3 cents for a Tik Tok follower? In the age of 15 seconds of fame, how can you monetize through TikTok?

Pop art master Andy Warhol said that everyone can be famous for 15 minutes. And Tik Tok tells us that 15 seconds is enough to become famous.

This video software, which has become extremely popular recently, had an average daily playback volume of over 3 billion a few months ago, and its daily active users peaked at over 60 million during the Spring Festival.

With the influx of high traffic , more and more industries are focusing on this. 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 we know, there are currently several ways to monetize Douyin accounts:

Accept advertisements and have influencers customize content for brands

One fan earns 3 cents, and some videos earn hundreds of thousands

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.

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.

According to a recent report from "Doujiao Entertainment Investment", Douyin has equipped the celebrities on the platform with dedicated editors to manage them. The top celebrities have a role similar to that of an agent to help them connect with commercial cooperation , but the specific profit sharing ratio has not been disclosed. The profit sharing method for celebrities with different fan bases is also different. In addition, some celebrities revealed that many Douyin celebrities live a better life than celebrities.

"For example, celebrities with more than 5 million fans can earn millions of dollars per advertisement. They don't have to live as hard as celebrities. They can be themselves and still make so much money. How great is that."

Market price of Douyin account circulated on the Internet

Regarding the brand’s Douyin marketing, there are currently many Douyin account market quotations leaked on the Internet. For some accounts with millions of fans, the quotation for a 15-second short video is tens of thousands. Bangmei verified this with several Tik Tok influencers and got a relatively consistent answer that the price is quoted at “3 cents per fan”.

According to a millionaire blogger, most Tik Tok influencers have basically reached a consensus on the price. However, the fans here refer to fans within the Tik Tok site alone, excluding fans from other Toutiao products such as Toutiao and Volcano Videos . More importantly, “only real fans would dare to sell it this way.”

However, "clear references are not yet mature," said Liu Fei, founder of Beike Video. He believes that this is also related to the content attributes, tone and tastes of the people behind it. "For example, a purely funny account, with the same number of fans, is definitely not as valuable as an account in a niche field such as technology or dance."

Liu Fei places more emphasis on personalization and segmented fields. He believes that content that focuses on the tones that young people like, such as dance, music, adventure, animation, technology evaluation, etc. , has the greatest commercial value.

However, if a blogger with a relatively mature brand tone joins Douyin, the market price will be different.

According to Miya, the marketing director of Shenyefawu , although Shenye Teacher Xu’s Douyin account has only been in operation for a month, “because Teacher Xu himself is a mature IP, the quote will be dozens of times higher than this (3 cents per follower). Our current Douyin cooperation starts at 100,000, and mainly serves beauty and Internet clients.”

In addition, according to many influencers, the Douyin platform will have a certain degree of traffic restrictions on Douyin videos that contain advertising information, especially videos that directly contain hard advertisements such as brand logos and QR codes.

Compared with these sudden exposures, creative Douyin marketing will be the mainstream in the future, just like the answer tea that was made popular by a Douyin video not long ago. It went from 0 to signing 249 franchise stores in 2 months, and the speed of attracting fans and realizing profits is amazing.

Of course, there are also many brands that simply settle in Douyin and use it as an important distribution channel . It was mentioned at yesterday's Douyin Marketing Summit that the blue V adidas neo, which currently has the most fans on Douyin, has accumulated more than 1.2 million fans in just half a month.

Do e-commerce , go directly to Taobao for one-stop shopping

Open to a small range, the hot item has a daily turnover of 70,000

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.

This move by Douyin has opened up the e-commerce monetization path for Douyin influencers, but currently this function is only open to a small number of Douyin influencers.

Judging from the sales of some known cases, some are not ideal, but there are also some popular cases, such as the food video account "Wild Food Brother" with 2.23 million followers.

According to staff from Dayu, the company that Wild Food Brother signed with, Wild Food Brother sold customized beef sauce through the Douyin shopping cart function, with the maximum daily turnover reaching more than 70,000 - on that day, Wild Food Brother posted a video of instant noodles with sauerkraut beef sauce.

"However, this has something to do with the video quality of Brother Yeshi and the stickiness of his fans. We have also tried the e-commerce functions of other influencers, and the conversion rates are far lower than that of Brother Yeshi." The staff member added.

“Watch and buy” has been on the lips of many video platforms for many years, but few cases have been heard of on a large scale. The reason for this is fundamentally the misalignment of the scenes. If you want to get users who are watching videos for entertainment to start shopping, you need extremely strong persuasive skills. Therefore, the conversion rate of video e-commerce has always been very low, and Douyin is no exception.

However, Toutiao has always been obsessed with e-commerce. From Toutiao's trial of e-commerce to Douyin's connection with Taobao, the exploration has never stopped. After all, for Zhang Yiming , although advertising revenue is growing rapidly, e-commerce is a more imaginative market.

Live broadcast , fans send gifts and sell goods

The fan business behind the sound wave, the live broadcast model of watching and selling

The live broadcast function is currently only open to a small number of experts.

Fans can give Douyin coins to influencers while watching the live broadcast. 6 yuan can buy 42 Douyin coins. The total income of the influencer is the sound wave. The higher the sound wave, the higher the popularity. It’s no different from spending money to buy gifts on other live streaming apps.

In addition to fans giving Douyin coins, experts with special skills can also sell goods directly through live broadcasts or divert traffic to themselves in other ways.

For example, the handicraft expert @囚徒 in the picture above usually films the process of his handicrafts. During the live broadcast, many fans asked in the comment section where they could buy a wooden spoon, where they could buy the tools he used, and whether he had an online store. The young man directly recommended a customer service WeChat account during the live broadcast.

According to Bangmei, some influencers now have the permission to put an e-commerce shopping cart button on the live broadcast page, allowing users to buy while watching, which is very similar to Taobao Live .

Divert traffic to other platforms and make profits outside of Douyin

An unexpected hit may lead to a business opportunity from details

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

For example, some Douyin accounts in vertical industries embed their own WeChat accounts in videos to direct traffic to WeChat businesses or produce corresponding peripheral products.

Or direct followers to other apps or platform accounts. Previously, some of the more famous cases include iFlytek VoiceJi and others. Although they may have been unintentional at the beginning, the commercial value that subsequently extended to them is immeasurable.

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

This public account was created on February 28 because 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.

Friends with a keen sense of smell can always think of ways to reap the benefits from emerging platforms. "Emoji Rabbit" is a pioneer who took advantage of the popularity and reaped the benefits.

However, with the development of TikTok, the platform has become increasingly strict in controlling the behavior of diverting traffic to other platforms, and will take penalties such as limiting traffic or even blocking accounts. I hope my colleagues will be cautious.

Internet celebrities transform themselves and gain derivative value

TikTok celebrities appear in TV series, musicians become TikTok joke makers

Similar to the trend of “celebrity becoming internet celebrities and internet celebrities becoming celebrities” that many people discussed some time ago, Douyin celebrities can also move towards the direction of personal IP and performing arts stars.

For example, Fei Qiming, who is very popular on Douyin, was recently reported to star in the TV series "I'm Waiting for You in the Future", and he may embark on his "star journey" from then on.

There are also some original musicians who spread their original works on Douyin.

Recently, Douyin launched the "See Music Plan" to fully support original musicians. A "Music" column will appear on the personal homepage of relevant Douyin musicians. The number of times the relevant music is used and the number of likes received by the relevant videos will be ranked comprehensively, which is directly related to whether they can enter the finals.

Douyin's move kills four birds with one stone. It not only supports original music and attracts a group of original creators, but also contributes a batch of high-quality materials to the platform, consolidating its own tone and activity.

However, for these original creators, there is still an opportunity to gain more attention for their works through Douyin. Some musicians gain millions of fans by posting jokes, and then occasionally remind their fans not to just read the jokes but also listen to the songs.

At present, the influencers on Douyin mainly include native influencers incubated by the Douyin platform, influencers from MCN agencies , and individuals who have settled on the platform. Since each type of cooperation with the platform is different, the corresponding content support and business models are also different.

For example, the talents signed and incubated by the platform and the talents settled in MCN agencies have closer ties with the platform and enjoy platform support to a certain extent.

In particular, many of the experts who join MCN agencies are internet celebrities who have already matured in vertical segments, so they have a better chance of getting high scores and becoming big names with millions or even tens of millions of fans.

Although we cannot generalize, we have to admit that these influencers do have a better chance of getting invitations to internal testing of features such as e-commerce shopping carts, 1-minute long videos, and live broadcasts, and they also have more opportunities for commercial monetization. Douyin accounts registered under personal identities can also become dark horses , but the vast majority of these accounts are still passers-by players, and many of them cannot be called experts.

Liu Fei said that their influencers have now all settled in Douyin and are making it a key platform. "Right now, rapid fan growth is the first goal, and the main ways to monetize are advertising and e-commerce, but in the future there should also be things related to downloads, traffic diversion, and App conversions, or they have already appeared."

We can also imagine the future monetization model of Douyin, for example:

1. Enable video reward payment and establish a user incentive system;

2. Set rewards for original BGM and original challenge topics, provide gift points and bounties, etc.;

3. Launch a paid version with more cool video production features for a limited time experience;

4. Open a column for self-made TikTok emoticons, referring to the reward and download mechanism of WeChat emoticons;

5. …

Compared with Douyin's commercial monetization, some new media people value Douyin's brand value more.

For example, Zhang Kenan, the founder of LyingDuck, mentioned in a recent interview that he believes that in the short term, the value of Douyin lies mainly in brand exposure rather than commercial value. "However, Douyin currently has a large number of users, so its future commercial value still deserves continued attention."

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.

The author of this article @张洁 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