Can podcasts make money?
This is the biggest concern of all podcast owners.
If the 2020 Chinese podcast track discusses traffic growth and giant bets that come into the spotlight, then the focus of 2021 is whether podcasts can "eat".
On August 2, Himalaya officially launched the "Himal Podcast Original Incentive Plan", taking out cash to directly subsidize excellent original podcasts, and outstanding creators who are active on other platforms can also get support through "special invitation".
As the head platform of the audio market, Himalaya has 280 million audio content, covering 100 audio categories, including a huge base of podcasters, and the incentive plan undoubtedly injects another dose of "heart-strengthening" into podcast creation.
Up to now, nearly 100 original podcasts such as "Limited Culture", "Passers-by Catch Horses", "Basically Harmless", and "Eight Tails are Monsters" have joined the incentive program.
Hold up the original podcast with "real money"
"Sound Tree" was invited to join during the internal testing phase of the incentive program.
He only started releasing his own audio show in May this year. After the start of the Tokyo Olympics, "Audible Tree", who lives in Japan, produced many issues of japanese and sports content, and was selected by Himalayas as the "Tokyo City Anchor".
Before joining the original incentive program, Sound Tree had not yet earned revenue on podcasts and had not tried other monetization methods.
After being invited to settle in, he received not only the incentive of income, but also the affirmation of traffic.
"In just one month, from only 53 fans to more than 1,500 fans, the number of listeners is also growing rapidly, and the traffic is much higher than I expected."
Mid-tail original podcasts like "Sound Tree" are also the focus of the Himalayas.
As early as April this year, Himalaya launched the "X Plan", which divided the podcast into several stages such as mengxin, advanced, emerging, and ace for hierarchical support.
Original podcasts can receive official support in terms of traffic and operation from the initial stage to gain content creation experience and fan base.
In a sense, the Original Incentive Program is an extension and further complement to Plan X.
To join this incentive program, podcast owners need to meet 4 conditions:
The number of fans ≥ 500
The anchor level ≥ Lv8
Anchor credit score ≥ 60
The content produced after review is original
As long as the above conditions are met, creators can quickly join on The Himalayas through the path of "account-creation-originality incentive".
At the same time, podcasts with fan bases on other platforms can bypass these conditions and be "invited to enter", simply sending personal information to the official email ([email protected]).
It is understood that podcast owners who join the plan can choose up to 2 free album declarations, non-VIP content, non-paid content, nor can they contain commercial promotion content, and need to meet the condition dimensions of duration, sound, and update:
1. The total duration of the album ≥ 1 hour or 6 audio ≥ in the album, and the total duration ≥ 30 minutes;
2. Does not include the sound of national reading, and the amount of live playback sounds ≤ 20%;
3. The cumulative update time of the past 30 days ≥ 30 minutes, excluding deleted and private programs.
The platform will calculate the cash rewards that podcasts should receive every day based on multiple data dimensions such as the number of plays, interactions, and sharing clicks of the album.
The history channel podcast "Fake Oriental Shuo", which has 233,000 followers in the Himalayas, said that it has planned to adjust the frequency of updates to ensure the continuous exposure of the content, provide a stable listening experience, and also try to leave oral content at the end of the film to guide users to interact.
"Teacher Zhang Zhihao", who has an audience of 80,000, also mentioned that since joining the incentive program, he has consciously increased comment responses and interactions.
"Teacher Zhang Zhihao" interacts with the comment area
It seems that in the future, in the Himalayas, we will often shout out "one key and three consecutive times".
The rise of podcasts, the rise of the hi-horse
Starting in 2020, the niche category of podcasts has entered the fast lane.
More and more people are listening to podcasts. According to the "2020-2021 China Online Audio Industry Research Report" released by Ai Media Consulting, the scale of online audio users in China will be 570 million in 2020 and may reach 640 million by 2021.
Under the boom, giants are competing to bet, and platforms have entered one after another.
Small universe, pirate radio and other podcast Apps turned out to be born, ByteDance launched "Tomato Listening", Kuaishou launched "Kayak", NetEase Cloud Music opened a "podcast cloud circle", QQ Music independent podcast plate...
Looking back at the 2019 Chinese podcasts, the number is less than 2,000. By May, The Global Podcast Search Engine and Database, List Notes, showed that the number of Chinese podcasts had grown to 19,422.
Data Global Podcast Search Engine with Database Listing Notes Image from "Tech Planet"
Himalayas had podcasts back in 2013. In August 2020, Himalaya launched an independent podcast channel, launched the "Podcast Hit List", and launched editing functions such as "Moments Of Paper" to reduce the threshold of creative technology.
In the Himalayas podcast channel, listeners can find a variety of topics such as humanities and arts, film and television entertainment, lifestyle, technology and business, and career growth.
Many podcast IPs such as Blackwater Park, Story FM, Ouchi Secret Talk, Ritan Park, Hard Nuclear Power Station and many other podcast IPs are active here, and many people who love podcasts continue to join the original group, talking about society, history, technology, sports, and personal stories and experiences.
Himalayan podcast channel
According to Himalaya big data, as of now, the platform has 250 million monthly active users, the average listening time of podcasts is 49 minutes, the average completion rate of podcasts has reached 50%, and the user interaction rate has exceeded 70% of audio programs.
However, at this stage of podcasting, there is still a long way to go from the form of a mature industry.
From the perspective of industry observation, to assess the popularity of an industry, it is necessary to measure the maturity of a whole chain from the production end to the consumer end.
What Himalaya is doing is continuing to push podcasts forward. In the past few months, they have held three podcast salons in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen to communicate with creators face-to-face.
Himalayan podcast salon live
A series of combination punches, including creative tools, traffic support, podcast salons, commercial resources, etc., are all comprehensive services that Himalaya is providing for podcast creators, and the original incentive program is also an important part of it.
How far is the spring that podcast creators are waiting for?
The most realistic question for podcasters is when they will be able to "eat."
At present, the way podcasts can monetize is nothing more than advertising cooperation, paid programs, corporate customized podcasts, and several peripherals, and some podcasts are also trying new ways such as audio delivery.
VIP subscription content of "Teacher Zhang Zhihao"
In addition to the relatively superior commercially capable head creators, most podcasters are still waiting to see the opportunity, and some are always generating electricity for love.
The launch of the original podcast incentive program can bring them the most direct cash income.
This part of the money may not be a major source of income for a podcaster, but it can be a motivation for them to persevere, especially for mid-tail podcasters.
Podcast creator "Eight Tails are Monsters" said that in a short period of time, it is still difficult to see the peak of support for original content and the best cost performance point of the incentive plan, "this will be a good mathematical model", and it can also lay the foundation for more support for follow-up.
"Eight Tails are youkai"
Of course, Himalayas are also matching advertisers and podcasters. From the perspective of the platform, they know that brands need a process to establish awareness of a single podcast, so they are more willing to do the role of intermediary linking, matching individual podcasts and brands, and currently cooperating with Tmall, Tesla and so on.
Another impact of cash incentives is that platform ecological participants will expand rapidly in a short period of time, which has been verified by the market in today's today's headlines, B stations, Qutoutiao and other platforms that implement content traffic sharing.
Himalayan Podcast Salon Live Discuss when podcasts will usher in the "circle-breaking" moment
When a track content blowout, the next trend is bound to be the outbreak of vertical content.
Himalayas, which has a large podcast group, invites more high-quality podcasts to settle in, and on the other hand, it takes this opportunity to actively cultivate representative creators of subdivided tracks.
The original incentive plan clearly emphasizes that it will focus on encouraging creators in vertical fields such as "literature and history, art, film and television, lifestyle, Internet, science fiction science, digital electronics, business, investment and financial management, career growth, emotional psychology, music, and health".
"Fake Oriental Shuo" also revealed that he is shifting his content products from literary and historical miscellaneous talks to programs with systematic attributes, "because this can increase the stickiness of users."
Part of the album "Counterfeit Oriental Shuo"
Moreover, the incentive plan uses broadcasting, interaction, etc. as a dimension with higher weight, which is also conducive to keeping more listeners in the podcast channel, not just the himalaya platform.
To this day, when we revisit the rise of Chinese podcasts in the past two years, we will find that Chinese podcasts have blossomed and gradually passed through the initial "green" stage.
However, departing from the "green astringency" does not mean full maturity, compared with the graphic and short video track, podcasts are still the only content areas where creators have developed for a long time and the infrastructure construction has not kept up.
Himalaya is adding a little bit to the podcast ecosystem, from operations to tools, from flow support to cash incentives.
The original incentive program is not the end, and podcast creators will also have the opportunity to be lifted up by the platform and go higher.