A year divided into 9.1 billion, why the B station UP main initiated the tide

On April 2, #B station UP main launched a stop tide # on the hot search, rushing to the first place in the hot search on Weibo.

Recently, many B site users have found that many UP owners who have been following for a long time have posted videos that temporarily stop updating, saying that they will not upload new content in the short term.

It is divided into 9.1 billion a year, why did the B station UP owners stop changing?

Stop the tide is coming

On April 2, an up owner with nearly four million followers on station B said that his account was temporarily suspended and he was not sure when he would return. He said that the entire team is currently in a loss-making state and cannot feed a team, on the other hand, the current ability of AI creation is also a reason to crack down on original videos.

The owner of the B station up, which is still being updated, said that the current platform incentives are gradually decreasing, and the impact of short videos is also partly reasonable.

In addition, the number of original personal accounts of station B is gradually decreasing, while the number of accounts packaged by the company is gradually increasing, and the cost of video production is also lower.

"The reward mechanism of Station B has been greatly adjusted this year." An UP owner with tens of thousands of fans on station B told reporters that a video content that is not much different from last year's data may only be 1/3~1/2 of last year's income from station B.

The revenue here mainly refers to the "bilibili creation incentive plan" launched by station B in January 2018, which evaluates the value of video traffic based on data such as video views, likes, coins, and collections, and gives UP master cash rewards according to the rules. However, in recent years, with the continuous loss of station B, the incentive amount of station B has also continued to decline.

What does the UP owner make money on?

For the owner of station B UP, the content monetization of station B is mainly through two channels: platform incentives and business cooperation.

Platform incentives mainly refer to the content creation incentives of the UP master, that is, station B comprehensively evaluates the self-made content created by the UP master and provides corresponding rewards. The evaluation criteria include the number of views, fans, fan coins, collections, likes, etc.

For business cooperation, the evaluation criteria are much simpler, that is, you can see how many commercial brands the UP owner can pull for the platform, the more pulled, the greater the incentive.

In May 2021, Station B made adjustments to the creation incentive plan, introducing a variety of assessment indicators including playback channels and user verification after conversion, and adjusted the weighting of different indicators. In fact, it increases the weight of business cooperation and reduces the weight of platform incentives. The criterion for determining the income of UP owners is no longer the quality of the video, but who can receive ads better than whom. As a result, the phenomenon of "traffic merger" has been caused, and the income of the head UP owners whose content is suitable for receiving advertisements and has a huge number of fans continues to rise with the investment of the platform, while more waist and tail UP owners are simply difficult to make a living on the platform.

For a long time, the owner of station B UP spontaneously produces and uploads video content for his interest and love, does not take economic benefits as the first pursuit of behavior and describes it as "generating electricity with love", which is also an important reason why station B can maintain the amount of content and community activity, but for most individual UP owners, long-term "power generation for love" will eventually run out of power.

"Generating electricity with love" has never been able to support the "long-term stability" of a pan-community platform, and motivating UP owners to expand their income through commercial cooperation can truly retain creators.

Last year, 9.1 billion was given to UP owners

It is worth noting that although the video revenue obtained by UP owners in recent years has continued to decrease with the adjustment of the policy of station B, the total amount of dividends distributed by station B to UP owners has increased year by year.

On March 30, Bilibili ("Station B") announced its results for the year ended December 31, 2022. On the same day, "Station B gave 9.1 billion to the UP master last year" rushed to Weibo hot search.

According to the financial report, the total net turnover in 2022 was 21.9 billion yuan, compared with 19.4 billion yuan in the previous year, a year-on-year increase of 13.0%. Net loss attributable to shareholders of the company was RMB7.5 billion, compared to RMB6.8 billion in the previous year, an increase of 10.4% year-on-year. In 2022, operating costs were RMB18.0 billion, an increase of 17.7% year-on-year, and revenue sharing costs (an important component of operating costs) were RMB9.1 billion, an increase of 17.9% year-on-year.

The net loss was 7.5 billion yuan, and the UP main share was 9.1 billion yuan. For station B who wants to break even, this is a good and bad thing.

Happily, creator incentive is an important support for the content ecology of station B, which helps it consolidate the core competitiveness of the content ecology. A good revenue share helps attract quality creators and attract users through content. To some extent, this is also a major driving force for the double-digit growth of total revenue of Station B throughout the year.

The worry is that compared with 2021, the increase in revenue share and operating costs of Station B last year was as high as 18%, which exceeded the 13% increase in total revenue. In other words, to achieve breakeven at station B, controlling expenses is only one aspect, and the biggest pressure is still on increasing revenue.

How long can "Power for Love" last?

After the 2019 New Year's Eve concert began to embark on the road of "breaking the circle", Station B tried to further expand the age group and interest circle of users. From more than 100 million monthly active users in 2019 to 326 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, the step by step "breaking the circle" of station B also means an influx of people from different circles, which will inevitably have an impact on the originally "small but beautiful" community atmosphere.

However, compared with Xiaohongshu and Douyin, which "Mark My Life" and "Record a Good Life", the "learning" and "depth" attributes of Station B do limit its commercialization.

For the platform, the community can carry enough commercial content and has the potential to undertake more commercial content, which is also the embodiment of its commercial value. Therefore, station B is also vigorously motivating UP owners to undertake advertising.

Although the incentive for content creation has been greatly reduced after the adjustment of the mechanism, Station B is also constantly improving and upgrading its commercialization infrastructure, launching official business cooperation platforms such as "fireworks", live streaming goods, and patch advertising, etc., constantly broadening the earning path of UP owners. However, at present, Station B is also facing the problem of how to govern creators to privately accept advertisements and catch the commercialization chain into their own hands.

Regarding this year's plan, Chen Rui said: "This year, our company's business will be more focused, and the most important things for the whole company are two things: first, increase revenue and reduce losses; Second, the healthy growth of DAU. ”

In the past, the creative atmosphere and content were the biggest advantages of site B over other platforms. Nowadays, before achieving the small break-even goal, Station B should probably find a way to retain talented UP owners.

Upstream news is synthesized from Jiupai News, Yicai, The Paper, etc

Editor: Zheng Yalan

Responsible editor: Liao Yi

Reviewed: Feng Fei