The new incentive plan of station B supports small and medium-sized UP owners
Author/ IT Times reporter Sun Yonghui
Editor/ Sun Yan
At the beginning of April, bilibili (hereinafter referred to as Bilibili) UP main support project, that is, the 2024 annual plan for video creation incentives, officially came into effect. According to the official account of the Bilibili Creation Incentive Program, "Super Cute and Exciting Reward", the plan will focus on UP owners who have no ability to monetize, that is, individual UP owners with an average monthly platform income of less than 5,000 yuan in the past six months.
Looking at the rules in detail, there is mainly the following information: first, it must be an original self-made manuscript published by the UP master within 90 days, and it must be non-commercial promotion; Activity incentives constitute the creative incentive income of the UP master, of which, the video basic incentive can get up to 2000 yuan per month;Third, the gameplay of the popular small goal has been adjusted, for the individual UP master with less than 100,000 fans and the commercialization is not yet mature, according to the different fan levels where the UP master is located, set different playback and coin volume levels.
"It's almost impossible to make money from incentive money. "I don't think about it, whether it is a small and medium-sized UP owner or a million-dollar V, they all expressed their helplessness and confusion to the reporter of "IT Times": the traffic follows the fate, the threshold for obtaining incentive funds has become higher, and the income has plummeted, and they have a negative attitude towards the plan.
The threshold for incentive payments has become higher
The main income of small and medium-sized UP plummeted by 80%
Jiajia (pseudonym), who has been stationed at station B for several years, is a part-time comprehensive blogger with nearly 3,000 fans, and the highest playback of a single work is 201,000. She took two videos with 33,000 and 107,000 views respectively as examples to tell reporters about her income composition: the former was released on February 3, 2024, and the cumulative income as of April 6 was only 36.75 yuan, and the latter was released at the end of August last year, and as of March 13 this year, the cumulative income was 249.06 yuan. "After opening the roll ads, the revenue will be slightly more. Jiajia said that if only the creation incentive is opened, the income is less than 100 yuan, and if the creation incentive and placement advertising are opened at the same time, the income will be doubled. "The income from creative incentives is a drop in the bucket and cannot be used as a major source of income. She admits that in recent years, the platform's creative incentive policies have not improved its income, and the renewal momentum has gradually dissipated.
"I don't know where the support measures are, and no one has explained them in detail, just an announcement. Regarding the new version of the incentive plan that has just taken effect, entertainment blogger Siqi (pseudonym) said, "I don't know the specific algorithm, but it is visible to the naked eye that the incentive has become less."
After being a blogger at Station B for a year, Siqi's account has 4,000 followers. "Now a video with 100,000 views earns less than 10 yuan, which may be related to the originality of the video, but in the past, the same type of video could earn 50 yuan, and the income plummeted by 80%. In her opinion, the pressure of recent days is that on the one hand, the creative incentive has dropped significantly, and on the other hand, the threshold for receiving awards for small goals of popular models has become higher.
Before the implementation of the new version of the plan, the platform's requirements were "a single manuscript reaches a like rate of 4%, and the number of views within 7 days of the manuscript is 1000, 3000, 10000, 50000, 100000, 100000, and 100000, and you can get 1, 2, 4, 8, and 10 share multiples." After the plan takes effect, the relevant requirements will be changed to "a single manuscript can get 25 incentive funds if it reaches 50,000 views and 100 coins and 4% like rate during the task cycle, and 60 incentive funds can be obtained if a single manuscript reaches 100,000 views and 200 coins and 4% like rate during the task cycle." ”
"For our bottom-level UP masters, it is quite difficult to reach 100 coins. According to Siqi, the users of station B do not have the habit of liking coins, and the amount of coins of big V can reach a considerable state. If you want to get the bonus of the popular small goal, unless you can produce the popular work. "For a blogger like me, 10 videos can only hit 1 hit. In the past, when she only asked for the like rate, she could barely meet the standard, but now she is facing the double resistance of encouraging being cut and having high requirements for small hit goals. At present, Siqi has not updated her work for several days, and she hopes that the requirements of the popular small target can return to the original state.
Also having the same feelings as Siqi are entertainment blogger Huang Ze (pseudonym) and film and television blogger Li Sha (pseudonym). At the end of March 2023, Huang Ze began to publish manuscripts and opened a creative incentive program. He clearly remembers that at that time, the small target of popular products had low requirements for playback, but now the platform's requirements for him are also the same. "Now the income is lower than before, and I hope the platform threshold can be lowered. Huang Ze said.
"The gameplay is getting more and more complicated, and the experience is getting worse. Li Sha has been posting videos on station B for two years, and her fans are small, with a total of 3.7 million views in 138 videos. She bluntly said that her income is not much, and her main source of income is video views and creator incentive programs. "Before the revision, a video with 10,000 views made a minimum profit of 16 yuan, and after the revision, only 2~3 yuan remained, a decrease of more than 80%. Li Sha said helplessly, after the revision, it is a blow to the little UP owner, and the current source of income is only the cumulative playback of videos, purely "generating electricity for love".
According to the "Super Cute Exciting Inspiration", the gameplay rules of the popular small target activity are as follows: for individual UP owners with less than 100,000 fans and immature commercialization, small and medium-sized UP owners are encouraged to continue to create high-quality content. On the 1st of each month, the task will be issued to invite the UP master to participate, and the task cycle will be the natural month of the month.
Judging from the feedback of a certain number of small and medium-sized bloggers, their voices may lie in the reasonableness of the threshold setting, and accounts that lack traffic and fans can enjoy this wave of support policies when faced with excessively high requirements for task completion?
Millions of big Vs are also worried
The annual income plummeted by 100,000 yuan
It has been nearly 4 years since the blogger "Fufu's dishwasher" changed from real estate to self-media, and according to his B station account, the number of fans has reached 2.693 million and the number of likes has reached 14.012 million times. Although he is an anime blogger, the works published on his homepage also include classic film and television dramas, detectives, suspense series, new works, etc.
In the blogger's view, this policy is beneficial to the platform, but it is the same for both large and small UP owners, and the direct impact is a decrease in income. "During the creation period, I was able to get about 200,000 (pre-tax) creative incentives from the platform a year at the peak, and last year it was about 100,000 (before tax). In the past, 10,000 playbacks could earn about 30 yuan ~ 40 yuan, but later it was estimated that it was only 3 ~ 8 yuan. In his personal experience, this policy will continue to reduce his annual income.
Despite having a fan base, he has already planned for his future creations in response to the policy, with the goal of improving commercialization capabilities. "In the past, there were creative incentives, which are equivalent to 'receiving salaries' from the platform every month, and there was no strong sense of urgency when negotiating business orders, and there would be a relatively high price expectation, but now the price can be compromised, and survival is more important than anything else. The blogger admits that finding themes that are easy to monetize and trying charging videos have become ways for him to improve his commercialization capabilities.
Xiaohongshu and Douyin
Or into a "new position" of traffic
Since February 2018, the creation incentive plan of Station B has been carried out for 6 years, but a certain number of UP owners have gradually turned their evaluation from liking to complaining and complaining. Regarding the motivation of station B to play this move this year, the above-mentioned big V believes that the platform is controlling costs.
In 2024, Bilibili will strictly control expenses. According to the latest 2023 financial report released by Bilibili, the total net turnover of the platform was 22.5 billion yuan, an increase of 3% from 21.9 billion yuan in 2022, and the gross profit reached 5.4 billion yuan, an increase of 41% over 2022. However, its net loss was 4.8 billion yuan, 36% narrower than the 7.5 billion yuan in 2022. In addition, operating costs were $17.1 billion, down 5% from $18.0 billion in 2022. The report also shows that the decrease in platform operating costs is attributable to reductions in server and broadband costs, staff costs, content costs, and other costs.
At the 14th anniversary celebration of Station B in late June 2023, Chairman and CEO Chen Rui announced a major shift - replacing clicks with broadcast minutes. According to his explanation, the number of minutes played is a better indicator of the quality of the video. This policy is also favored by more UP owners. IT Times reported earlier that changing the number of views to minutes is a relatively friendly policy for medium- and long-term videos, and in addition, videos with an average play time of more than 1 minute may benefit from this change, and after the revision, some videos will show a multiplier increase in the number of values. For example, if a video with 100,000 views has an average playback duration of 5 minutes, the displayed number will expand by 5 times, from 100,000 to 500,000. The difference between the playback time will further widen the numerical difference between the videos, and the same 100,000 views, the average playback time of a video of 1 minute and 2 minutes will show a double difference.
"Incentive programs in recent years have made income less and more demanding. Li Sha also posted the same video on Xiaohongshu before, and the number of views exceeded 10,000 in a short period of time, but the number of views on station B was only one-tenth of that of Xiaohongshu. "Douyin and Xiaohongshu have a good interactive experience. She bluntly said that if there is no blessing of creative incentives, she will not consider continuing to post videos on station B.
"Compared with Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, there is a gap in the recommendation algorithm mechanism of Station B, and many of the pushed content does not match the user's preferences. Xiaohongshu financial blogger Song Fei (pseudonym) told the "IT Times" reporter that Station B is a platform with strong private domain traffic, and users spend most of their time on the UP owners they have followed. If the medium and long videos of the UP master below the middle waist do not have the initial traffic and likes to start, it will be difficult to gain attention, and face problems such as difficult to receive business orders and low value of business orders.
In Song Fei's view, the basic incentives and advertising shares given by the platform are low, and full-time UP owners will be unsustainable, while part-time UP owners will face the problem of insufficient update frequency and increasingly scarce traffic.
Typesetting / Ji Jiaying
Photo / bilibili Oriental IC
来源/《it时报》公众号vitimes