?" "Such a brain-opening pure fictional question. The answers to such questions are almost 100% online creations. Zhihu's first phenomenon-level online article "Palace Wall Willow" appeared in "Why do harem concubines have to compete for favors?" " under the question.
According to the articles published by the certified account @Zhihu Classroom, in fact, many of these questions are raised by the producers to "squat" the story. Driven by this atmosphere, more and more people spontaneously write novels in Zhihu.
@Whole Sugar Seven Points Ice initially developed from an ordinary Zhihu user to a fiction writer. On a business trip, in the airport lounge, she accidentally brushed "What kind of existence is the white moonlight in the eyes of boys?" "This question. She had something she wanted to express and had time, so she wrote down the beginning of the story.
However, in the comments section, many people insist that this is a true story, and the author's statement that "it is a novel" is only a statement to many people. "Many readers feel that the story is real, and sometimes they project emotions about the characters in the novel onto the author, but this is really a fictional story with no basis in reality." @ Whole Sugar Seven Point Ice sometimes faces this insistence of readers is also very helpless.
This answer-style novel, which was first attempted on Zhihu, brought more than 15,000 likes and more than 2,000 fans to @Whole Sugar Seven Points Ice. Zhihu editor also came to the door and asked her if she was interested in signing a contract to create, but limited by time and energy, @whole sugar seven points ice temporarily declined.
@Whole Sugar Seven Points Ice Story Creation Source: Zhihu
The creative technique of "knowing the body"
What is the difference between the novel on Zhihu and the ordinary online text?
Tianchen, the editor of the online text, often publicly receives Zhihuwen in the circle of friends, and he tells us that the narrative method of Zhihuwen is often more inclined to tell stories directly than to novel-style descriptions. In addition, Zhihu text tends to be faster-paced, strong in conflict reversal, about 10,000-30,000 words in length, usually in the form of first-person self-reports, and contains some stems that may form explosive points.
The shorter length is almost the commonality of the know-it-all text. Of the 30 columns that are the hottest at this stage, except for two columns written by individuals who are slightly longer, the rest of the individual columns and collective columns are almost all composed of short content. Some Zhihu editors told the online author @ Cardamom Tea that most of the submissions are short stories, and at this stage, Zhihu is actually very short of long works.
Zhihu hot salt selection column Image source: Zhihu
Zhihu is not an online text platform in the traditional sense, and its users are more likely to come here to seek answers to questions or pass the time of fragmentation. If they come across a few interesting short articles during browsing, they don't mind taking a short time to read them. But if it is a long novel that appears in the user's sight at this time, many people may have to abandon it. Knowing that this kind of answer-based community does not provide a reading interface and adaptation functions suitable for browsing long-form content, it is difficult to bring readers a more comfortable reading experience. Therefore, short online articles have become more suitable for content with zhihu.
@Waste Snack, an online author who has been creating content on Zhihu for six years, said that because of the limitation of space, Zhihuwen tends to be short and fast in content and style, the character personality needs to be more intense, the plot direction must also take a sharp turn, and the relationship between shaping a character and telling a story is particularly close and urgent. Tianchen shouted: "I know a small plot of hundreds of words, a small reversal, it is difficult." ”
Qiancheng, the author of the online article, believes that the first-person perspective is the most significant feature that distinguishes Zhihuwen from other platform online texts. Among the acceptance requirements of most Zhihu texts, "first person" is an absolutely necessary rigid requirement, which is the first stepping stone to enter Zhihu.
Under the platform ecology of the Zhihu Q&A community, the sharing of real experiences of "live talk" is the most common and eye-catching type of answer, and the first person naturally becomes the most common narrative perspective. This kind of content tends to have a strong sense of substitution, high credibility, and more convincing. Most of the online creations mentioned above are hidden under normal questions. Narrating the story from a first-person perspective is not prominent in many of the answers, and at first glance it will be considered to be a real experience, and the realism is more intense.
Common Zhihuwen receiving requirements Image source: Online text public account
"The beginning is particularly engaging, and the beginning is climaxing." Ming Zhan Xuan is an absolute fan of variety shows, but zhihu novels can make her temporarily come out of the world of variety shows. Knowing that the fast-paced and high-energy plot of Zhihuwen is easy to catch the reader's attention, coupled with the short length, it can make her watch a lively story faster, which is very enjoyable. In order to enjoy reading novels in Zhihu, Ming Zhan Xuan also partnered with friends to serve as a salt selection member for half a year. She likes to be interactive when reading the text, and she knows that the text happens to have reader comments interspersed in the article. While reading the text, she learned about this "real-time barrage" experience that other people read after reading, which made her feel good.
The small number of words and short length does not mean that the creation of zhihu text is difficult. He Miao's several short sweet articles have a good response in knowledge, but she also bluntly said that the requirements for short stories will be higher, and the plot needs to be more compact. "There is a fixed routine for long stories, and there are thousands of words in the water." Tianchen said. It is more difficult to create short stories, and "hydrology" is actually easier for the majority of online writers than reversing the plot and controlling the word count.
Know the high cost performance of online text monetization
Cardamom Tea, who has been writing full-time and has her own online public account, is determined to turn to Zhihu, because she recently observed that the remuneration that Zhihu gives to creators is very attractive.
A number of Zhihu online authors mentioned to us in interviews that in terms of online text monetization, compared with other platforms, Zhihu has a high cost performance. This high cost performance is reflected in the low entry threshold, regardless of whether you have writing experience can be created at will; second, the short content is mostly, it saves time and effort to write; the third is that the high traffic of the platform itself is conducive to the exposure and promotion of the content.
@ Waste Snacks out of their own intuition and hobbies, the earliest to write paragraphs and absurd content on Zhihu, but this type of style is difficult to monetize in Zhihu. Later, he also wanted to follow the market trend and take the road of making money, so he began to write female frequency novels (with girls as the protagonist, mostly romance). Now, he has a novel selected for the salt selection column, although it is only more than 20,000 words, but it has brought him about 30,000 yuan of monetization income, and it continues to grow. He said that because the length is too short, this kind of article generally does not have such a high yield on other online platforms.
"I haven't seen a higher bid than Zhihu on a short story site." Qiancheng said. After knowing the use of manuscripts, the advance payment will be settled according to a thousand words, but the maximum will not exceed 3,000 yuan, and then it will be divided according to the reading situation, and there will be five or five points between the platform and the author. Two months after the work entered the salt selection column, Qiancheng received a share income of more than 9,000 yuan.
There are two ways for users to read salt selection columns, one is that non-salt selection members directly pay the column price to buy works, and the other is to pay to become salt selection members to read for free. Zhihu will calculate the number of column purchases and member clicks separately, and the revenue will be settled to the author on a quarterly basis according to the agreed share ratio.
@ Waste snacks tell us that when a salt selection column is more, it can get tens of thousands of yuan, and the heat is flat can also get thousands of pieces. Of course, there are also dark horses for monetization. In the data given by Zhihu officially, Zhihu author July Li's 200,000-word work "Wash Lead Hua: Vicious Female Survival Record" was launched in April 2020 in the salt selection column, and in less than a month, it received nearly 400,000 yuan in income.
"Interface" has also mentioned in previous reports that compared with other platforms, the revenue of Zhihu is at a very competitive level, filling the gap in the market for high-quality short stories. Authors who know that they have two strictly selected novel columns have already received nearly 500,000 yuan in revenue when the column is updated to halfway, and the same income level may need to be middle-level and upper-level authors in reading articles, and it can only be reached by about 10,000 words a day.
Three reasons to know the code good text Source: Zhihu salt selection members
When Zhihuwen becomes advantageous and more and more people want to get a piece of the pie, not only do online authors vigorously embrace Zhihu, but many "Xiaobai" have also dreamed of writing and monetizing. This has also spawned a variety of zero-based writing monetization training courses, including Zhihu official.
On external platforms such as Zhihu and Douyin and WeChat, information flow advertisements for "newcomer writing training camps" can often be seen. Take "Zhihu Research Job Online" on Douyin as an example, clicking on the account will jump to the Zhihu Writing Monetization Live Course page, and then you can spend one yuan or receive a free zero-based Xiaobai Writing Live Course.
Zhihu Writing Monetization Pyramid Source: Zhihu Writing Monetization Live Class
The learning planner of the Zhihu Writing Training Camp told us that after the listing of Zhihu, a large number of new authors are needed to become their own stable source of contributions, and now there are not a few people in the market who specialize in writing courses for Zhihu, "Other platforms finally submitted to our Zhihu, it is better for us to open courses ourselves." According to the study planner, the official writing training course began the year before and has been two years so far.
Through the experience of the Zhihu Zero Basic Writing Training Course, the author found that the participation in the course experience is not limited to writers who want to write novels or stories, but also want to realize monetization through knowledge sharing and Q&A. In the comments section of the live class, a variety of unfounded students had a lively discussion, and they couldn't wait to grasp the password to realize it. However, after the experience class, the learning planner said that of the 70 or 80 people he brought, only four people bought a 2380 yuan writing monetization course.
Of course, for writing online articles in Zhihu, some people also pointed out the difficulties: this is not a platform for main online texts, and the audience and promotion efforts are limited. In addition, beginners are more likely to be uninterested in addition to being prepared to be sprayed. No matter how much the online text platform is criticized, at least there are mechanisms such as a thousand-word guarantee, a new book list, and an editor-in-chief. In zhihu, these links are relatively lacking. Unless the writing is particularly brilliant, or it is promoted by the big guys, most of them are sunk by the influence of their personal accounts.
In Tianchen's view, Zhihu is still an emerging channel in the field of online literature, and there are certain advantages. At least for now, Zhihu's "incense" still has a great appeal.
*Qiancheng, Tianchen, Spring and Autumn, Ming ZhanXuan, and He Miao are pseudonyms
The author is a reporter for Caijing
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