How does 360 company make money? A profit model that can make money even if it’s free!

Looking at the Internet giants in today's society, whether it is BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent), or the up-and-coming TMD (Toutiao, Meituan, Didi), as well as various APPs and Internet startups, they all use the name of free, permanently free to attract audiences and users. What kind of game is behind the free?

How does 360 company make money? A profit model that can make money even if it’s free!

360, the epitome of the word "free".

When it comes to the word "free", we have to mention 360 first. In the early days of the development of the Internet and PCs, antivirus software and security protection software were basically paid services. At that time, WINDOWS itself was not well developed, had many vulnerabilities, and viruses were prevalent. Security companies such as Rising, Kaspersky, and Kingsoft all made their main profit by selling genuine antivirus software licenses. At that time, it was okay for individual users, but corporate users had to buy it. At that time, 360 was just an inconspicuous company in the market. It first adopted low-price marketing to seize the market, but it still had no effect. Finally, Zhou Enlai got excited and simply made the product free. Everyone thought he was crazy.

However, it was this crazy decision of his that completely changed the profit model and history of antivirus software and opened the door to free Internet. Now almost all security software and antivirus software in the country are free, which has brought real benefits to the public. It is worth mentioning that when 360 defeated other security vendors by providing free services, it seemed that all the rampant viruses on the market disappeared. Isn’t that intriguing?

At that time, 360 almost instantly controlled most of the domestic PC user groups through its free policy. This method of seizing the market will inevitably make other manufacturers always resent Zhou. There is a popular saying now: He who has the fans wins the world. When you have a fixed customer base and daily active users, it is difficult not to make money.

Although 360 still has a certain gap with the first-tier BAT, it is still a company that people can mention casually. Some people may ask, where is 360's profit point behind the free service?

1. Advertising revenue. Everyone should understand this, because most Internet companies now make money in this way. This year's Wei Zexi incident exposed another side of Baidu to everyone and made everyone understand what search engine bidding is like. According to the data, 360's annual advertising revenue is US$123 million, accounting for 73.3% of the annual revenue (2011 data). Advertising is divided into online marketing services, which is search engine bidding. 360 Navigation and 360 Search are the main supporting products. Search engine referral services, in layman's terms, means that whichever search engine is the default search engine for 360 Navigation needs to pay 360 for this part of the "diverted traffic" income. Previously, the default search engine was Baidu, and this part of the money was paid by Baidu. Later, it fell out with Baidu and switched to Google, and 360 also received about US$12 million in return from Google.

2.APP distribution. 360 is the largest APP distribution platform in China. In addition to its own 360 family bucket, most other software manufacturers and game manufacturers have launched products on this platform. When users download any APP from other manufacturers through 360 Mobile Assistant or 360 Guardian, the manufacturer will pay 360 a fee to achieve the purpose of market promotion. If the download volume of an APP is one yuan, this amount of revenue is also astronomical.

3. Revenue sharing between 360 web game platform and 70 web game developers

This model is similar to APP distribution, relying on a large customer base, 360 web game platform as the supporting product, and cooperating with well-known domestic manufacturers, 37, 9377, youxi.com. Players who come out of the 360 ​​web game platform and make top-ups and purchases in the game will get a share from 360 company, which is about 43.6 million US dollars, accounting for 26% of the total annual revenue (2011 data).

4. Qiku 360 mobile phone

When domestic mobile phones were gaining momentum, Zhou was unwilling to miss the opportunity and spent a lot of money to practice with Coolpad. In mid-2015, he launched the Qihoo 360 mobile phone, which was dubbed the most secure mobile phone in China. He did have the ability to do so. You know, the 360 ​​team "cracked" Google Chrome in 11 seconds at the World Hacker Competition. The 360 ​​mobile phone is still very good.

He who wins the fans wins the world. Whether it is Tencent Games defeating NetEase by relying on the banner of permanent free games, or Baidu dominating the domestic market with its own search engine, it is enough to show that the trend of free is unstoppable. Although the free things are actually charged passively, as an ordinary audience group, passive charges always feel better than active charges. It may be a psychological effect.