How to monetize TikTok?

Recently, Tik Tok has become a battleground for MCN (Multi-Channel Network). The new concept of MCN is an imported product. It was born on the foreign video website Youtube. It is a multi-channel network product form that brings together high-quality PGC or UGC of different types and contents under the platform, and provides content creators with operation , business, marketing and other services in a platform-based operation model to help PGC or UGC monetize. With the strong support of capital, we can ensure the continuous output of content and ultimately achieve stable commercial returns.

The most talked-about case is Maker Studios. In 2014, Disney bought Maker Studios, one of the largest content producers on YouTube with approximately 400 million subscribers, for US$500 million, which was considered a huge success for the MCN content maker model.

After spreading to China, MCN made some localized improvements. For example, abroad, MCN plays the role of an agency, helping its influencers to connect with advertising and commercial collaborations; in China, MCN is more required to have the ability to continuously produce high-quality content.

2017 was the year when MCN exploded. Short videos were very popular that year and occupied an important position in the Internet content industry. The short video MCN industry is experiencing rapid development in 2017. Compared with 2016, the number of institutions has increased by 400%, and is expected to reach 4,700 in 2019. The amount of financing for short video MCN agencies alone has exceeded 280 million yuan. For a while, MCN was very popular.

But the good times didn’t last long. After the traffic dividend period of each platform, the monetization problem of MCN has become a problem. In addition, each platform has fought a resource war and forced MCN organizations to take sides. Not only that, whether the content can be continuously produced with high quality and whether top Internet celebrities can be continuously introduced have become the real problems that need to be urgently solved on the road to moving forward for MCN.

Just when the industry was wondering whether MCN would leave a mess, Douyin, which emerged at the beginning of the year, became the white knight that saved MCN from the dire straits. Douyin, a platform with huge traffic dividends and where the top position has not yet been determined, provides MCNs with new opportunities to compete fairly and grab traffic dividends.

1. Which type of people are suitable for short video marketing ?

Before talking about the monetization methods of Tik Tok, let me first talk about who is suitable for attracting traffic in this type of short video.

The first category: beautiful women and handsome men with good looks. The second category: talented creative people. The third category: original works with true feelings.

Douyin is essentially a product that upgrades short video consumption, that is, a product that is about "beauty". So it is not difficult to understand why there are so many beautiful girls and handsome guys in the short videos on Toutiao, whether it is Douyin or Huoshan Video .

But for the first type of people, they prefer to show themselves in short videos, thereby gaining attention and eventually becoming internet celebrities. Their profit-making methods generally rely on taking advertisements.

As for the second type, there are actually not so many of them on short videos, because this type of people may do whatever it takes to make some extraordinary videos for the sake of creativity and to attract attention. Therefore, it may be difficult for this type of people to make a profit on Douyin. Of course, if it is something beautiful or creative, that’s another story.

The third category is ordinary videos shot by relatively ordinary people. This type of video will not be recommended too many times, but it is relatively more likely to be recognized. Occasionally some videos will break out.

Therefore, generally speaking, it is better for e-commerce and WeChat merchants to choose the third category. The first type of people come to see beautiful women and handsome men, and some even want to see if there is any exposure. The second type, you don’t have that many creative ideas. Therefore, the third option is the most suitable and realistic one for you.

2. Douyin’s monetization methods

In addition to how to get likes and increase followers on Douyin, one of the most concerned issues is: how to monetize through Douyin?

Let's get straight to the point. As far as I know, there are currently several ways to monetize Douyin accounts:

1. Accept advertisements

Tik Tok influencers can conduct brand co-marketing through various clever ways such as video stickers, sponsored voice-overs, image endorsements, interactive stickers, and launching challenges.

For example, Linda Ruirui, a TikTok influencer with 400,000 fans, recently did a soft placement for a mobile phone brand by performing the "Sakura Hand Gesture Dance" in a video, and the video received 17,000 likes. Although it is an advertising marketing, it uses the gesture dance gameplay that is popular on Tik Tok, which makes it look much more acceptable.

The average Tik Tok fan is 3 cents per fan. For example, a celebrity with over 5 million fans can earn millions for each advertisement. He doesn’t have to live as hard as a star and can just be himself and still make so much money. How great is that?

2. Do e-commerce

Douyin short videos have really made many products popular, such as Peppa Pig watches, rabbit ears, prank overturned cups, etc.

There are also many clothing, beauty and other products that will use Douyin to attract traffic to their stores, and Douyin has also opened the function of direct access to Taobao for some Douyin influencers.

Around March 26, Douyin began to display sales links linked to Taobao, and shopping cart buttons appeared on the pages of several Douyin accounts with over one million followers. When clicked, product recommendation information appeared, directly linking to Taobao.

For example, the Wild Food Guy sold customized beef sauce through the Douyin shopping cart function, with the maximum daily turnover reaching more than 70,000 - on that day, the Wild Food Guy posted a video of instant noodles with sauerkraut beef sauce.

3. Divert traffic to other platforms

Although some Douyin accounts cannot make money on Douyin, they can make profits outside of Douyin.

Another typical case is the “Expression Rabbit” who gained 1.3 million followers on a public account in two days through Douyin.

The operator saw some very popular emoji videos on Douyin, and many people asked for emojis in the comment section. They posted a video on TikTok showing how to search and follow this public account and get TikTok's popular emojis. According to the operator, this video has been played 13 million times, and the number of followers of the official account increased by 1.3 million in two days, and the number of followers increased to 1.5 million in one week.

4. Selling fans and accounts

Selling fans is the simplest way to monetize. When attracting traffic, pay attention to posting videos with corresponding attributes. Take targeted fans as an example, there are mom fans, skin care fans, weight loss fans, education fans, etc.

In some industries, a precise fan costs 30 to 80 yuan and people are vying for it. Compared with general fans, the unit price is more than ten times higher.

Nowadays, the number of views for a single post of an account can reach hundreds of thousands, and the price of taking an advertisement is tens of thousands, not to mention selling the account.

5. Sell courses

Nowadays, people selling course materials online can be found everywhere. Some resell, some distribute, and some make their own courses to promote .

Currently the most common thing is that micro-course materials and courses from various colleges are being resold. For example: musical instruments, painting, dancing, taekwondo, etc.

6. Personal IP creation

A good IP, whether for a company or an individual, cannot be separated from marketing and promotion. You need to turn your personal IP into a brand and a money-making machine, such as a model, internet celebrity, entertainment industry, original singer, etc. For example, one can successfully enter the entertainment industry by attracting fans through Douyin.

7. Sell services

The essence of business is information asymmetry. Some people are used to using money to buy time, while others use time to exchange for money. When you have studied it thoroughly, making money will be a natural process. In fact, there are many similar ways to make money through knowledge, but many people are not able to realize their talents and do not know how to monetize them. It must be said that the benefits of paying for knowledge have just begun, because learning is a lifelong career for many people. For example: wedding photography, travel customization, etc.

8. Promotion cooperation and sponsorship

Currently, the main monetization model for Douyin accounts is for Douyin influencers to take on advertisements or customize content for brands. Tik Tok influencers can conduct brand co-marketing through various clever ways such as video stickers, sponsored voice-overs, image endorsements, interactive stickers, and launching challenges.

3. Some thoughts on Douyin monetization

At present, the main battlefield of the entire social media is still Weibo. Most of the monetization still comes from Weibo. Tik Tok is a platform for increasing followers, while Weibo is a platform for monetization.

The reasons are: Douyin's algorithm mechanism leads to relatively low fan stickiness; secondly, when following someone on Douyin, people will not deliberately open the "Follow" tag to see what this person is posting, so the traffic value of Douyin is much lower than that of Weibo. He observed that many top celebrities on Douyin would link their Weibo accounts to their Douyin accounts in order to divert traffic and make their fans more sticky.

In addition to the issue of fan value, Douyin's traffic allocation to MCN is currently much lower than that of Weibo. "Toutiao has been wavering between openness and closedness." As for Weibo, the entire commercial environment and its entire MCN gameplay are relatively mature. Weibo subcontracts all of its traffic to a dozen or so core MCNs that are closest to it. These MCNs help them cultivate influencers, manage content, distribute traffic, etc. For MCN, this efficiency is much higher than attracting fans on Douyin by themselves.

In mid-July this year, Douyin announced the launch of the Star Map platform, an online advertising order-taking platform that is mainly used to match the advertising cooperation needs between advertisers and influencers, and Douyin then takes a certain percentage of commission from it.

He mentioned that not only TikTok wants to do this, but all platforms want to do it. Weibo has done this before, and WeChat even more so, and they all want to become this kind of industrialized order-taking platform. But the core problem is that all the advertisements in short videos are native advertisements , and native advertisements cannot be directly ordered. They require communication, such as how to implant the content and what effect you want to achieve after the implantation. If you directly accept hard advertising, oral broadcast or exposure on the platform, first of all, the platform itself will not be able to bear it and it will greatly harm the users. Secondly, the conversion effect will not be good.

If MCN cannot survive on Douyin, there is no possibility of transferring it to Weibo. After all, the entire Weibo system is now relatively stable, and you can basically not make much money on Weibo. This environment urges MCN to seek a way out more actively.

In fact, the advantage of celebrity e-commerce lies in “personalization”, and personalized traffic means high stickiness and high conversion. Onion Video has more than 60 internet celebrity teams. They rely on their own personalized labels through major platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu to maintain fans' purchasing stickiness.

Relying on the overall ecological environment of the new studio, in the future, artist management, program sponsorship, original ecological advertising customization, etc. are the directions they want to try. In addition, they have signed cooperation agreements with major record companies and are exploring the possibility of MVs on TikTok, which is also one of the directions they are optimistic about.

The divine songs on Tik Tok are so brainwashing that their dissemination efficiency is much higher than that of a record company releasing an album to hit the charts. This is a direction worth exploring!

Comments:

Compared with Douyin's commercial monetization, some media people pay more attention to Douyin's brand value. In the short term, the value of Douyin is mainly brand exposure rather than commercial value. "However, Douyin currently has a large number of users, so its future commercial value is worth continuing to pay attention to."

However, whether TikTok is just a flash in the pan remains to be seen by time. However, in the competition among similar video software, Douyin, which has attracted a large number of young people in first- and second-tier cities, has the upper hand at least in terms of commercial value.

Source: Ma Haixiang