Solid info! A brief analysis of the three major monetization methods of the community

We all know that the fan economy has arrived. Many friends have gathered a lot of fans who like their own columns through short videos , and have also begun to establish communities to manage them. But does the community just end there? Today

I would like to share with you some content related to community monetization and tell you how to use the communities we have to monetize and make profits.

1. Community Economy

Before I explain to you how to use the community to help you make money, let me first share with you what community economy is. Understanding community economics can help us better utilize the community to help us make profits. Let me explain to you what community economy is from three aspects.

1. What are communities and categories?

When talking about communities, most people probably think of WeChat communities. In fact, I have briefly mentioned to you in my previous article introducing the basic knowledge of communities that a community is a group that brings together people with the same interests and hobbies . Any community that meets this characteristic can be said to be a community. For example, online QQ groups of fellow townsmen, some forums, and some BBSes that gather friends with the same interests and hobbies are all online communities. In fact, there are many offline communities, such as fitness clubs, which are groups that gather fitness enthusiasts together. There are also many roller skating clubs, which are also communities, but in different forms, one is online and the other is offline.

Communities have many attributes, such as knowledge communities, interest communities, and some entertainment communities.

2. What is community economy?

Community economy refers to the Internet era, in which a group of users with common interests, cognitions, and values ​​interact, communicate, collaborate, and infect each other to generate certain value. With interaction there will be social interaction , and with social people there will be a market. They build emotional trust, which leads to consumption.

3. How to do community economy?

I have summarized two points: one is to gather fans and cultivate potential users; the second is to provide value and shape the community brand.

(1) Cultivate potential users

If you want to engage in community economy, first you need to have your own fan users, tap into potential fans and convert them into your loyal users. Let’s take Xiaomi as an example. In the early stages, Xiaomi attracted users to its communities, such as QQ groups and forums. These users were actually the predecessors of Mi fans. We learned about their needs from the community, optimized our products to make users feel involved, and then marketed our Mi Noodles business to help them grow rapidly.

Therefore, if you want to gather fan users, you must first pay enough attention to your users, constantly interact with them, collect their opinions, provide value to those users who are willing to try your products, and slowly convert them into your fan users, forming sticky consumption.

(2) Providing value and shaping community brands

After you have fans, you need to consider the community itself and how to build a brand of your own and keep it spreading. In fact, in the process of gathering fans, your brand has gradually been formed, but it does not have such a strong influence yet. So how can we spread the word and convert more users into paying users ?

We need to provide them with value, continuously output, and build trust between each other. If you set up a succulent cultivation community, you can actively share with them what you know about succulent cultivation, such as what kind of cultivation method can make succulents grow fuller, and share some succulent preferences with users who have just started to cultivate succulents. Through these small actions, users will gradually develop trust in you, believing that you can really help them, and everyone will benefit mutually. Old users attract new users for you, such as introductions from friends, and new users are gradually attracted to your succulent brand. In this way, your succulent breeding brand is actually developed slowly and unintentionally.

In addition, there is a program called "Ten O'clock Reading" which pushes an article to everyone at ten o'clock every day. This meets the needs of some users who do not want to read but still want to read the content of the article. Reading the words aloud solves this problem. An article is pushed out every night at 10 o'clock and everyone can read it for free. The time is fixed, and the name of "Ten O'clock Reading" is very unique. It means reading books instead of reading books, which distinguishes its brand from other book-related content and forms differentiation. This not only gathers book-loving fan users, but also creates its own exclusive brand in the process of being recognized by users.

The community I created before, Short Video Heroes Gathering, was previously named Short Video Elite Entrepreneurship Community. It gave people the feeling of being a WeChat group and could not form its own brand. Later, it was renamed Short Video Heroes Gathering, so that it looked like a collection of short video enthusiasts. Our name is Heroes Gathering, which is easier to form a brand. For example, Fan Deng Reading Club adds "Fan Deng" in front of the name of the reading club, so that people will talk about what Fan Deng Reading Club is like, which is conducive to the promotion of the Fan Deng brand.

When building a brand, you need to be more specific and create differentiation . In order to form a fan economy, you first need to have your own fans. The second is to have your own brand and build it into a brand recognized by users. Or your brand must have real valuable content, or be relatively distinctive and easy for users to remember.

Once we have met the conditions for community economy, we can use the community to realize monetization. So what are the ways to monetize the community?

2. Community monetization methods

Regarding community monetization methods, we have summarized three aspects for you based on our experience: community self-money , community product monetization and cooperative monetization . Let me explain them in detail below.

1. Community monetization

(1) Setting thresholds

In fact, everyone should have a certain understanding of setting thresholds. You continue to provide value to your friends in the community. The purpose of providing value is to attract more loyal users. If you want to distinguish the authenticity of users and attract more valuable users, you need to set up thresholds . Therefore, when you have a certain base of fans, you need to screen them. One way to screen users is to pay. You can select some more loyal users from the perspective of whether they are willing to pay, continue to build their stickiness, and output content.

(2) Community service monetization

If you have established a community full of investors , if people who are not in the group want to get the resources of these investors , they may need to pay a certain fee to enter. These communities may have different lengths of existence, different numbers of investors, and different related resources. Some users may need these investor resources and pay to join the group. The investor resources in the community are actually a kind of service of the community.

2. Product Monetization

Product realization is divided into two parts: direct realization and indirect realization .

(1) Direct monetization

1) Subscribe to the column

The subscription columns of Shidian Reading or Dedao APP are based on their existing community fans to share more in-depth knowledge content with everyone. This part of the content may be more valuable, so it is not open to everyone. If you want to get this content, you need to pay a certain subscription fee, which may be paid monthly or periodically. These contents are particularly valuable and benefit users a lot, which makes users sticky and prompts them to continue paying every month or every issue.

2) Selling courses

Another direct way to monetize is to sell courses in the community . Generally, this type of community will provide classes to everyone within the community. The course format may be annual, or it may be a few classes in a cycle. Course training in different directions is provided to different groups of people, and each cycle requires payment. This direct course sale is also a way to monetize.

The above two situations actually fall into the category of knowledge payment , but the forms of implementation are different.

(2) Indirect monetization

Indirect monetization is formed on the basis of direct monetization, and is divided into content rewards and community-related monetization .

1) Content Reward

Jianshu was initially a UGC content platform, and then gradually developed many communities of its own, with creators of different content categories joining. Jianshu developed its own APP some time ago and promoted it in the community for users to use. The articles shared in the community through the APP have better visual effects, which gradually makes users stick to the mobile APP. Moreover, there is a recharge and withdrawal function on their APP. Users can only withdraw money when the reward amount reaches 100 yuan. When withdrawing money, Jianshu will charge a 5% fee, thereby realizing monetization through the community.

The content on the Jianshu APP can be generated into long pictures for direct sharing. These long pictures have exquisite backgrounds or beautiful fonts to choose from, but the prerequisite is to recharge or purchase to become a VIP. In fact, this is also a way for the community to indirectly monetize.

2) Community-related monetization

The second indirect monetization method is community-related monetization. If you create a succulent cultivation community, you can not only teach people how to grow succulents, but also sell succulents and even beautiful vases and flower pots directly in the community. Because the fans you have gathered already have certain characteristics, they are all succulent cultivation enthusiasts, so if you sell related products at this time, your chances of success are actually very high.

We mentioned Shidian Reading earlier. Shidian Reading is about books. It recommends books with more connotations or similar to the pushed articles and sells them. This is also a way for the community to monetize.

3. Collaborative Monetization

The last way to monetize is through collaboration. For example, if you are engaged in plant cultivation, clothing matching or video editing, it is rare that there is only one company in the market that provides this kind of content community, so we can cooperate when it comes to knowledge output. For example, if you both offer online courses, you can invite each other’s lecturers to give lectures and earn a share of the profits. At the same time, the lecturer will bring new traffic during the lecture, and users may be attracted by your own courses, thus achieving conversion.

If your community is doing well, other communities may invite you to be a lecturer in offline activities to share and get a certain share of the sharing fee. In addition, when you are conducting offline activities, you can sell tickets directly.

That’s all I have to say about community monetization today. With the rapid development of the fan economy, people are gradually paying more attention to community operations . Friends who have other ideas are also welcome to leave a message at the bottom of the article to communicate and learn together.

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

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