Is it still worth doing new media now?

I often encounter this situation: many friends add me on WeChat , and the first thing they ask is, "How can I enter this industry without any foundation now?" Or: How should I get started in this industry if I don’t have any foundation? What industry am I in? How can I do well in my own media ?

Regarding this question, I will give a unified answer today, hoping it will be helpful to everyone. Of course, I hope to write comprehensively enough to cover as many types as possible.

First point: You are never late.

The second point of view: If you feel that so much time has passed, is there still a chance if you come in again? Then don’t do it. If you have this mentality, you will have no chance.

The third point of view: The best way is to find a ready-made course and participate in it to learn.

The fourth point of view: If you don’t have a complete business model , don’t come in, you definitely won’t be able to stand the loneliness.

The fifth point of view: Is it better to use a public account or other platforms?

The sixth point of view: Is any industry suitable for new media ?

These questions are the ones that people have asked me most frequently in recent years. After reading this article, everyone should have a general idea. If you still don’t have an idea, you can only come to the practical camp to find me.

Let’s start with the sixth point.

Is any industry suitable for new media?

No, there are still many industries that are not suitable for new media. If you are a sales-oriented person targeting B-side enterprises, it is often not suitable. New media can only serve as a place for your brand image and will not actually bring you more benefits. If you invest a lot of time and manpower to work in this field, generally speaking the input-output ratio is not high.

If you are a single-product sales company, creating an account to sell products will not have a high input-output ratio. In 2015, there were not many people selling products on WeChat, and micro-business was also at its peak of development. At that time, if you have a single product, it is a good choice to do WeChat business, Youzan Mall, or develop a mall yourself.

But now it is very difficult to build a single product mall by yourself. First of all, there are many platforms now, whether it is Daily Tao, Beidian or Yunji, these are aggregation type platforms, and your single product is completely uncompetitive with these platforms. It’s hard to do it again.

Creating an expert IP is one way, but it costs time, manpower and financial resources. If you don’t have a deep understanding of this field, you wouldn’t dare to do it. Unless the business owner himself has an unwavering belief in this direction, he can continue to do so.

If you choose this direction, you must be prepared to maintain it for at least half a year. Maybe in the next six months, this IP will not bring you any economic benefits. If a business owner does not have firm confidence in this direction, normally the business will be withdrawn within half a year or a year. There is a lot of pressure on managers. But I tell you, after half a year or a year, you will see the light.

Believe that what I said above is true. I have been doing new media operation and consulting work for companies offline since 2012. There are many such companies. This is a common situation.

Of course, this is based on the premise that you have a certain amount of experience. If not, it will be very difficult for you to do it well.

Therefore, the selection of accounts, the selection of types, and the setting of new media business models are a science. This is why I can work as a new media consultant and agent. These are not areas that you can understand just by looking at a few cases.

The cases you have seen may not be as many as the ones I have handled in recent years. Of course, I have never talked about this before, and I always feel that it is the same as those that show off wealth. So it’s better to keep a low profile. I was just talking about this topic, it just happened to be brought up.

Is it a good time to create a public account now? Or other platforms?

This question involves a lot of issues. First, you should choose a platform based on your personal situation. I will talk about a few directions below. If I haven't mentioned them, I will supplement them later based on the situation.

The first category: individuals who make a little money just by earning some advertising fees, which are subsidized by the platform.

There are actually quite a lot of choices in this direction. You can work on a public account or other platforms. Maybe you will say, editor, what you said is nonsense, so let me analyze it for you.

If you don’t have so many ideas and just want to create a public account for movie interpretation, of course you need to have attention and fans, and the best way is to get the latest movie resources.

At this time, you can create a WeChat public account . All new torrents, videos, file names, movie stickers, and watermarks you can get can be marked with the name of your public account. Set the reason for following your official account, and then you can publish your content in the official account. Publish content on other platforms simultaneously.

Of course, if you don’t want to write original film reviews, and feel that this type of work is too difficult, you might want to write some emotional or gossip content.

For this kind of positioning, you’d better not come to the WeChat public account. Why? Look, many people are still playing it! Look how low the content is.

Yes, a lot of people are playing it, because the advertising revenue is pretty good, and the Black Five category is still playable, and of course there are still a lot of people playing it.

But you definitely don’t know that the cost of using this type of public account is already very high. Most of those who are still using it have either completed the initial accumulation in the early stage and guide fans to each other, or use a main account to do Guangdiantong delivery and then use small accounts to guide. This will lower the cost per fan.

If you don’t have funds, a complete monetization model, and access to a complete industrial chain, you normally won’t be able to play in the WeChat public account system.

So where would be the best place for you to go?

If you look at the account transaction situation on many platforms currently, you will find that the best is still the WeChat official account, with the highest price per fan. Those who tell you that official accounts are not worth having will tell you to work hard on Douyin accounts and don’t need to do anything else! I don't even know the situation myself. It would be strange if you could succeed if you listened to them.

You might argue that what others say is wrong, but what you say is right? First go to a5 webmaster network, they have a new media account trading section. Check the account with the largest volume on the platform, as well as the account with the highest transaction price per follower.

As shown in the figure below, the overall a5 site has a separate large navigation bar for WeChat public accounts, followed by Weibo, Toutiao , Douyin, Kuaishou , Baijia, QQ public accounts , and other public accounts. Basically, the numbers that can be judged to be valuable are currently among these.

The situation can be roughly seen from the screenshots above. The more valuable it is, the more money the accounts on these platforms can make. There is a certain connection between making money and value price.

Look, an old WeChat public account with messages and rewards can be sold for 2,000 yuan. Isn’t it worth running a public account? Of course, these are the overall directions.

You can see that in addition to official accounts, the price of QQ official accounts is also very high, which is higher than the prices of Toutiao, Douyin, etc. with the same number of fans. This is because the subsidies for QQ official accounts are still very large. If you create content, you should not enter the QQ official account. If you just want to make money from advertising fees, you must enter the QQ official account.

So according to this statement, other accounts have no value? Tik Tok is garbage? Who says that all junk accounts can be sold for money? Of course it is valuable.

I asked our intern girl to create a few Tik Tok accounts. In half a year, the accounts have reached over 1 million followers. They have posted more than a few advertisements and have even attracted followers several times. This is a case of weak monetization.

A case with stronger monetization capabilities was one they did for a client, using short videos . The account their team had run for several years only had tens of thousands of followers, and it helped bring in a dozen customers every month. They asked me to help with planning a month ago. It has been a month since then, and not long after the new strategy was implemented, the results are better than those of the previous account which had been in operation for a year. 6,000 yuan per customer, which means hundreds of thousands of yuan in a single month.

He came to me a few days ago and told me that all employees were going to fully implement my previous strategy. If we implement all the previous strategies, it will be easy to break 10 million this year.

So there is no definite answer to this question. Different accounts and platform strategies are all different depending on each person’s situation.

If you don’t have a complete business model, don’t come in, you definitely won’t be able to stand the loneliness.

Here are some suggestions for all the friends who want to enter this field. I have been working in this field since 2012, and I played these with the early players. There were 20 people in a group at that time, and I am the only one who is still doing it now. Either the results could not be seen for a while, or the platform rules kept changing and the platform could not keep up with the changes. In the end, none of them persisted.

I was chatting with my friends these days and we talked about this issue. This is also a big problem. You can write articles, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have business planning skills, and having business planning skills doesn’t necessarily mean you have writing and operation skills. And so on.

Unless you treat writing as a hobby and do it as a hobby from the beginning, not many people can stick to it. Even if you persist and have a lot of fans, your commercial capabilities are very limited.

A friend came to me before. He entered this industry accidentally and had 300,000 followers in a few years. Accounts of the same level had already exceeded one million, but he could only hover around 800,000 a year. He asked me to help him with monetization planning.

So this problem will be encountered by many people. Either you have a friend who is an expert to help you plan, or you think about the feasibility yourself. Otherwise, it is really not recommended to come in casually, it will be difficult to stick to it.

I wrote about the simplest model a few years ago, which is to create a pseudo-original genre and simply make money from advertising fees. This has always been the mainstream way of monetization. It is mainstream not because of its great monetization ability, but because the threshold is very low. Anyone can do it. The client pays for advertising, and you can get the money as soon as you publish the article.

Even if they cannot receive advertising from the client, this type of platform can still earn advertising fees from the platform. As advertisers, this type of platform pays advertising fees to content creators on their platform for advertising exposure. This is the mainstream traffic business.

Enough friends have read this article, so I will not repeat it here. You can look back on your own.

Of course, the advertising model is also a business model. The reason why many people are willing to talk about this type is because the threshold is low enough. Simple enough.

If you feel that so much time has passed, is there still a chance if you come in again? Then don’t do it. If you have this mentality, you will have no chance.

Of course, this refers to the many people who have always been skeptical, thinking that new media is not good and that it is too late now. This kind of people should just stop watching. This one isn't for you.

Since I entered this industry in 2012, I have heard this voice every year. Every year, some people enter and some leave. Some people gain and some people lose.

It is the same with any business. There is no guarantee that you will make money when you invest in something. As long as it is a business, there will always be gains and losses. If someone does it for friends, they will lose money. So if you ask 100 people this question, they will give you different results.

Some people tell you that this is a pitfall. They have been doing this for a year and have not made a penny, and have wasted a lot of time on it.

Some people will tell you that, generally speaking, they only earn tens of thousands of dollars a year from advertising fees, which is just enough pocket money. That's how you do it.

If you listen to the above two types of advice, it is actually the same as doing business. It is the same logic as asking those who have failed in opening a store or who cannot make any money how to make money. So be sure to learn from successful people. Reduce the noise that could be the very thing that's distracting you from taking action.

At the beginning of this year, someone said: Those who still say that Douyin traffic is useful have never used Douyin!

It felt so reasonable at the time, and it was indeed true. The value of Douyin traffic is not that high, and it can be evaluated from the transaction price of Douyin accounts above. If it had that much value, the transaction price would probably not be at the current level.

My final evaluation of this topic is nonsense. I always think that what I see is the whole picture, but in fact, it is just a joke in the eyes of others.

Why do I say this? Some time ago at the beginning of the year, someone shared a case in which TikTok was used to promote an APP. By using an innovative idea, the number of users exploded by hundreds of thousands in just a few days.

I shared this case in the practical camp at that time. This is the final effect of traffic that is useless in the eyes of some people.

Also, a young girl's account has almost 10 million followers in just two months, even though many people are saying that the bonus period of Douyin has passed.

You may say, editor, didn’t you say 10 million? How come it's only 4 million? This is the screenshot I took before. It has already reached 8 million now. I just didn't take the latest screenshot because the data will be refreshed again in a few months. The current data are only temporary reference values.

It’s still my previous point of view, during the bonus period, as long as you come in, you can attract fans and make money if you have business acumen, but after that time, it will return to the essence of business, and you still have to rely on content and business planning capabilities. Techniques only play a small part.

You see, those people who are attracting attention on Tik Tok are all using videos of beautiful women to attract traffic . Why don’t you create good content to attract traffic?

Why do many friends add me and ask if I am there? Are you busy? The question had no background whatsoever, it just asked me directly whether I could do it and how to do it, and I gave a uniform answer. Why do I ask some of these questions at the beginning but just stop asking later? A big part of the reason is that, really, it’s not something I can answer clearly in just a few words.

I will add other issues next time. If you have any questions, or contact me for cooperation. Add my personal WeChat and explain the problem more clearly. I hope the above helps you.

Source: Liuye Notes