How did you create a paid column with over 100,000 followers?

People often ask me what I think about the wave of " knowledge payment "? What is its essence and what are the future trends? How did you seize this opportunity? What should a good paid knowledge column look like? What are the musts for writing a good column, what are the bonuses, and what are the real secrets? How should I enter this field?

As the owner of a business column and a business consultant, today I would like to share some of my thoughts and insights on how to understand "knowledge payment" and how to create knowledge payment products from a business perspective.

First of all, what exactly is “knowledge payment”?

The first key question is, when we say “paying for knowledge”, what exactly are we paying for? Is it for "knowledge"?

From ancient times to the present, there are two types of people who provide knowledge. The first type of people turn the world's unknown into what is known to mankind, and the second type of people turn what is known to mankind into personal cognition.

What's the meaning? If we want to know what the world is like, we must first go through a process of exploration. Scientists, inventors, philosophers, etc., are the ones who, through exploration, have mastered certain regularities and knowledge, and expanded the boundaries of knowledge that humans can reach. Although some errors will occur in this process, they will be corrected over time, and the map of the entire known world will continue to expand in iterations.

These are the first type of people who are turning the world's unknown into what is known to mankind.

The process of knowledge transforming from unknown to known is a process of "discovery". Once discovered, this knowledge becomes the wealth of all mankind and no individual needs to pay for it.

But what humans know does not automatically become everyone's cognition. Therefore, we also need a second type of people to turn the discovered knowledge, such as the Pythagorean theorem, Newton's laws of mechanics, the law of economic demand, etc., into your personal cognition. This requires a process, and this process is "education" , and we pay for this process.

From elementary school to high school, and even to college, the knowledge we have learned can be searched for free on the Internet , but we still have to spend more than ten years and pay tuition to study in school because the educational process is difficult.

So when we talk about “paying for knowledge” today, we are not paying for “knowledge”, but paying for the “process of acquiring knowledge”, that is, “education” . We pay money to those who help us transform knowledge.

The most important ability for knowledge payment practitioners is not the ability to create knowledge, but the ability to transfer knowledge.

The second key question is, what kind of knowledge will users pay for?

The fact that “paying for knowledge” is gaining more and more recognition does not mean that all content producers can earn more income from it.

High-quality content producers who rank high in subscription volume (100,000+) on "Get" and other knowledge payment platforms include Li Xiaolai, Wan Weigang, Xue Zhaofeng, Wu Xiaobo , etc. They were already top content producers before the rise of "knowledge payment". All of them are top experts in "transmitting knowledge" who have written one or even several best-selling books. The abilities of these people have long been proven by the market, and the high-quality content they produce is very "expensive".

For example, if you wanted to attend Xue Zhaofeng's Peking University Economics Class, you had to be admitted to Peking University first; if you wanted to invite Wu Xiaobo to give lectures at a company, the cost of hundreds of thousands of yuan per time was not something that ordinary small and medium-sized enterprises could afford.

Now with the Internet and audio content distribution mechanisms, the marginal cost of adding a listener is almost zero, and theoretically the number of users is infinite.

This brings about an interesting result: if the number of users is large enough, each user can access high-quality content that was previously unaffordable at a very low fee, and the income of content producers will not decrease.

This actually makes things that were very expensive in the past become cheap, but it does not mean that things that were free in the past can finally be charged.

This understanding of payment for knowledge is very important: payment for knowledge does not mean that free things can finally be charged, but that very expensive things can finally be cheap.

The third key issue is the correct approach to acquiring knowledge.

In the past, reading was the most important way to acquire knowledge, so we once equated books with knowledge. Our emphasis on and pursuit of knowledge makes us extremely cautious about reading. We even believe that only by reading every book carefully can we understand the author's thoughts.

As an author who has published five best-selling books, I know that the author's thinking when writing a book is from top to bottom: first there is an overall judgment and point of view, then the knowledge that wants to be conveyed, then the logic and framework, and finally the stories and cases. The author hopes that through a framework supported by cases, you will eventually understand the point of view of the whole book, rather than really "reading" every word in the book.

So, remember that books are just carriers of knowledge, not knowledge itself. Our real purpose is to acquire knowledge, not "reading". Some habits and views formed in the past due to our excessive obsession with books have now become obstacles to our acquisition of knowledge.

For example, some people believe that we should not learn "second-hand knowledge" and must read the original works. Luo Zhenyu once gave a counterexample in this regard: If you want to learn Newton's three laws of mechanics, should you read the original work or the junior high school physics textbook? Of course, you should choose the junior high school textbook because it is expressed in a way that is easier for modern people to understand. What we need to learn is the knowledge contained in it rather than the original book.

Therefore, we must understand that our real purpose is to learn knowledge and we must know how to acquire it efficiently using appropriate methods and carriers.

With the above three points of understanding, I summarize a good knowledge payment product:

• The core competence is not to create knowledge, but to master the skill of transferring knowledge.
• It’s not about charging for free things, but about trying to make expensive things cheaper;
• Break down the old shell of knowledge, repackage it, and re-product it according to the acceptance habits of today's readers.

Next, let me talk about some of my feelings in the process of creating a product with more than 100,000 subscriptions.

First, users are more willing to pay for "useful" content

What is "useful" may involve personal value judgment. My definition is that "useful" content is anything that can help others learn, grow, and improve in work, business, or psychology. People will pay for it because they see it as an investment in themselves.

Entertainment is "consumption" and learning is "investment".

On the contrary, there are now some free public accounts with a large number of readers, often over 100,000. Their business model is to attract traffic through content and then monetize it through advertising. In order to attract traffic , they must either chase hot topics, provide gossip, or use jokes to "entertain" the public and cater to readers' needs for instant gratification. It is difficult to charge for such content.

Secondly, the paid content for 100,000+ users must be easy to understand.

I have lectured at many famous universities and business schools at home and abroad, including Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Jiaotong University, and Nanyang Technological University. After talking for a while, you will find that it is very difficult to teach in a traditional business school. There are very high requirements for the qualifications and level of the lecturers. The teachers are very good, but the requirements for teaching skills are not high. Why? Because the audience is at a high level, as long as the lecturer points out the key points, they can understand it through their own thinking even if the process is not explained clearly.

However, when you target 100,000+ users, you will find that there are huge differences in all aspects of the user group, including age, education level, position...all kinds of situations. The same content must be understandable to everyone and everyone must feel it is valuable. This requires that content providers must be able to "explain in simple terms": the core knowledge must be in-depth and grasp the essence; and the form of expression must be simple and easy to establish connections with various users.

In fact, only by achieving this extreme level of simplicity and thoroughness can you prove that you have truly grasped and thoroughly understood the essence of a piece of knowledge. If you want to gain 100,000+ users following you, you must have this ability.

How to train this ability?

We can do a test : Do you know the problem of keeping chickens and rabbits in the same cage? There are chickens and rabbits in the same cage, with a total of 35 heads and 94 legs. How many chickens and rabbits are there? Trying to explain the logic behind this to a kindergarten kid who has never learned about linear equations in two variables is called "explaining things in simple terms."

Then, paid content must be productized.

A column with more than 100,000 subscribers is destined to be a To C (end-user) product, which means that each of these 100,000 people faces a separate purchasing decision. Everyone who faces an individual purchasing decision has their own unique life scenario: a white-collar worker who is anxious about promotion, a student who is thinking about how to find a job, a boss who wants to learn something more after completing an EMBA... So, why should they subscribe to your content?

This is fundamentally different from the previous school enrollment and teaching models, as well as corporate training procurement models. We must rely on the product itself to influence users, rather than sales or persuasion capabilities.

Therefore , the content of my column is strictly built according to the requirements of scenario and product sense: "Put the wall clock into the pocket watch" to control the length of learning, polish the logic of introduction, development, turning point and conclusion to facilitate absorption, and select cases close to life to create a sense of substitution... All these efforts are to deliver what I think is the best to you in the form of a product.

Furthermore, to create a column with over 100,000 readers, thoughtful operations are required.

The purpose of the operation is to create an experience of companionship. Why some online MOOCs fail to achieve rapid development? This is because if you only provide course resources and ask users to "come and listen when they are free", this cannot form a real teaching process. "Knowledge payment" means paying for knowledge. It is a process of acquiring knowledge, not a one-time transaction. Only through operations will users feel: "I am learning and improving with you."

For example, in order to facilitate students' daily study, my column is scheduled to be online at 9 o'clock every night. Everyone studies on time every day, just like running to the classroom to wait for the teacher to start class. I will also use the "official certified sofa" to encourage everyone to punch in on time. Every day I will spend time replying to 40 to 60 selected messages, weekly guest professors, offline classes at the end of each season, and irregular online live broadcasts on the platform... These are all the process of companionship.

Through such operations, students can feel that "I am not buying a book, but taking a course". Although the road to learning and self-improvement is difficult, the company of teachers and classmates can help them strengthen self-discipline and make the process of acquiring knowledge happier and smoother.

Finally, and most importantly, we should have the right mindset when polishing our products.

There is a mentality that “I am great, I am knowledgeable, and now I will teach you”, this kind of mentality is inappropriate. You should know that the user is now the "Emperor". No matter how knowledgeable you are, you are just a "Hanlin Academy". Your knowledge, time and energy are to serve the users. Your most important goal is to make them understand, not to show off your skills.

Therefore, whether you think about the problem from the user's perspective is particularly important. Are you able to always put the user's state of "understanding" at the highest position, and put your own personal preferences lower? If you can do this, you will serve users in the right way.

postscript

Paying for knowledge is still a very new track. I was lucky and happened to choose a track I liked. After a year of creating the "5-Minute Business School", I have also gained a lot. Looking back a year ago, the understanding of paying for knowledge was completely different. I hope that these insights of mine can help students who want to join this track to increase their chances of success.

All those who help everyone turn the world's unknown into humanity's known, and turn humanity's known into your and my cognition, deserve respect.