Text: Yi Wanyu
Edit|Si asked
Source | E-commerce online
"Employees break up and leave the company in seconds", "300 report letters are scattered all over the workplace", "there is no holiday for public relations people on the Spring Festival weekend", a series of "boss" remarks by former Baidu vice president Xuan Jing have aroused a lot of attention and controversy.
From the release of the first Douyin video on May 1, the hot search on the 6th, the emptying of the account on the 7th, and then the resignation on the 9th, the Jingjing incident ebbed and flowed in less than a week, and the people who watched the excitement also extended their eyes to the personal IP incubation team behind the event.
According to the online chat records, Xuan Jing once asked all employees to learn "Brother Sam's Golden Sentences", and netizens were curious about what role "Brother Sam" played behind the Xuan Jing incident, and also pushed this Brother Sam, who was called the "King of Douyin Liquidation" by fans, to the hot search.
As a grassroots business blogger who relies on short videos, the narrative of Sam Ge's reverse harvest of the elites of large factories spread rapidly, and his reply to this matter has also experienced a polar reversal, from denying the intersection with Xuan Jing, saying that "it is completely a rumor, whoever believes it is mentally retarded", to May 10, he responded in the video, Xuan Jing "did come to me, did not enter the community but had a good chat".
The quiet incident came to an end for the time being, but Brother Sam, who responded, "took over" the hot search. Samgo claims to be a leader in traffic monetization, and his income mainly comes from paid courses, private board meetings, traffic support and cooperation sharing. Tencent Deep Web reported that Samgo had revealed in his speech at his company's 2023-2024 annual meeting that his company's annual revenue reached 1 billion.
Grassroots bloggers reverse harvest the elites of large factories
Although his education is not high, Brother Sam is a short video monetization mentor for a group of business executives and small and medium-sized enterprise owners.
Two or three months ago, Xuan Jing spent 5,980 yuan to sign up for a three-day offline course for Brother Sam, and Brother Sam also responded in the video, "She came from a big factory, and I communicated separately for about 10 minutes in the middle of the course." ”
He doesn't think that he is "a teacher of success and brainwashing", "I am actually a person who teaches business owners to create personal IP and take Douyin courses".
In the eyes of passers-by, whether it is a course priced at a few thousand yuan or a private board of directors with tens of thousands of yuan, there is a certain consumption threshold, and netizens who watched the excitement ridiculed that "Brother Sam never pits the poor", after all, if you search for a "Brother Sam" course on Xianyu, you can buy the same model of a thousand-yuan course for a few dollars. However, in the eyes of the elites of large factories and small and medium-sized enterprises who have the ability to consume and are anxious about making short videos, Samko is a shortcut for them to realize the monetization of short videos.
In 2018, Samgo started to make videos, created a traffic matrix, incubated a number of Internet celebrity IPs, and packaged the above IPs into cases, developed paid courses, and taught people how to make short video IPs. In addition to the course, there are also a variety of revenue models such as 80,000 yuan for private board of directors, 2 million yuan for full-case cooperation, 50,000 yuan for matrix partners and 300,000 yuan for apprentices. Since then, Samgo has become what he calls the "monetization king" of Douyin and the "behind-the-scenes operator of phenomenal IP on the whole network".
According to media reports, the threshold for participation in the private board of directors is "an annual income of one million, willing to make friends, and a fee of 80,000 yuan", and as early as September 2023, the number of private board members will exceed 1,500. With successful cases in front of them, and Brother Sam's straightforward criticism of the bosses who are worth more than 100 million, this group of battle-hardened elites has become more ambitious after being educated.
And this response to the hot search did bring traffic and heat to Samgo.
In March this year, Samgo's matrix account with millions of followers was officially banned from searching by Douyin for 90 days, but he is still active on the new matrix account.
(Screenshot from Cicada Mother)
The new accounts only started to publish videos in April this year, among them, the new account of the same name "Samgo Cognitive Circle" has a total of 19.4w fans, less than 1/10 of the number of large fans of the same name. But in the early morning of May 10th, after Samgo posted his response to the Xuan Jing incident on "Samgo (Daily Account, Record Growth)", the account that only released its first video on April 14 this year has climbed to the peak of traffic in the past 30 days, increasing its followers by 1880.
Although tuba has been restricted from searching, fans who follow can still see the content posted by tuba. After the large number was restricted from searching, the traffic of "Brother Sam's Cognitive Circle" declined, and only one video released after March this year had more than 10,000 likes, which was in stark contrast to the previous popular videos with hundreds of thousands of likes. According to the background data of Cicada Mother, the large matrix of Brother Sam has lost fans to varying degrees in the past 30 days, among which the largest "Brother Sam's Cognitive Circle" has lost 2295 fans.
Produced by Brother Sam, rough and easy to use?
After starting a self-media business in 2018, Samgo has created a number of accounts with millions of fans, and after entering Douyin in May 2020, he has become a phenomenal IP of Douyin knowledge bloggers, with a Douyin matrix of more than 20 million fans at its peak, more than 10,000 people online at the same time in each live broadcast, and 8 figures in monthly monetization.
At the beginning or end of his videos, the most common slogan is "Produced by Brother Sam, rough and easy to use". In his self-reported family history in a video released in April 2023, he believes that his core strength is, "I have really been a business for 20 years". Born in 1987, his real name is Shen Wenjun, a native of Xiguan Village, Ninghai Town, Muping District, Yantai City, and a graduate of the 2002 fitter class of Muping Vocational College. He once said that he entered the society at the age of 15 and bought his first car at the age of 18.
In 2003, 16-year-old Brother Sam started to do Taobao, because he made a fortune by selling sea cucumbers, he had the name "Brother Sam". But later, Brother Sam found that bird's nest was more profitable than sea cucumber, and he made the performance of sea cucumber and bird's nest 20 million yuan through micro-business direct sales, with a profit of 3 million to 5 million yuan, and also expanded from 1 store to 12 stores.
This kind of expansion has allowed Samgo to see a new way to make money. In 2017, he posted on Zhihu to share entrepreneurial dry goods and sell courses related to Taobao store operation, although the initial purpose was to develop franchisees and operators of bird's nest stores, he soon found that selling classes was more profitable than selling products.
According to Tencent's deep web, Samgo once revealed in his speech at his company's 2023-2024 annual meeting that his company's revenue exceeded 1 billion. The company has grown from 0 to 1,000 people in four years, and the minimum number of employees will increase to 3,000 in 2024. "Monetization" is the strength of their team's self-proclaimed "specialization in the art industry", which is why many bosses and Internet celebrities look to him for guidance.
A netizen who signed up to participate shared: "Listening to the private board meeting has broadened my mind a lot and learned a lot. But some people also said that the private board of directors is a group of bosses who eat and drink with each other and pull people to consume their own products, "I don't know if I made 100 million by paying 80,000, anyway, Brother Sam made enough 100 million by relying on these 80,000." ”
The Samgo team boasts of being a leader in the field of monetization, and even responds directly to the doubts of consultants, but they do get huge profits. In his speech at the company's 2023 annual meeting, Samgo mentioned that the company's revenue exceeded 1 billion, "In 2023, the company has 3 small partners with an annual income of more than 10 million, more than 20 colleagues with an annual income of more than 1 million, and 6 colleagues with an annual income of more than 5 million." ”
Who's paying for Sam?
But is it really that easy to monetize? Before this accident broke out of the circle, Samgo's account had been repeatedly banned, and his business practices and courses were also questioned about cutting leeks.
There are people who want to transform into short video bloggers, and they have purchased the same ginseng course as Xuanjing, and the core skill of the course is "borrowing", "finding the benchmark account, analyzing and copying the video structure, background music and even subtitle form." Stay for 3 seconds to catch users, maintain interaction with users, and try to attract users to like and comment. ”
There are also bloggers with only a few hundred followers, sharing their experience after spending tens of thousands of yuan to sign up for the ginseng course, despite the hot comments and sarcasm "40,000 yuan of the class has increased by 400 fans", the bloggers who spent the money still feel that everything is worth it.
For many people who have paid for Samko, anxiety is a big reason for gritting their teeth and paying, but because the Samgo team does not explicitly promise to be responsible for specific business results, and the effect of such paid knowledge courses is indeed difficult to quantify, many people can only consider themselves unlucky even if they regret it.
For the kind of entrepreneurs who spend a greater price to buy a private board of directors, spending money is not for knowledge, but for socializing. Some people who have participated in the private board meeting and other business mentor courses said that most of the trainees in the same period were small and medium-sized enterprise owners, because it was difficult to continue their success by relying on the past path, and because it was difficult to re-understand the market and demand, they were anxious to follow the footsteps and find a reliable operation model once they saw that someone had obtained the exact results.
In the self-media "Vulcan Economy" published a post about "What happened to the people who paid to learn from the brothers?" In the video, some students who spent tens of thousands to millions of yuan broke the news that they had no gain. Some people realize that they have been cheated at the beginning, but because they have paid the money, they continue to learn, and they fantasize that they will really learn in the end. There are also people who transfer millions to follow Brother Sam to do IP, but they are dumbfounded when they inspect offline, because in addition to basic editing, the most emphasized in the trading class is "copying" and "benchmarking", but it does not involve real methodology and industry judgment, and the so-called thousand-person company is actually composed of many traders who have paid 50,000 yuan in tuition to study, and they not only pay tuition, but also are willing to do free labor.
In the past, Brother Sam, Li Yizhou, and Dada were known as the top three in the field of knowledge payment. One of the major characteristics of Samgo and Dada is that they have hundreds of slice accounts on various social platforms and have millions of fans, while Li Yizhou, who can be called the "ceiling" of self-employed people who sell classes, has more than 3 million fans and has a record of earning tens of millions of yuan a month by selling classes.
Before joining the brother, Dada, Li Yizhou and other Internet celebrity mentors "collapsed" one after another. Li Yizhou sold the water-injected AI course for 50 million yuan a year, but the course selling routines and the heads of doctors from famous schools were picked up one after another, and because the "Yizhou Intelligence" AI tool website included in the course fell into the controversy of suspected infringement and no filing, on February 22 this year, Li Yizhou's AI course was removed from the entire network, and his personal video account was also prohibited from paying attention.
Also in February, the hottest female business IP "dada" in 2023 was also banned. Dada claims to be a post-95 generation, a leader in female entrepreneurship mentors, with an annual income of more than 100 million, 25-year-old Rolls-Royce, Douyin and video accounts have hundreds of matrix accounts, and the number of fans on the whole network has reached millions, mainly through the mode of recruiting management trainees to make money.
Dada's management trainee model is what she calls "co-entrepreneurship". Dada advertises himself as the owner of a 400-person new media company with 15 million fans on the entire network, while more than half of the 400 people in his company have no salary, or even a basic salary, and they rely entirely on "profit sharing". However, in February this year, because he was suspected of being reported by a management trainee who did not make any money, DADA also "overturned" and was blocked.
In fact, paying for knowledge is able to capture consumers because of the anxiety of the people who buy the course and the actual need to learn new skills. Internet celebrity mentors attract new users on multiple platforms, and then cater to these anxieties through personality, courses and discourse packaging, so as to monetize. From simply selling classes to spending money on part-time jobs, the way of harvesting leeks has also begun to advance.
After Li Yizhou and Dada were banned, the current search of Sange's account is only restricted, which does indicate that the business of selling anxiety courses is not as good as before. In fact, serious training, whether online or offline, knowledge bloggers who help solve their needs are unlikely to overturn, but under stricter supervision, many knowledge bloggers have begun to deliberately shrink their business, and even reduce pricing and limit sales share in order to avoid peer reports.
(In addition to the annotations, some screenshots are from the Samgo Douyin account)