During the months of ChatGPT's popularity, excitement and anxiety formed the face of all living beings, and on the bright side, a number of technology companies and celebrities squeezed into the big model track; Secretly, some ordinary people are looking for new opportunities to make money under the wind.
Li Mingfei is one of these ordinary people, he began selling ChatGPT accounts in February, the "batch number" cost two yuan three, initially sold for a high price of 99 yuan. By the time ChatGPT's app was launched in the United States, the market price of the account had dropped to 30 yuan, and the profit margin was still considerable.
Media hype and bigwig publicity are free advertisements for "number sellers". When the giants drilled deep into the big models and did not see the "return money", these people were already profitable.
On various e-commerce platforms, Li Mingfei hid in Tibet, although the store disappeared once in ten days and a half months, the average monthly sales volume can still be five or six thousand, the monthly turnover exceeds 150,000 yuan, and the cost of taking the number is more than 10,000. However, the promotion fee is the lion's share, accounting for more than half of the revenue. There is also a large flow of people and wide channels, and the net profit can be 200,000 yuan in a single month.
But this is not a stable and long-term income. If the popularity of ChatGPT does not continue, the business will become tepid; If there is no traffic, this money will not be earned. In the past, the blowout of domestic large models once made Li Mingfei and his peers worry about affecting sales, "Fortunately, ChatGPT is still strong, and those who should buy it still have to buy." ”
Behind the ChatGPT account vendors is people's strong demand for AIGC tools, and various needs cannot be met by domestic large-model products for the time being.
30 yuan ChatGPT account less than 3 yuan to get the goods
On May 19, OpenAI put ChatGPT on the iOS App Store in the United States, and the news of the mobile terminal launch quickly spread in China and reached a group of niche merchants. OpenAI, 14,000 kilometers away, is on the other side of the Pacific Ocean and has blown business opportunities for these businesses.
Li Mingfei is one of them. In February this year, he quickly felt the tide of AI poured into the world by ChatGPT, although he did not understand technology and could not rush to the front line to engage in research and development, but when the big guys such as Meituan Wang Huiwen and Innovation Factory Lee Kaifu broke the cup, he began to think about how to make a fortune in the wind.
"At that time, most people could only watch others use ChatGPT, and they were eager and anxious, but there was no way to register an account in China, so I felt that selling numbers would definitely make money." In this way, Li Mingfei started his selling business.
"At the beginning, it sells quickly, you don't need to have traffic, the demand is there, and the wholesale account is on the line." Talking about the business during that time, he couldn't hide his excitement, and he couldn't wait to spit on everyone who talked to him, "But during this time, the energy seems to have passed, the demand is obviously less, and there must be traffic to sell." ”
But the popularity of ChatGPT has been wave after wave, and now, the new hotspot is the ChatGPT APP, which is not only more convenient to use, but also supports voice input. "There are more lists these days," Li Mingfei added another way to make money.
The extra way to earn money in his mouth refers to selling App Store accounts in the United States, because ChatGPT can only be downloaded in Apple's American store, "This is not expensive, 18 yuan." ”
ChatGPT is available on the App Store in the United States
Li Mingfei introduced that he now sells an ordinary ChatGPT account, that is, the free version of the official website, using a GPT-3.5 model, priced at 30 yuan; and a ChatGPT Plus account using the GPT-4 model, divided into a shared version and an exclusive version, the price is 80 yuan and 200 yuan respectively; There are also shared members of the AI mapping tool Midjourney, which sells for 40 pieces.
"Ordinary ChatGPT accounts sell the most, the price is cheap, 30 yuan can be used all the time," Mr. Li said, adding that it would be cheaper if he bought more. He asked Li Mingfei for the price with "wanting to be an agent", and he quickly gave the reserve price: 7 yuan.
From 30 to 7, Li Mingfei was more atmospheric than the anchor in the live broadcast room who worked hard to bring goods, and took the initiative to hit a "fracture". Not only that, the official fee for ChatGPT Plus is $20 (about 141 yuan) per month, and Li Mingfei gave a supply price of 160 yuan. However, he reminded, "Plus you push as little as possible, this thing is expensive, and it is very troublesome for someone to ask you for a refund." ”
Li Mingfei reflected that ChatGPT Plus due to the extra step of overseas account recharge, if the channel of recharge is out of order, it may lead to banning, if the customer finds that it is blocked in a few days, it will definitely find after-sales, which is too troublesome. However, this is expensive, and fewer people buy it.
When asked "can ordinary accounts be cheaper", Li Mingfei said that he could give 3.5 yuan, but it was registered in batches by machines, and there was a risk of banning, "Manual registration is a little more expensive, but basically it will not be blocked." ”
After some conversation, Li Mingfei confessed that he was also looking for someone to get the number, and because of the large amount taken, the average cost was about 2.3 yuan. According to this cost price, a number is sold for 30 yuan, and a "pig's foot rice" is sold.
"There are peers with a net profit of 200,000 yuan a month"
Judging from Li Mingfei's description, the profit margin of selling ChatGPT accounts is very considerable. But how much you can earn depends on sales.
Li Mingfei said that his main sales channel is a treasure store, so he also found someone to develop a simple web page, if someone asks through the communication software, they can directly place an order on the website.
"Looking at the traffic, in good times, it can sell 1,000 in a few days, and if the online store is not blocked, it can sell five or six thousand a month." This quantity corresponds to a price of 30 yuan, "if it is cheap, you can sell more, but it is not worth selling at a low price." "In this way, his monthly turnover can reach more than 150,000 yuan.
"Then don't you easily earn hundreds of thousands a month?" Seeing such speculation, Li Mingfei said that it was not easy, "E-commerce platforms still have to advertise, you think it is pure profit." He revealed that if you want to sell more, you have to spend money to put on priority display stores, "that is, when others search for keywords, they can see your store, and the promotion cost accounts for more than half of the turnover volume." ”
According to him, the monthly sales of 150,000 yuan, the promotion fee alone is more than 70,000, far higher than the cost of getting the number. However, this promotion fee is not a fixed expenditure, the promotion fee is proportional to the traffic, "losing money is not enough".
Reselling ChatGPT accounts on e-commerce platforms is actually not that simple. A treasure customer service told "Metaverse Daily Explosion" that the platform is not allowed to list ChatGPT accounts, but there are no relevant explicit regulations for the time being, only saying that "the release of prohibited products may lead to risks such as the removal of products".
Li Mingfei also knows that the platform itself does not allow the sale of ChatGPT accounts, "I found that the store will be closed, and it is useless to pay the promotion fee, and people can't look at your money." He said that he did not know how many shops had been closed in the past few months, and he could only "fight guerrilla", and he had to change the name of the store in ten days and a half month.
Li Mingfei also tried other platforms, but the review was stricter and "couldn't do it." For example, if you search for "ChatGPT" in Xianyu, the preferred result is women's shoes called "notre chat".
"If you only start selling now, it's still a little late." Li Mingfei said that now that more people are selling, the demand is gradually decreasing, and basically people who want to have an account have it. "It's still just starting well, at that time it was still expensive, a number can be sold for 99 yuan, and there are peers with a net profit of 200,000 yuan a month."
In Li Mingfei's view, there is actually no threshold for selling accounts, which is nothing more than the cost of getting the number. He himself has also tried to register an account with a platform that can accept foreign mobile phone verification codes, and the cost is only one or two dollars, but it is too troublesome to register one by one, and it is not as convenient as the "batch number". "It's not that stable, you know it when you do it. Now many channels cannot be promoted, and it is easy to do it with accurate traffic. ”
Domestic large model "did not affect business"
In the months since Li Mingfei sold his number, domestic technology companies are also engaged in an arms race, and giants such as Baidu and Ali have successively released "domestic versions of ChatGPT" to benchmark OpenAI.
On March 16, Baidu launched Wenxin Yiyan and opened it for testing; On April 7, Ali's version of ChatGPT product Tongyi Qianwen opened the internal beta invitation; Two days later, the 360 Great Prophecy Model "360 Wisdom Brain" opened for appointment. Since then, domestic large models have entered a blowout period, and many large models and ChatGPT-like tools such as Huawei's "Pangu", SenseTime's "Discussion", Ask the Door "Sequence Monkey", and iFLYTEK's "Spark Cognition" have been unveiled. It's dizzying and dizzying.
The era of domestic large models kicked off, which made Li Mingfei and his peers feel uneasy. "We communicated with each other, and we were all a little worried that no one would buy an account after the domestic ChatGPT came out."
What caught Li Mingfei's most attention was undoubtedly the press conference where Wen Xin spoke. After all, Baidu is the first and most capable company to be a conversational bot.
The scene that day impressed Li Mingfei, "Li Yanhong put a video recorded in advance, and the comment area was scolded." Without waiting for the press conference to finish, he withdrew from the live broadcast room and had a bottom in his heart.
Wen Xin's word press conference
Subsequently, Wen Xin opened the test, and more and more people used this large domestic model, but various rollover cases were also uploaded on the Internet. When a technology company releases a large model in the future, Li Mingfei directly does not care, he believes that the benchmark position of ChatGPT can not be shaken for the time being.
Li Mingfei said that although large domestic models can basically be used for free, when they first came out, many of them needed an invitation code to participate in the test, which means that there is still a threshold for getting an account. "But you have seen who sells domestic numbers, and there are still more foreign ones than domestic cattle X."
In Li Mingfei's perception, the concentrated appearance of domestic large models has no obvious impact on his selling business, even if the subsequent sales are low, he does not feel that it is the domestic large model that has stolen the limelight, but his selling number peers are more, which shows that domestic users have a large demand for ChatGPT, "This thing everyone will only use the best one, after all, it doesn't cost much." ”
Another merchant who sells ChatGPT accounts feels the same way, "We sell ours, they give theirs, no conflict." ”
Worry about the decline in popularity and legal risks
Although the launch of the ChatGPT APP has attracted another wave of customers, Li Mingfei also faintly feels that the popularity will not last forever. Coupled with the encirclement and blocking of various platforms, he expects that this business will become more and more difficult to do.
"Everything is to eat the first wave of dividends to make the fastest money, this thing is not a long-term solution, earn a day is a day, if you can't sell it, you will withdraw." Li Mingfei can think openly, he can catch this wave to make some money, he is very content, moreover, in his eyes, this is not a "stable" transaction.
"Instability" is mainly about legal risks. Mr. Li adheres to a self-imposed bottom line: not selling virtual networking tools. In Internet black words, this tool has various homophonic pronouns. Since Chinese mainland IP cannot access ChatGPT, users need a virtual network to use it. Li Mingfei has encountered countless inquiries about the tool, and he has replied uniformly "not for sale".
Domestic IPs cannot access ChatGPT websites
Searching for public information, there are many cases in China where people have been sentenced to criminal punishment for providing "circumvention" services for illegal profit. A 2022 ruling by the Guangzhou Baiyun Court showed that a gang illegally profited by operating a "circumvention" website that could evade supervision and access overseas internet without authorization without the approval of the telecommunications authorities. His acts constituted the crime of providing intrusion into and illegal control of computer information system programs and tools, and the main offender was sentenced to three years' imprisonment, suspended for three years and six months, and fined 50,000 yuan.
Even if you do not encounter risk-related business, simply selling ChatGPT accounts has the risk of crossing the line.
Zhu Jie, a senior partner at Tahota (Chongqing) Law Firm, said such buying and selling could constitute illegal operations and other illegal acts. The genuine services of ChatGPT are provided by overseas institutions, and the use of virtual private networks to provide cross-border business activities without the approval of the relevant mainland departments is expressly prohibited, so these domestic merchants who ask and register on behalf of the mainland for the purpose of profit, build or use virtual private networks to register accounts, and operate and buy foreign accounts without relevant national administrative licenses, may be subject to administrative penalties or even criminal penalties.
Li Mingfei and his colleagues are also paying attention to this information, "So far I have not heard of anyone who had an accident because of selling GPT accounts." He remains vigilant and admits that it is not a long-term and secure business. The ChatGPT app is online, and he predicts that the popularity will become calmer little by little like the ChatGPT page. "Li Mingfei" is also looking at the next stop, waiting for another useful overseas AI product to appear, in their eyes, it is an opportunity that ordinary people can also seize in the wind.
(Li Mingfei is a pseudonym in the text.) ）