Paid reading for WeChat official accounts is finally here! What do public account practitioners think?

On January 15, the WeChat team announced that the payment capability of WeChat subscription accounts would begin grayscale testing. WeChat said that eligible operators can go to the public platform to activate the payment function. After successful activation, the operator can set a charge for part or all of the content of the original article, and users can only read the full text after purchasing the article.

It is reported that currently the paid content of subscription accounts can be purchased by users on both iOS and Android. iOS users pay through Apple IAP (In App Purchase), while Android users can pay through WeChat Pay.

WeChat stipulates that paid pictures and texts must be original articles, and currently does not support reprinting, rewards, and advertising insertion. After the content is mass-sent, parameter settings such as article price, trial reading ratio, preface, etc. cannot be changed. Non-paying users can only read the preface and trial reading part and cannot leave messages.

In terms of price setting, operators can choose appropriate pricing from 35 price levels ranging from 1 to 208 yuan. Operators are not currently supported to customize prices.

In terms of profit sharing, the amount users pay for articles is subject to certain settlement and channel commissions (different payment channels have different account periods and commissions), and the platform may charge a technical service fee later.

In addition, WeChat official accounts currently only provide the ability to pay for reading of individual articles, and do not yet support monthly/annual payments.

WeChat said that this move is to provide high-quality content creators with more capabilities and earn more profits.

Currently, subscription accounts that have been registered for more than 3 months, have no serious violation records in the past 3 months, and have published at least 3 original articles can activate the paid function. Subscription accounts that meet the above activation conditions have the opportunity to be grayed out and applications are not open for the time being.

This is not the first time that WeChat official accounts have tried the paid reading function. As early as 2015, the WeChat team publicly expressed the idea of ​​"paid reading". A related plan was exposed in 2016. In 2017, Ma Huateng commented in a friend's circle of friends that Tencent is accelerating the development of a paid subscription function for WeChat public accounts.

But to this day, WeChat has not yet opened up paid reading for public accounts. Content creators can earn income through the user reward function, but this amount is not the main source of income for content creators.

Some analysts believe that another purpose of WeChat official accounts launching paid reading is to encourage originality, boost the enthusiasm of creators, and attract high-quality creators to stay in the WeChat ecosystem. But from the user's perspective, paid reading also invisibly adds a psychological threshold, which may be the reason why WeChat is still weighing the options.

At the 2020 WeChat Open Class PRO, WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong revealed that an important initiative for WeChat official accounts this year is to focus on short content. He said: "The content of the public platform group posting is not the focus, it should be all kinds of content should be acceptable, such as text, pictures, videos, etc."

It is widely speculated in the industry that once official accounts launch short content, it may attract more ordinary users to join the ranks of content creators, which may become the biggest change in the WeChat ecosystem this year.