Zhihu’s road to commercial monetization!

From launching the live streaming function to the recent "Little Blue Star", Zhihu has been constantly trying different commercial monetization paths. The author of this article sorted out and analyzed Zhihu’s attempts in the commercialization process and shared them with everyone.

On the eve of Double 11, Zhihu App launched a new “Little Blue Star Recommendation List”. The Little Blue Star Recommendation List is a "good things list" from Zhihu ratings, which sorts the products from high to low according to the ratings of Zhihu users.

Currently, the Little Blue Star Recommendation List covers products in the fields of digital, fashion, etc., which are subdivided into 30+ category lists such as mobile phones, headphones, lipsticks, facial masks, etc., 400+ listed products on sale, and 750,000+ evaluation data. Users can gain access to the list by searching for “Little Blue Star” in the Zhihu App.

Users can click "recommend" or "not recommend" on the product topic page to complete their evaluation. The background will summarize the user's selection results and calculate them through algorithms, and finally present them to the public in the form of a list.

From the name, “Little Blue Star” is easily reminiscent of Xiaohongshu. Xiaohongshu is known as a "powerful grass-planting machine", especially in the fields of beauty and fashion. However, the design style of Xiaohongshu's app is younger and more fashionable, and it has attracted a large number of post-95 girls who love exquisite life. It seems to be more suitable for recommending beauty and fashion products.

Zhihu itself is more rational and scientific, and it gathers many highly educated users who have a strong desire for knowledge. From the perspective of consumption scenarios, Little Blue Star seems to be more suitable for "scientific planting", especially for digital products that require comparison of a large number of indicators.

Zhihu has been around for 8 years since its birth in 2011. It can be seen that Zhihu has taken another step towards the e-commerce field on the road to commercialization.

At present, Zhihu’s revenue mainly comes from two aspects: Yanxuan membership and commercial advertising. Among them, more than 90% of Zhihu's revenue comes from advertising, and the remaining 10% comes from paid knowledge services (membership).

Zhihu is obviously not satisfied with this and has made many other attempts in the commercialization process.

01 Salt Club

In 2014, Zhihu held the first Salt Club and began to explore commercialization. Here, Zhihu users go from online to offline and communicate face to face with knowledge elites in various fields and industries.

Since then, Salt Club has become the annual offline exchange conference of Zhihu platform. From a niche activity that only Zhihu users knew about and participated in, it has gradually grown into an industry event for talent exchange in various fields such as culture, technology, and economy; from focusing on award ceremonies to the addition of knowledge speeches, the content of Yan Club's activities has gradually become richer.

Over the years, tickets to the Salt Club, priced at 288 yuan, have been hard to come by. However, the annual Salt Club serves more as a way to establish a brand image, and it is difficult for it to become a stable source of income for Zhihu throughout the year.

02 Worth it

On April 1, 2016 (yes, April Fools’ Day), Zhihu launched a new feature called “Zhihu”. After users follow the Zhihu public account, they can share their coded information in WeChat Moments, but others must pay to see it. If you are satisfied after paying, the income will go to the original author; if you are not satisfied, it will go to Zhihu officials.

However, knowledge payment is a one-way, closed knowledge flow process. Individuals pay to ask questions to knowledge owners, and the knowledge owners answer the questions. There is no interaction between the two parties or participation of others in the discussion. This kind of superficial paid Q&A is unlikely to motivate users to pay continuously and will also be difficult to generate long-term revenue.

03 Zhihu Live

In May 2016, Zhihu Live was officially launched. This is a real-time question-and-answer interactive product launched by Zhihu. If Zhihu solves the "one-to-one question and answer" scenario, then Zhihu Live targets the "one-to-many sharing" scenario.

The answerer can create a Live, which will appear in the news feed of followers. After the user clicks and pays the ticket price (set by the answerer), he or she can enter the communication group and interact instantly through voice to improve the efficiency of information exchange.

Zhihu Live achieved good results as soon as it was launched, hosting nearly 3,000 live events within a year. The average hourly wage of each lecturer reached more than 11,000 yuan, and the repurchase rate reached 34%. However, it is difficult for Zhihu Live to screen excellent speakers and high-quality content.

For example, if I am interested in a topic, how can I judge whether a speaker is reliable; if there are 10 lecturers discussing the same topic, how can I judge which lecturer’s content is more suitable for me.

How should Zhihu build a standard operating mechanism to screen out high-quality content and recommend it to users? If the quality and user experience in this process cannot be guaranteed, users may feel that they are being "charged an IQ tax" or "scammed", which will ultimately harm the community content ecology.

04 Recommended Products

In September 2019, Zhihu launched an internal test of “Good Product Recommendations”, which was another attempt at commercialization based on Zhihu’s cooperation with JD.com.

Question answerers can insert product cards in their answers to direct traffic to JD products. If the user purchases the product, the question answerer can obtain corresponding benefits.

Authors participating in the "Good Product Recommendation" answer section cannot post anonymously. The content of each article must not be less than 200 words. A maximum of 10 product cards may be inserted in each article, and a maximum of one content containing a product card may be published per day.

Despite this, "good product recommendations" is essentially a traffic business. By diverting content to other e-commerce platforms, you are ultimately helping others.

05 Zhihu Live

In October 2019, Zhihu's live broadcast function was officially launched. Zhihu can’t wait to catch up with the live streaming trend. In live broadcast scenarios, users can share knowledge, experience and insights more easily and directly, engage in real-time discussions and exchanges, and get professional answers from the host.

In Zhihu's live broadcast room, users can interact with the host through various functions such as "comment barrage", "questioning questions", and "conversation". The anchor gains support and recognition from users and thus obtains corresponding benefits. However, Zhihu user "Dajiang" expressed his pessimism after watching five Zhihu live broadcasts.

Zhihu live broadcast is only available on mobile phones, and not many people give gifts in the live broadcast room. In one live broadcast, 60 people gave gifts, and 50 people received free gifts. Without the crazy rewards from Douyin and Kuaishou live broadcasts, Zhihu’s path to commercialization will probably be questioned again.

at last

On August 12 this year, Zhihu completed the largest Series F financing in its history, with a total amount of US$434 million. The round was led by Kuaishou, followed by Baidu, and existing investors such as Tencent and Today Capital continued to invest.

With the support of capital, Zhihu is accelerating its pace towards commercialization. From the initial offline gathering "Yan Club", to the online knowledge payment "Zhihu", "Zhihu Live" and "Zhihu Live", to the "Goods Recommendation" in the e-commerce field and today's "Little Blue Star Recommendation List", Zhihu has been working hard to achieve monetization.

How can Zhihu, which has always prided itself on its niche nature and depth of knowledge, move towards popular commercialization? We hope that Zhihu can find a better balance between "content depth" and "monetization breadth" .

Author: Vink

Source: Ding'er Little Bell