The entire process of traffic monetization, 7 key links!

Paul Gram said: The essence of entrepreneurship is growth, and this also applies to products.

Product growth, ultimately, is the growth in the number of users and revenue. A product can only maximize its value when more and more people use it more and more frequently; only by obtaining more revenue can it have resources to invest in continuous iteration, thus establishing a positive cycle, serving more users and creating greater value.

This is a huge topic, and today we will talk about the issue that everyone is most interested in: “revenue growth”.

What is the process of generating cash flow for an Internet project?

First, developers will invest manpower, time, and server resources to make a product that is useful to users. For example: a website that can search for online information, a tool that can chat with friends, will naturally attract a certain number of users because of its ease of use. Through operations and word-of-mouth, the number of users visiting the product will gradually increase.

At this time, we can recommend suitable products on the interface, just like when we see Starbucks while waiting for a flight at the airport, and the most basic transaction takes place. Developers certainly hope for more transactions like this, so they will continue to optimize transaction details and expand product categories to generate more revenue. This is the whole process of generating cash flow.

See how simple it is? So, what are the key links in the entire process of traffic monetization?

1. Scene Construction

Having products and traffic does not mean that revenue will come naturally.

For example: Moji Weather is a product with a DAU of over 100 million, which is a daily visit volume that most developers envy. There are only a handful of products that can reach this level of daily visits. However, the value of a single flow of traffic from Moji is far lower than that of similar products, because after users log in to Moji Weather and visit it, it is difficult to find a scenario that can create a transaction again.

The scene is the environment that can stimulate user needs. Liang Ning said: "Only scenes that can trigger user emotions are the real traffic entrances", and he deeply agrees with this.

How to build a scene?

The "three-stage rocket method" is a classic strategy. Sogou Input Method is a tool product with a large number of daily visits, but due to display limitations, it cannot support a good monetization scenario. Therefore, by importing the browser , the traffic can be deposited on the browser, so that whether it is built-in search or jumping to the URL navigation page, the traffic can be better utilized.

The transfer of Luoji Siwei from WeChat public account to Duode is also a good example. WeChat official accounts can attract customers, but the scenarios are very limited. To provide better services, other tools are needed, so Dedao was launched to achieve this function. It not only provides better services to users and enriches the scenarios for user login, but also greatly increases the possibility of monetization.

2. Category Selection

When choosing traffic import, specifically for this scenario, what kind of products do I need to import?

This choice is of great significance.

• First, users have different preferences for specific products in specific scenarios;
• Secondly, the revenue generated by different products also varies greatly. “The selection of top categories is a key factor affecting monetization efficiency.”

A typical case is: Momo . Momo's commercialization exploration encountered many pitfalls. When it first went public, it wanted to spend a lot of effort on marketing advertisements and games , but later found that the traffic did not match and the growth was slow. Finally, it chose live streaming , which greatly improved its revenue growth. Another photo social product, IN, was not so lucky. Although its DAU was not low, it had not found a suitable category and its traffic had not generated good revenue.

A company's growth is generally due to strong revenue from its main products, but the market will always encounter a balance between supply and demand. At this time, it is necessary to expand product categories.

We can expand our products horizontally. For example: Apple's expansion from IP OD to iPhone and iPad; for example: Starbucks' expansion from coffee to Frappuccino, bottled coffee and VIA series instant coffee, all of which belong to horizontal category expansion before the growth curve of the original product slowed down, constantly breaking through the growth boundaries of a certain product itself.

From this perspective, Toutiao follows the same logic in creating Volcano Video and Douyin .

The other type is vertical expansion. For example: Tencent went from being an agent to making its own games; Baidu went from helping video websites to divert traffic to iQiyi , which are all part of moving upstream in the industrial chain. In the past, we only provided channel value by helping products find users, but now we also provide products. In this way, we can go deeper into the industrial chain, gain greater voice and create greater value.

3. Improvement of conversion

Once the scenario and product are determined, the user's purchasing path has been basically determined. The next step is to make micro conversions. How can we maximize a user's purchase of a certain product in a certain scenario? This requires dividing the steps and processes into different steps to improve the conversion at each step.

For example: Once a course has been positioned, the next thing to think about is how to sell this course better? That requires thinking through every possible means to run the event.

At the same time, the repurchase rate of products is also a topic worthy of discussion. This involves the issue of trust in the product and the issue of product recommendation, that is, the ability to get users who have bought products in the store to buy again.

Many people think that projects on the Internet are empty and are just burning money. In fact, from a long-term perspective, this is a very real thing. It is nothing more than a process of continuously providing value, gaining profits, providing more value, and gaining more profits. It’s just that the value is changing because of the different product forms.

Creating unique value is never easy. In "Ten Years and Twenty People", when talking about the battle in 2008 when JD.com started to develop all categories and build a logistics system, Wu Xiaobo asked Liu Qiangdong why logistics was so difficult at that time. Liu Qiangdong said:

If you don't do the important and difficult things, then where is the value of your contribution?

This is still of reference value for our product decisions today.

7 key steps to create a competitive product. This article is the final in a series on building a competitive product.

Good products start with demand and grow with growth. Looking back at the entire product creation process, we started from the analysis and insight of needs and studied user segmentation in order to find out what users really need. In order to avoid competition and move forward with ease, we need to find accurate product positioning. Next, we design products around user experience . Because the environment and competitors are changing, we need to continuously iterate our products.

All of these will ultimately be reflected in product growth. Only by continuously acquiring users and earning revenue can we keep the wheel of evolution turning.

7 key steps to create a competitive product. This article is the final in a series on building a competitive product.

The author of this article @许晋诚 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games