Six views on knowledge payment

Among the products covered by the knowledge payment series, one is a bit special, that is, small circles and expensive circles. Six views on knowledge payment are as follows:

As a nao (Can) user who knew about live after watching 50+ games and subscribed to 7 columns, he recently concentrated on horizontally comparing a series of knowledge-paid products, such as Himalayan, Fen-Answer and Little Secret Circle. Of course, I spent all my money to experience the product. Here I share some experiences with you.

First, after the flood of information, knowledge has to be paid.

This has been discussed a lot in the industry. A major premise of knowledge payment is that the Internet has been flooded with information for more than 20 years, and there are a lot of high-quality information, but there are more inferior ones, which are easier to screen because it has a stronger motivation to expose itself and attract attention.

The key point is that when the blog era came more than 10 years ago, that is, the so-called web2.0 or UGC era, anyone could produce content at will. It can be said that they have subverted the traditional media to a certain extent, and also increased the difficulty for ordinary users to identify content. But in general, you can still distinguish the author's reputation, the number of fans, the forwarding of content, the proportion of comments and likes to a certain extent.

Then there was the era of smart phones five or six years ago, with more content, fragmentation and fast traffic. After the explosion of geometric quantities, ordinary people almost lost the ability to identify the quality and authenticity of content, and free logic failed in many scenarios. When you need medical treatment, study abroad, and workplace experience, there is a lot of inconsistency in online information, and you may even encounter completely false soft-text advertisements. Which one can be understood in a short time?

There is also a core reason: the rise of the middle class. And as long as they are middle class, there are almost no people who are not anxious. The middle class abroad generally refers to people who live a stable, wealthy and healthy life, while the middle class in China thinks nothing more than houses, cars and promotions every day. Middle-class people are afraid of not getting up, and they are even more afraid of falling. But at the same time, they all have some cash flow on hand and are willing to spend money on self-improvement knowledge.

Second, audio has become the mainstream form.

This wave of knowledge payment PK is different from last year's fiery live broadcast, mainly in the form of video, and also different from offline delivery such as * * * bicycle appreciation. The form of audio has revived, and few people who pay for knowledge do not provide audio services.

Audio has become the mainstream, on the one hand, because of the flood of internet information in the past 20 years, and graphic content bears the brunt of this flood. At the same time, if you count the long video content in the TV era, the short video and live content in the mobile phone era, then the video content on the Internet has actually flooded.

Audio Internet content is actually scarce, such as music products and radio products. However, due to policies, copyrights and licenses, its development has been frustrated repeatedly. Including Netease Cloud Music, which has just been financed these days, it is also very difficult to get the copyright of songs.

At the same time, due to the limitation of product form, the exploration of audio business model is also very unsatisfactory. Advertisers prefer flat products with fixed positions and rich video products.

On the other hand, due to the anxiety of the middle class, and most of them are busy, audio is a product that can liberate their eyes and make full use of their fragmentation time. I believe everyone is aware of this, such as on the way to and from work, on the subway, while driving, taking a walk after dinner and other scenes.

Of course, in essence, the form of audio is closer to the state where we used to learn knowledge in class when we were at school: teachers give lectures on it and use PPT and other graphics. This may be the evolution of the education industry after thousands of years, especially the knowledge of skills. This form not only has the highest efficiency of information transmission, but also can be understood by students.

Third, they all pay for knowledge. What is the difference?

Luo Zhenyu mentioned it at a peer sharing meeting of knowledge paid products. We are all lonely fishermen in Wang Yang. How can we just be enemies of these boats? We can fish as close as possible and help each other at the critical moment. ?

Therefore, I prefer to call it the great navigation era of knowledge payment compared with knowledge payment PK, because it has not yet reached the stage of life and death. Now it's more like everyone enters the game from different angles. Is it mainly graphic, audio or video? Do you want to do in-depth content or platform mode? Is it a one-time sharing or an annual fee? This requires everyone to constantly explore its margin in the ocean of knowledge payment.

Of course, if knowledge payment is still the traditional traffic economy model of the Internet, that is, the world of the importer, then the final decisive battle seems inevitable, and most products will die out (which will be described in detail later).

1) Knowing that live is a single sharing based on a specific theme, similar offline theme sharing will be moved online. Audio-based, illustrated, and can also answer specific questions of participating users. The advantage of Zhihu is that these big V's are all born and raised in Zhihu, which can ensure the continuous operation of this model under the relationship of * * *. Moreover, Zhihu has covered enough topics, and the topics that can be talked about can always find corresponding talents to broadcast live. Meanwhile, Zhihu is well known among the anxious middle class.

2) I believe you can see the head effect. Luo Zhenyu's personal brand effect is used to promote the participation of high-level scholars and experts in other specific fields, and the team has a very deep involvement and collaborative planning in the courses offered, so relatively speaking, the number of courses obtained above is also the least. Users pay for a one-year course, which is very similar to a series of courses in traditional education: fees are paid in advance and services are provided in units of years.

Since I got the concept that there are no fans like Zhihu, I began to sell them. It is necessary to ensure that this mode can continue to run smoothly. In addition to using the New Year's speech, the recent long talk with Lao Luo, and the 5-minute audio converted by Youku video to get enough traffic (customers) sources, the most important thing is to make the big coffee-level content producers not only make money, but also earn a lot of money. Luo Zhenyu's own judgment on making money is: at least 654.38+00,000 yuan per year. ?

3) Himalayan was originally a broadcast Internet product, providing relatively simple content, such as books, listening to stories, cross talk programs, etc., but it also cut into this battlefield because of the indispensable sound service in knowledge payment.

The form of Himalayan knowledge products is between learning about live and getting live. Originally, it also had a UGC community, so it received attention. But in the promotion, it highlights the big V itself. However, because these big V's are invited from outside (such as Ma Dong, Lakeside University and Wu Xiaobo), they are not local people in the community. In the dimension of fan management, Himalayan control over big V is not strong, and it is better to get the effect of making money. The only differentiated play is rapid spread and payment. However, because it is originally an audio product, there is no conversion cost for the original users to accept paid products as a form of audio service (compared with Zhihu who originally focused on words, but knew that live focused on audio).

4) The question put forward by Xing Hang last year flashed across the sky like a meteor. After the birth of Weibo's question and answer, there was almost no sound. I think the new lecture is similar to Himalayan audio products, but it is different. Facing the anxiety of the middle class more directly, it has made more subdivisions in the use scene, covering topics such as children's education, psychological counseling, gender and emotion. It has built a large-scale commercial supermarket with knowledge service as the main service by using its own years of product and operation experience. However, its question is as obvious as the answer of that year. Without traffic source, head effect and bargaining advantage, how can we face the competition from other countries in the future?

Fourth, the circle is the circle, and knowledge payment is knowledge payment.

Among the products covered by the knowledge payment series, one is a bit special, that is, small circles and expensive circles.

As far as my feelings of opening a small circle recently are concerned, its form is more knowledge output+online? Circle? . Small circle is not a kind of pure knowledge payment. I didn't say that I would definitely hear a specific topic like Zhihu Live after paying, nor did I say that I would definitely see a fixed column every day in the process of getting a year like that after paying.

More like offline? Circle? Online substitution of culture can form a concentric circle with the circle owner as the core. In the traditional circle culture of our country, it is a common bridge to pay for membership, have dinner and make friends. However, there are still a limited number of celebrities who are willing to pay hundreds of thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars a year to join the club without doing anything. Such people may take more offline clubs and other channels.

Among the circle products that provide such super celebrities, there is a product called Guiquan, which seems to be opened by Xue Manzi, Wang Sicong and others, but I doubt the online investment of these people. In other words, people who pay a high price go in, except for pure curiosity, they worship and have nothing to do with paying for knowledge.

Small circles are more suitable for people at the waist and bottom, including from the media. These people may have a certain number of fans, but they are several orders of magnitude behind the level of Kai-Fu Lee and Xue Manzi, and it is impossible to meet the needs of fans by sending photos of food and scenery. They need to provide some knowledge output in the circle to continuously attract fans and interact with them, including the growth of themselves and fans.

The payment mechanism can not only better ensure effective communication with real fans, but also improve the communication efficiency between like-minded fans and precipitate the value of communities and circles. For example, technology from the media gossip and caoz all use small circles to manage their readers. As far as the use of many small and medium-sized V's is concerned, products such as Small Secret Circle have formed an extremely effective supplement to WeChat WeChat official account, which has a limited number of messages sent, and WeChat group, which is easy to overflow out of control.

Fifth, the service ability is a moat.

Judging from the current trend, I think that in the field of knowledge payment, the idea that traffic is king may be outdated and traffic is inaccurate. Even if the user buys your product to taste this time, it may just be a bad review.

At the same time, service ability may be the real barrier. The more vertical the content field, the deeper the service should be provided. For knowledge paid products, the traditional data evaluation dimensions such as PVUV, daily activity, monthly activity and the number of registered users may all be invalid.

This kind of service ability can be to c or to B, for example, obtaining a specialized knowledge planning team, opening this team ability to industry experts who have obtained columns, and building their curriculum system not only ensures the quality of the curriculum, but also makes it difficult for other products to compete with it in a short time.

Because this service ability may be a combination of content ability, product design ability and operation and promotion ability, talents are obviously not enough.

Paying for knowledge is not all about acquiring knowledge. The core is not to sell a book. The real service should start after the books are sold. Even in semi-militarized, industrialized primary and secondary schools in China, attending large classes (without differentiated content output) is only a part of teachers' work. After-class homework correction, students' conversation between classes and targeted remedial classes occupy most of the teachers' time. And these are services.

At the same time, our attitude towards learning has undergone three changes in this era:

-Change from stage learning to lifelong learning: learning will not end just because you graduate from college, but may just be the beginning;

-From discipline (specialty) learning to cross-border learning: the traditional discipline classification is invalid, and to solve the problems encountered in the current work, one must be a versatile person;

-from deep learning to shallow learning: there used to be a feeling that it would take several years to understand a subject. But now, in the face of the more complicated situation in today's society, sometimes? Do you understand? Than? Master? More effective.

Faced with this situation, our existing education industry obviously does not provide supporting industrial services, which gives many opportunities for Internet products. The past traffic thinking has failed. You can't be an enemy of BAT. BAT has provided all basic services, including key mobile payment capabilities.

In the field of knowledge payment, the deeper the service, the thicker the barrier.

Sixth, content becomes the entrance, and the individual is greater than the platform?

Judging from the current situation, we can find that all the fans of Big V-head follow people, such as Li Xiaolai, Wu Xiaobo and Luo Yonghao. Their influence is cross-platform, and no matter what product form, such as pc or app, text, voice or video, it can be easily done. They are walking IP, and their traffic is not the traffic of the platform, but their own traffic.

Their content is the entrance of platform traffic, and their personal influence is greater than the platform influence.

This is my worry about some paid products without native community knowledge. Similar to the answer of that year, celebrities come and go quickly, but Zhihu's native V may be much better, and many people leave but come back.

The field of knowledge payment based on income looks beautiful, and the competition in the future may be cruel. Similar to the competition of long video website Youku Tudou Iqiyi, the traffic you buy and the copyright you buy, users have never been sticky to you. Users follow the series, watch it wherever it starts, and broadcast it alone. This is typical of following the content.

As for the team that provides you with content, you can either be famous, make money or earn fans. As a platform, you should provide at least one thing.

Finally, I want to ask a question: If the middle class in China is not anxious, can the knowledge payment model still work?

Oh, maybe if you weren't anxious, there wouldn't be so many people starting businesses.

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