Paying for knowledge, where is your path?

The first full note released on the Internet

Before we knew it, the flames of the knowledge economy had started to spread.

Social software such as WeChat, Weibo, and Maimai have opened a reward function at the end of the article; Zhihu and Guokr, as two major knowledge communities in China, have begun to commercialize knowledge, launching " Zhihu " and " Fenda " respectively; the membership system has become a standard feature of video websites; it is even said that you have to be prepared to pay to read the news. These highly-watched signs indicate that the era of paying for knowledge products has arrived.

Ask colleagues to bring a box lunch, ask a designer friend to design something, borrow a friend's car, ask a buddy to help with moving...all of this is taken for granted in China's traditional interpersonal structure that values ​​personal connections.

But now you are used to spending money to use Ele.me, Zhubajie, Didi, and 58 Moving to solve the above problems. Nowadays, everyone is busy, and paid consumption is replacing free help as our habit.

You will also encounter such problems as: business problem analysis, career development advice, communication skills, etc. You may not find friends around you who are good at these areas. What should you do? The most popular way nowadays is to pay to listen and seek opinions from professionals.

In the era of mobile Internet , users' targeted demands have increased, and they are willing to pay to replace personal search costs. As a result, paid knowledge Internet products have begun to appear.

Ultimately, the essence of knowledge payment is to turn knowledge into products or services to realize commercial value. Over the past few decades, from the perspectives of information communication efficiency, information organization, sharing spirit, crowdsourcing, and social interaction, we have jointly created the largest and most efficient "free knowledge Internet" in human history. Previously, the driving force behind Internet knowledge sharing was the logic of reciprocal gift economy. What everyone is most concerned about is whether the introduction of price or economic return factors will further improve the efficiency of human knowledge sharing and consumption.

At present, several "paid knowledge products" that have brought "confidence" to knowledge payment have transformed knowledge into new forms of products, meeting the needs of consumers and are the victory of products:

Luoji Siwei’s e-commerce book store ;

One-on-one one-hour paid consultation in line;

Fenda’s 60-second paid voice quiz;

Zhihu LIVE, a paid knowledge live broadcast based on the Q&A community;

Paid voice Q&A——Zhihu;

Chaos Institute’s business knowledge courses;

Information services provided by Li Xiang Business Insider;

Ma Dong’s “Speak Well” audio education program, etc.

At present, the success of these products lies in the innovation of methods. No new demands or new markets have been discovered. Some of the methods, such as package sales, are still temporary. It can be said that we may be in the very early stages of paid knowledge Internet products, and paid knowledge Internet may have breakthrough products in the next few years.

Knowledge is priceless, which actually means that knowledge cannot be priced. Only when knowledge is transformed into products or services that can help people solve problems can the transfer of value be achieved and pricing and sales can be achieved. Knowledge cannot be bought and sold; what is bought and sold is the form of knowledge. Therefore, only by turning knowledge into products or services, that is, productizing it, can knowledge realize its commercial value.

For the platform, if it cannot provide products and services on a large scale and cannot serve knowledge consumers on a large scale, it is worthless. The essence of paid knowledge products and services can be extended into three perspectives:

Supply perspective - if it doesn’t become a product, it has no value.

Consumer perspective - if the problem is not solved, there is no value.

Platform perspective - if it cannot be scaled, it has no value.

Question 1: What forms does knowledge take?

Zhang Yifan adopts the broad meaning of knowledge and proposes to define information and knowledge into three categories:

1) Objective facts

2) Subjective opinions

3) Professional judgement or know-how

The third category can be considered as skills. At present, the knowledge that can be paid for is mainly concentrated in some categories 2 and 3 .

Wei Wuhui, a senior media observer, also divides information and knowledge into three categories based on the time and results of return:

1) Short-term utilitarian knowledge:

Master a skill and obtain a certain certificate, such as software engineer, financial accountant, driver's license, IELTS, etc.

2) Mid-term conceptual knowledge:

At first glance, these ideas may seem sharp and logical, but upon closer inspection, you will find that they are not of much short-term use. For example, there are many opinion comments and business management articles.

3) Long-term cultivation knowledge:

Most of this knowledge is "useless" and not very practical, and is mainly used to improve one's realm and connotation. For example, philosophy, literature, art, etc.

The current paid knowledge products are mainly mid-term conceptual knowledge, mixed with some short-term utilitarian content and long-term cultivation insights. Mid-term concept-based knowledge providers build their personal brands by writing articles and books, and then monetize their brands through lectures and forums.

For example, "Li Xiang's Business Insider" and "Hearing Wu Xiaobo Every Day" are pure medium-term conceptual knowledge, "Speak Well" is medium-term conceptual knowledge mixed with short-term utilitarian content, and "Jiang Xun's Detailed Explanation of A Dream of Red Mansions" and "Xue Feng Concert" are pure long-term cultivation knowledge.

Question 2: What are the production and consumption links of knowledge?

“Knowledge Creation – Knowledge Productization – Knowledge Consumption”

In its logical structure, knowledge productization connects the two ends and is also the most important link. Among traditional industries, publishing is such an example. As one of the most traditional paid knowledge service industries and the most familiar knowledge product (content product), it typically embodies the value of the "knowledge productization" link.

Example :

Knowledge creation: book authors complete the manuscript;

Knowledge productization: The editors of the publishing house edit the manuscript into a book, package it, and the publishing house prints the book, markets it , and sells it;

Knowledge consumption: Readers acquire knowledge from books through reading.

The publishing editor is responsible for productization. Most manuscripts are the author's personal creation, from a personal perspective; excellent publishing editors adopt an external perspective and a market perspective. In the United States, the author's literary agent will partially assume the role of a publishing editor, but the difference is that he represents the interests of the author.

It is difficult for readers to digest knowledge independently, so some people try to make changes in the knowledge productization stage and provide new knowledge products other than books. The main method is to turn the book into a course or lecture.

As there are difficulties in using knowledge, knowledge products continue to extend, such as consulting and advisory services provided by the authors, or even the authors jointly developing consulting and advisory services with other institutions that can be provided by others and licensing them out.

These are all productizations beyond the books themselves, intended to make it easier for individuals to gain knowledge from books. But the traditional way of publishing books has constrained the thinking of paid knowledge products for too long.

Question 3: What forms do knowledge products take?

1) E-books;

Amazon opened up the e-book market with the Kindle hardware. It established a huge support system and used long-term patience to promote the shift of books from paper books to e-books. Now, many pure e-books have gradually appeared in the Kindle ecosystem. Among the latecomers, Apple uses its mobile phone advantage to promote e-books, and WeChat uses its social advantage to promote WeChat Reading. So far, the changes in e-books have mainly been in the carrier, with little change made to the books themselves.

2) Book adaptation products such as audiobooks;

On the Internet, the form of books itself is transformed, typical examples being audiobooks and abridged versions. Abroad, there are audiobook platforms such as Audible, and in China, there are Himalaya and others.

3) Book publishing;

4) Education;

This is also the most traditional paid knowledge product, but education has long been considered to be social and public welfare, emphasizing its social value and rarely talking about its commercial value. But now, commercial education and training products are the most important and effective means of monetizing knowledge products. The educational objectives, prerequisites and methods for adults, college students, teenagers and children are different, and they also present different forms under the form of the Internet and mobile Internet .

★ Example:

• Chaos Study Society: Founded by Li Shanyou, it established a business school for the Internet era;
• GeekBang: It is held in the form of an educational technical conference;
• NoteHero: a knowledge service for recording and sharing notes of meetings and lectures;
• Mantou Business School : Internet products and operations;
• Meten Online English: One-on-one online adult English training with highly-rated foreign teachers;
• MOOC : Massive Open Online Course.

5) One-to-one knowledge services pioneered by Zaixing and Fenda;

Xinghe and Fenda use the same logic to package knowledge into products between knowledge creation and knowledge consumption. Zaixing packages knowledge into “a one-hour offline one-on-one interview”, and Fenda packages knowledge into “a 60-second online one-on-one question and answer”. One hour or 60 seconds are both ways to standardize the "container" of knowledge when the knowledge itself cannot be standardized, thereby transforming knowledge into products and services.

6) Subscription-based media products.

Their common feature is "subscription-based media products": fixed-period subscriptions, currently mostly annual subscriptions, priced at around 199 yuan; content updated daily, ultra-segmented content, using a single content model; mostly high-quality production methods by individuals or small teams, endorsed by personalized brands.

★ Example:

• Li Xiang Business Insider;
• Ma Dong’s “Talk Well” audio;
• Classical music education product "Xuefeng Concert".

Exchange of knowledge products within a specific professional field. In some specific professional fields, there is an exchange and sale of some knowledge products.

★ Example:

CreativeMarket: paid design platform;

SlideShare: A PPT communication community under LinkedIn;

Teachers Pay Teachers: A trading platform for teacher course lesson plans and handouts.

In terms of effectiveness and targeting, the "question-and-answer" approach will become the mainstream form of knowledge products. This is because the "question-and-answer" approach can solve problems more directly and better provide personalized knowledge services.

Therefore, mid-term conceptual knowledge products such as "Li Xiang's Business Insider" are prone to bottlenecks.

According to internal sources, the target number of subscriptions for "Li Xiang's Business Insider" is 150,000, and the number of subscriptions as of 23:00 on July 18, 2016 was 62,126. Under the pressure of KPI, it launched the social marketing and transcribed audio of "Reading Red Packet" on July 16, but the number of subscriptions only increased by more than 500 in 48 hours.

In addition, "Get" has also joined forces with a large number of knowledge and business self-media to carry out soft promotion and implantation, but the results are not ideal.

★ Example:

To this end, Dahua, the note-taker, specially subscribed to experience "Li Xiang's Business Insider" and consulted friends who had subscribed for a long time, and found that there were two problems:

1) There is a misalignment between content and mainstream user needs;

Li Can's users include business operators (including entrepreneurs) and ordinary people who are interested in business knowledge. Based on the fact that the mainstream users of similar products such as "Luoji Siwei" and "Dedao" are the latter, it can be inferred that a considerable number of the 60,000 users of "Li Xiang Business Insider" are non-business operators, and the content needs of the two are inconsistent.

Therefore, Li Can’s content is difficult to integrate into the real work scenarios of this type of people. The current opening rate of less than 50% is proof of this. Everyone wants to please, but in the end no one can be pleased.

2) Psychological expectations are too high.

The early publicity was too grand, and the recommendations from Jack Ma, Liu Chuanzhi and Lei Jun gave everyone too high psychological expectations. In the end, there was much ado about nothing, and the magazine was not much different from previous paper business magazines. Not only that, the 10 pieces of content every day are too fragmented, making it difficult to go deeper, and there is no progression or connection between each piece of content.

When we say "pay for knowledge", we actually omit two words. A more accurate statement should be one of the following:

Pay for knowledge products.

Pay for knowledge services.

In the field of knowledge, products and services are intertwined. We will not make a detailed distinction here, but roughly call those that do not require human intervention products, such as books and videos; and those that require human intervention are called services, such as lectures, one-on-one consultations, and training courses.

So why do we spend so much money on paid content in an age of “free”? There are 4 aspects.

1) Time cost

Every noon, colleagues would ask each other what to eat. Even if they opened "Ele.me", they would not know what to choose. This is a real scenario.

Most people will have this feeling that although eating is a basic need, choosing where to eat is actually a personalized need. If there is a content product that recommends what to eat every day, someone would be willing to pay for it because the cost of choosing each time you order food is getting higher and higher.

With too many choices, users become paralyzed in their decision-making, the time cost of making their own choices increases, and they are willing to pay to replace personal search choices, which makes paying for knowledge possible.

Now there are many Internet startups that are actually solving this problem, such as:

Noteman: You can get first-hand notes of live speeches without going to the scene;

Gift Talk: There are various gift purchase recommendations, which are detailed to every festival and anniversary scene for every group of people. I believe that many people have the pain point of not knowing what gift to give to their girlfriends;

There will be more products like Assistant Laiye and Get that help people save time in the future. The essence of their profit model is payment for content or content e-commerce.

2) monetary cost;

In addition to being convenient, Didi has greatly reduced the cost of travel, which is also an important reason for its popularity. When people order food on Ele.me, in addition to reducing the time cost of eating out, the important point is that the food is cheaper than eating in a restaurant, and drinks are provided.

The prices of audio materials, business school notes, and practical books sold on "Get" are actually very low. A video that costs thousands of yuan on the Chaos Study Society APP can be watched in its entirety for just a few dozen yuan. There is no need to go to the site, no need to book air tickets or hotels, and no need to travel for business trips. This will reduce the financial cost of learning.

3) Competitive pressure

The survival anxiety of commercial competition requires us to be nourished with a large amount of knowledge every day. In the era of knowledge flood, cognition has become the biggest competitive barrier and pressure has become the biggest motivation for learning.

While the Internet has made the world flatter, it has also caused a lot of divisions and contrasts. The people who are better than you are getting younger and younger, someone becomes famous every day, and someone gets millions or tens of millions of dollars in financing every day. The ever-changing business environment makes us feel like we are falling behind if we don’t study for a day, and it feels like the whole world has changed if we don’t check our Moments for a day, but you don’t know it.

4) Social Currency

Knowledge is increasingly becoming a social currency.

You haven’t watched Ode to Joy, but after reading a few articles about it, you have the right to chat with others; you haven’t read The Inevitable, but you bought it, so when you come across this topic, you can interrupt and chat; you haven’t watched Big Fish and Begonia, but after reading other people’s reviews, you dare to say it’s a bad movie as if you have watched it…

For paid knowledge products, social currency often means that the product has personal endorsement and is a topic of conversation in the community . Users are willing to pay for content. It doesn’t matter whether the content is actually effective or not. What matters is that Jack Ma, Liu Chuanzhi, and Lei Jun recommended it. After reading it, you will feel like a successful person, and you will have topics to talk about with others.

The popularity of Fenda in the first half of 2016 catalyzed the transformation of content charging. Although its popularity was mainly due to its exploration of the privacy and gossip of stars and celebrities, it still could not stop its impact on all content entrepreneurs. Not only did many imitators emerge, but the topic of charging for knowledge was also put before every content entrepreneur.

Return to the content, return to the knowledge itself, and ultimately solve the problem. Several of the currently popular paid knowledge products are actually not very good based on users’ feedback on expected effects. Coupled with the endorsements of celebrities and big names, it is inevitable that there is a bubble element in them. In addition, these are the pioneers of knowledge-based paid products, and there will be certain product dividends in them.

Viewpoint 1: Personal knowledge products are only a small part of the knowledge service industry

Currently, the popular Internet knowledge products are all aimed at individuals (the so-called 2C), and very few are aimed at enterprises (the so-called 2B), but this is also the law of development of the Internet. Because 2C is related to individuals, it is often easier to attract attention, and individuals are more likely to accept innovative Internet products than companies.

If we expand our perspective to the enterprise level, we will find that the current craze for knowledge products is only a small part of the knowledge service industry, and enterprises are the largest buyers of knowledge products.

The logic adopted by enterprise-oriented knowledge services is also completely different. Targeting individuals is closer to the logic of media and entertainment, only providing products and services, not solving problems. For enterprises, the goal is to solve problems and even pay based on results. The logic of problem solving is also one of the reasons why knowledge services for enterprises are still difficult to be Internet-based.

In the enterprise-oriented field, there are several typical cases:

Zhubajie.com. A trading market that provides professional services, where buyers and sellers can sell and purchase professional services such as logo design, website design and development, film and television production, and online promotion.

Fiverr website and app. Starting at $5, transactions include creative fields such as art design, digital marketing, writing and translation, and video.

InnoCentive website. The most well-known innovation crowdfunding platform connects companies and organizations with difficult problems to be solved with scientific research experts from all over the world, and has served organizations including Procter & Gamble and NASA.

X Prize. The incentive competitions advocated by Peter Diamandis, executive chairman of Singularity University and chairman of the X Prize Foundation, can also be seen as a typical example of problem solving. The characteristic is that it can greatly increase the "visibility" of a challenge, which may be achieved by setting up huge prizes such as the Google Lunar X Prize of up to $30 million. In addition to the X Prize, another well-known prize is the Netflix Algorithm Prize.

Github . Github is a code hosting platform based on GIT and also an open source code communication platform. The knowledge results of solving problems in the form of code are made public, shared and iterated on it. At present, in the field of code, knowledge achievements are rapidly iterating and evolving in this way, thereby promoting the diffusion, accumulation and creation of knowledge.

Viewpoint 2: An era where platforms and individual craftsmen coexist

The change from free knowledge Internet to paid knowledge product services is not just a change in business model, but may be another advancement in human cognitive patterns. Fang Jun, Executive President of Chuangyebang, has four prospects:

1) We must not only transform knowledge into knowledge products and services that users can purchase, but in the future, the scope of knowledge productization will be further expanded: for knowledge products and services for individuals, we need to take into account the personal knowledge consumption and digestion part; for knowledge products and services for enterprises, we must not only take into account the integration and customization corresponding to knowledge consumption, but also the problem-solving part of the knowledge use stage. The future evolution of knowledge consumption will point to the result of purchasing knowledge products or services. The standards for so-called good content and good knowledge products are not absolute, but the future will definitely be about solutions. Current knowledge solutions are not yet able to be responsible for the results.

2) Only knowledge products with a high degree of productization and high commercial value can achieve large-scale knowledge monetization. Those that are merely knowledge raw materials, have a low degree of productization, have low commercial value in themselves, and whose fees are not enough to cover transaction costs are bound to be in the free domain.

3) If the entire field is divided into a 2 X 2 table according to the providers and consumers of knowledge products, the current hot spot is person-to-person services (C2C), and the next possible boom will be person-to-business services (C2B).

4) Both the creation of knowledge and the productization of knowledge are difficult to scale. What is needed is more of the spirit of craftsmanship, creating knowledge, designing knowledge products, and serving knowledge consumers in a craftsman's way. As sociologist Richard Sennett said in The Craftsman, "Superficial skills are particularly popular in modern society."

Viewpoint 3: Paid knowledge products are not media, but channels for cross-border learning and lifelong learning

From the perspective of the effect of knowledge, content can only solve the first level of knowledge problem, which is the problem of cognition. It can let you know things you don’t know, and let you know that your previous methods are wrong, or ineffective or inefficient. In essence, it is a relatively scientific methodology for understanding certain types of problems.

Because these paid content products only summarize theoretical knowledge, and some are very fragmented and unsystematic. They go from theory to theory, and only by practicing it yourself can you verify the final effect of the product.

However, there is always a group of people whose needs for solving deeper problems cannot be met by paying for knowledge. The demands of this type of users are often strong and can only be solved through offline education and training. Of course, this faces the problem of not being able to scale, which is something knowledge platforms are unwilling to do. A better way to compensate for this is to provide live online lectures, which actually increase real-time interaction.

If knowledge charging continues to settle down, its essence will still be offline training and education. Lightweight and fragmented paid knowledge will become an entry point for offline education transformation.

Therefore, when creating paid content products, we must not start from the perspective of the media, but must start from the mindset of education and from the two new trends of cross-border learning and lifelong learning.

In short, we are in the very early stages of paid knowledge product services, which may bring about a new wave of knowledge creation, sharing, and educational learning, as well as a wave of business opportunities around knowledge monetization.

In the past, only a few people could create knowledge and produce knowledge products. Now, more people are joining in the process of knowledge creation and knowledge product production. In the future, as Toffler predicted decades ago, perhaps everyone will be both a producer and a consumer, that is, a consumer is also a prosumer. In the field of knowledge, such integration of production and sales may be realized first. New forms of knowledge will continue to emerge on the Internet. New technologies or models, such as the mobile Internet that has already happened and VR that is currently happening, will promote the emergence of new forms of content. We are extremely optimistic about the future of knowledge.