Xiaohongshu blogger’s guide to making money on Double Eleven!

The National Day holiday is over, and Double 11 is coming soon. I won’t talk about the too basic idea that Xiaohongshu bloggers can make money, because it always feels like nonsense. Who doesn’t know that they can make money?

The time of the year when bloggers are most likely to receive cooperation has arrived. In this issue, we will tell you how Xiaohongshu bloggers make money and how to make "more" money.

And the good thing is that the threshold for monetization on Xiaohongshu is really too low. Compared with Bilibili and Douyin, the fan base can even be ignored. It only requires some content of decent quality to monetize.

But on the other hand, if you don’t have a certain number of fans on Bilibili and Douyin, you are just a nobody. After all, there are a lot of accounts with hundreds of thousands of fans on Douyin. Therefore, Xiaohongshu is a very easy platform for amateur bloggers, especially those who want to monetize quickly.

1) Ad placement

Advertising placement is the most mainstream form of cooperation on Xiaohongshu. To what extent is it mainstream? Currently, more than 95% of Xiaohongshu bloggers monetize through embedded advertising.

And for brands, advertising placement is also the easiest way to achieve marketing effects on Xiaohongshu.

Therefore, for bloggers who want to monetize on Xiaohongshu , advertising placement is essential, and it is best to think clearly about the form of advertising placement during the account positioning period. For example, if you want to place beauty products, then your content must be related to beauty products.

Some friends don’t pay much attention to this point. During the positioning period, they pursue rapid fan growth or low-cost posting notes by themselves, so they choose low-quality forms such as editing entertainment videos and sharing mobile phone wallpapers. As a result, although they have more fans and good traffic, there is no brand cooperation. Why?

Because what is truly valuable on Xiaohongshu is not just traffic, but traffic with "personalities endorsing the brand."

If you don’t understand, let us explain. Advertising has passed the era where people will buy if they see it. Do you agree? For example, there are so many brands on TV commercials, but people just watch them and forget about them. No one buys something just because they see it, right?

So the current advertising goal is to persuade you to place an order through content.

So who can persuade you to place an order? It must be someone who is close to you. What brands want most is your friends to recommend you, but unfortunately, the cost of finding your friends is too high, and the success rate of finding your friends is also very low, so you can only settle for the second best and get recommendations from semi-acquaintances, that is, bloggers who have similar actual situations to you.

After reading the things they recommend to you, you believe them and become interested in them. This is the value of this kind of endorsement traffic.

If you refuse to understand this logic and still think that as long as my Xiaohongshu has some traffic, brands should place advertisements on my account, I advise you to give up this idea as soon as possible.

With this logic, it would be better for brands to invest in Guangdiantong or WeChat Moments advertising. Wouldn’t it be better to invest in WeChat Moments advertising?

Secondly, this traffic is not constant. Xiaohongshu relies too much on algorithms. If you post entertainment content, it will of course be popular. But if you change it to advertisements, it will immediately get less than 100 reads. The brand will want to kill you. This kind of business has only one first and no second, and it is not a long-term business.

2) Live streaming

Live streaming with goods has become a common form of monetization on other platforms, such as Douyin and Kuaishou, but it is relatively rare on Xiaohongshu.

On the one hand, it is affected by the "goods". Xiaohongshu can only carry too few goods. The goods in the Xiaohongshu mall are not rich enough, and the goods brought by Taobao are limited to some categories, making it difficult to choose at will.

On the other hand, the "ceiling" of Xiaohongshu's live streaming sales is slightly low, which leads many people to prefer taking notes on advertising implantation, because the revenue from advertising is clear, and it takes less time, does not require real-time appearance, and has lower requirements for the on-the-spot performance of the characters, so bloggers tend to choose advertising implantation. But according to this logic, the bloggers of Douyin and Kuaishou should also be willing to choose content implantation, right?

Why is it different?

Because the ceiling for live streaming on Kuaishou and Douyin is very high and they rely on a large amount of traffic, there are multiple cases where Douyin and Kuaishou live streaming have brought in more than 10 million in a single show, and millions are commonplace.

But on Xiaohongshu, earning millions is something you only hear about occasionally, and don’t even think about it. So for big bloggers, the income from selling goods in a 2-hour live broadcast is not as valuable as the income from an embedded advertisement. Bloggers are very good at math in this regard.

Bloggers can make money by selling goods through live streaming, and the threshold is not high, but the income is limited, and it requires a high level of on-the-spot performance ability. So the conclusion is that it is possible to make money, but most people are unwilling to choose it.

3) Small list of goods

"Small list" is another way for Xiaohongshu to earn commissions by selling products. Since the note-based selling function was taken offline, the only way to sell products in text form is the small list.

The small list cannot be displayed directly in the notes, but you can find the corresponding "small list" in Xiaohongshu by searching for the password, such as the one I took a screenshot of below.

There are some products that bloggers can customize in it. After users jump from the page and place an order, they can get matching commission income.

But unfortunately, there is currently no quick "button" entrance, which results in high operating costs for users, and they can only reach the page after multiple jumps. This also means that the results of bringing goods may not be "very good", so bloggers don't use it much.

But after all, it is a way to make money, so we have to add it.

4) Open a store and sell goods

In addition to advertising other people's products on Xiaohongshu, you can of course sell your own products, so opening a store to sell things is also a natural way to monetize. However, because there was a certain threshold for opening a store on Xiaohongshu before, its popularity was relatively low, and most of the stores were opened by brands. Now that Xiaohongshu has implemented the integration of accounts and stores, the threshold has been further lowered, and more and more bloggers are opening stores.

But in general, most bloggers are part-time, and there is no necessary connection between their homepages and most of the products, so there are still only a few bloggers who have their own products, and there are indeed not enough bloggers who can actually open a store. But like the small list, it is always a possibility to make money. Whether it is suitable for everyone depends on personal needs.

5) Drainage

Every platform can attract traffic, and Xiaohongshu is no exception. You can make money by attracting traffic, and Xiaohongshu is no exception. It is against the rules for any platform to attract traffic, and Xiaohongshu is no exception.

So it is true that traffic can make money, but how to attract traffic on Xiaohongshu is a "real" problem.

But as an amateur blogger, you may have posted only a few notes, not to mention the number of fans. Naturally, you have no influence at this time, and it is difficult for brands to actively find us for promotion.

Waiting until you have more fans and then letting brands come to you is obviously not the best approach.

Then we can take the initiative to find some brand cooperation. The easiest way is to take orders through the following small tool products.

One of these two platforms is called Crab Notice and the other is called Red Notice. Both are "third-party" platforms for Xiaohongshu bloggers to receive orders. However, because they are third parties, the authenticity of the information is not necessarily accurate. Therefore, if you want to receive orders on these two platforms, you still need to do more identification on your own.

Secondly, we can see at a glance that this kind of platform mostly involves cooperation with fans with low requirements, and the amount of money is not very high. It is used by amateurs who are just starting out to make a little money.

After all, since we have no fans and no cooperation, we can't be too picky.

However, once you have a certain fan base, it is not recommended to use this platform.

First, the authenticity of information on this type of platform is limited, and it is too tiring to sift through it.

Secondly, this kind of platform generally selects low-quality amateurs, so if your offer is too high, they won’t accept it, and you will get angry (for example, they will only give you 50 yuan if you have 10,000 fans).

Secondly, I personally do not recommend taking orders when you are an amateur, because advertising will inevitably affect the increase in followers, so advertising will prolong the speed at which we increase followers.

If it affects the speed of increasing followers but you can make money, I think it is reasonable. But obviously, at the amateur stage, a note earning a hundred yuan or so may not be worth your effort.

It would be more comfortable to earn a few thousand dollars from one more note from a fan.

Secondly, there are some communities where you can get cooperation, but I think this form is too inefficient. There is only one successful one among a lot of spam messages every day. It is not worth it and I don’t recommend it at all.

Finally: Placing an order without going through the Xiaohongshu Dandelion platform (registering the advertisement) is considered a violation according to the Xiaohongshu platform rules, so bloggers are advised to be cautious when accepting orders.

The prices are already out of the reach of ordinary people, and the price of a note can range from hundreds to thousands.

The best point is that because it is at the KOC level, the brand’s expectations for the data are relatively normal and they don’t have particularly high expectations.

So on the whole, there is no better stage than just waiting to make money without any KPI.

The premise of all this is just to put an email address in your signature.

Secondly, I would like to add some personal suggestions. It is best to have a nicer attitude towards the brands or advertising companies that come to communicate with you. This does not mean you should deliberately flatter or curry favor with them, but rather normal mutual respect. Especially when it comes to some modifications, it may really only take a few minutes to do it with just a few clicks of the fingers, but it is difficult to communicate, which is actually harmful to both parties.

What’s important is that this brand will not choose you next time, and it will also tell all the brands it knows not to choose you. In fact, it will miss out on many high-quality brands invisibly.

So after all this time, there are actually not many brands that can cooperate with us. Moreover, the brands have paid a lot of money and their expectations for the data are extremely high, so the psychological pressure on KOLs is very high.

Moreover, all orders for cooperation are completed through the Dandelion platform. After all, they have spent a lot of money, so they have to at least invest in information flow, right?

But in this way, the KOL will receive 10% less money because the platform has to pay taxes on the blogger's behalf.

But is it okay not to pay this 10% tax?

That’s definitely not possible, but paying less is still possible.

The method is to sign a contract with MCN and conduct platform settlement through the company of the contracted agency, which can reduce the tax rate.

The tax rates of general institutions on the market may range from 6% to 8%, but in order to save as much as possible, it is definitely better to find one with 6%.

In this way, the amount you report in your notes can be increased by 4% for each order.

Some bloggers have begun to demonize signing with MCN, saying that they don’t want to sign, that signing is too difficult, etc. But it doesn’t matter, you can still be affiliated with MCN if you don’t sign.

The things about reducing tax rates are the same, and the signing and affiliation are the same.

It’s not easy to make money, so save as much as you can, my friends.

Finally, let’s summarize:

1. Amateur bloggers can receive orders through the notification platform.

2. It is best for KOC to wait for orders.

3. KOLs can just sit and wait for orders, but they can earn more money by signing a contract or becoming affiliated.

Note: The prerequisite for the above cooperation is that the blogger’s content must be vertical and the content must be close enough to the product, otherwise there will be no cooperation.