Baijiahao earns millions a month, is it really that easy to make money on other platforms?

The 5th anniversary of the official account has just passed, and such discussions can still be seen in the group: If the WeChat official account is not profitable, stop doing it and start other platforms...

Indeed, many platforms attracted a large number of content creators by relying on various subsidy programs in the early stages. Penguin Intelligence's " 2017 Self-Media Trend Report" also mentioned that 43.1% of self-media have settled in 4-6 platforms, and 73.8% of them believe that the greatest value of settling on a platform is the sharing of advertising revenue.

Previously, Huxiu published an article titled "The "Number-Making World" under the Content Dividend: 20 articles a day, 5 minutes per article, 50,000 yuan a month..." It also mentioned that operators register a large number of self-media accounts in the early stage, and then produce content through various low-cost methods such as plagiarism, rewriting, and pseudo-originality, and then distribute it through major platform channels to obtain a large amount of traffic , thereby earning advertising revenue.

However, is it really that easy to make money on other platforms?

1. What are the profit methods of other platforms?

In the era of self-media, there are many platforms, but the ways of making money provided by the platforms to content creators are similar. Some people use these methods to "make accounts" and earn over ten thousand yuan a day, while others are still struggling in the novice period and have not yet met the conditions for the platform to generate income. According to Jam Girl's observation, there are currently seven platforms that have opened up income, including Toutiao , Penguin Media Platform , Yidian Zixun , NetEase, Dayu , Baijiahao , and QQ Public Account .

1. Toutiao

| Profit-making methods: 10,000-person 10,000-yuan plan, 100-group 10,000-yuan plan, courtesy plan, headline advertising (similar to public account traffic owner), praise, product commission, Golden Second Award (for short video field), Golden Festival Award

In March last year, Liu Chen, who was labeled as "Head of Toutiao Q&A Market", posted a screenshot on Zhihu and said that since January 2015, the platform revenue of the entire Toutiao platform has continued to rise rapidly and has exceeded 200%.

However, when Jam Girl recently contacted some Toutiao operators, many of them said that it is not so easy to make money from Toutiao advertising at present: for articles with high recommendations and reading volumes, sometimes the advertising exposure and revenue cannot keep up. For example, the income from 10,000 advertising exposures is about 10 yuan.

It is common for most creators to receive little revenue from headline advertising every day. The product function is to insert product cards from third-party platforms into articles, and Toutiao can obtain a certain commission after users purchase them. However, according to the operation, the current income does not seem to be ideal.

2. Baijiahao

| Profit model: Baidu advertising & subsidies, content e-commerce

On September 28 last year, Baidu Baike officially opened for registration. On November 23 last year, Baijiahao announced that in 2017 Baidu would distribute a total of 10 billion yuan to content producers.

According to the data at the time, the highest monthly income of a single Baijiahao account reached 40,003 yuan, and the highest income of a single article exceeded 24,425 yuan.

However, the unstable income of Baijiahao is often complained. Sometimes the number of readings is only a few thousand, but the income is dozens of yuan, and sometimes the number of readings exceeds ten thousand, but the income is only a few yuan.

On June 27 this year, Baijiahao was exposed to have blocked accounts on a large scale. Although Baijiahao issued an official statement, there were many rumors online that: Baijiahao promised to pay the share between the 15th and 25th, but no payment had been made on the 27th and tens of thousands of accounts had been blocked, and Baijiahao was suspected of malicious fraud. It is reported that this is not the first time. On March 28, a user broke the news about the large-scale blocking of Baijiahao accounts online.

In addition, an operator revealed that those who currently make money on Baijiahao are all people with connections, and as long as they maintain the top users, it is no problem to earn millions a month.

3. UC Big Fish

| Profit method: quantum bonus, graphic/ video advertising share, graphic product promotion share (in beta)

It is worth noting that different Dayu accounts have different star ratings and enjoy different rights and interests. For example, a five-star Dayu account can enjoy three times the profit sharing every month; a four-star Dayu account can enjoy two times the profit sharing every month, and there are also special benefits for articles marked as original.

According to an operator, the invitation codes for joining Dayu are divided into three levels: Diamond, Platinum, and Silver. Diamond can quickly open up income and original tags, Platinum can quickly open up income, and Silver is the most common.

In addition, the operator told Jam Girl that UC's video account has good revenue, with monthly income ranging from 100,000 to 500,000, and the content is mainly funny.

The 10th of every month is the day when the Big Fish Prize is announced, and the winning creator will receive a prize of 10,000 yuan. It has been observed that accounts that are listed on the Big Fish list every week or that month and are ranked higher are more likely to win prizes. However, there were also operators whose multiple accounts were listed in the Dayu Newcomer List that month, but none of them received the Quantum Bonus.

4. Penguin Media Platform

| Profit method: Grain in Ear Plan, traffic master, appreciation

Regarding the revenue of the Penguin Media Platform, Tencent's official public account "Meipai" cited several cases in the article "Over 100 million traffic, 40,000 yuan a month: The autumn harvest season of the content dividend of Penguin picture self-media | All-media view":

•In April 2016, the "Weiyanboyu" Penguin account was launched. In a few months, more than 100 sets of pictures were posted. Through push notifications on Tiantian Kuaibao and Tencent News clients, the number of readers exceeded 100 million, and the average monthly income has reached more than 40,000;

•In April 2016, the Penguin account "Xi Chulang" had a cumulative reading volume of more than 95 million in a few months, and achieved a maximum daily income of 4,000 yuan;

During the interview, many operators also stated that Penguin Account is one of their key operating platforms.

5. QQ public account

| Profit method: Traffic master (still in internal testing)

Since May this year, many QQ public account operators have said that they have received internal testing invitations to open the traffic master function. Some time ago, a screenshot of a traffic master's weekly settlement amount of 100,000 yuan was circulated in a WeChat group .

Recently, a QQ public account operator who is also an internal beta traffic leader told Jam Girl that he operates QQ public accounts in multiple fields, with a daily income of around 2,000 to 3,000 yuan, a reading volume of 7 to 8 million, and a unit price of about 0.25.

In addition, the operator said, "I have seen people making more than 100,000 yuan a month." If the revenue of QQ official accounts is really as high as the operators say, then the date of the main public beta of traffic will be worth looking forward to.

6. NetEase

| Profit method: 100 million yuan reward plan, cash rewards, tips

NetEase accounts with a full one-star rating can open "cash rewards", which is the advertising revenue we commonly see. In the data screenshots provided by the operator of a certain NetEase account, an article had more than 2.3 million recommendations and more than 270,000 views, and the revenue was about 52 yuan.

This is the most eye-catching article in the account's data in mid-July. It is calculated that the account's monthly income is less than 1,000 yuan. During the interview, Jam Girl found that many people were taking a wait-and-see attitude towards NetEase, and the legendary people who earned over 10,000 yuan a day were still a minority.

7. Yidianzixun

| Profit method: Point Gold Plan, Reward

In November 2015, at a self-media annual meeting, Yidian Zixun CEO Li Ya announced that all revenue from in-text page advertisements would be returned to content producers. However, the two profit-making methods currently available to Yidian Zixun are both for personal accounts, which is a bit embarrassing.

It is reported that after opening the "Dianjin Plan", the account can obtain a share of picture/video advertising. The higher the reading volume, the more advertising displays there will be. An operator of Yidianhao, an account focusing on the technology field, said that the income of his account has remained stable in the range of 3,000 to 4,000 yuan per month from May to August this year.

In addition, the operator stated that the number of article readings and recommendations on the account changes every month, but the revenue does not seem to be affected much.

2. There are so many platforms, can you handle it?

Multi-platform distribution has become the norm, and there are many people who "have entered many platforms but still cannot make money." Compared with official accounts, these platforms are all labeled with recommendation algorithms and large traffic, and the amount of advertising revenue does not depend on the clicks of users they follow. Faced with the dilemma of being unable to increase followers on their public accounts and having low readership, many people turn to other platforms.

However, money on other platforms may not be so easy to make.

It is obvious that the account blocking incident in June this year affected more than just WeChat public accounts and Weibo. Each platform has more or less started to clean up some "junk accounts", and the supervision of clickbait and illegal content has become increasingly strict:

•Sohu banned 637 illegal accounts;
•Toutiao banned 51 illegal accounts;
•Yidianhao cleaned up 92 illegal accounts in total, accepted 11 user reports, and cleaned up 673 illegal articles.
•A total of 305 Penguin Media accounts were punished, including 198 accounts that were suspended and 107 accounts that were stopped from posting.
•NetEase News banned a total of 425 illegal accounts.

If you want to make money, content is king. As Lao Huang wrote in his book “Official Account Thinking”, “In the content media ecology of the mobile Internet , WeChat official accounts are like a core origin, and its content radiates from this origin to major self-media platforms , forming a new media content distribution ecology covering the entire mobile Internet platform.”