How can 300 million short video creators break through in 2021?

In recent years, short video platforms have occupied part of people’s leisure and entertainment time. Short videos have also become popular among the whole nation, and everyone can show themselves. Short videos are an opportunity, but it does not mean that everyone can make money in this industry. The author of this article starts from the market structure of the short video industry and analyzes and discusses the way out for short video creators. Let’s take a look together.

After going home for a few days during the Chinese New Year, I noticed with my own eyes that not only the young people working in big cities, but also the elderly and children in small villages and towns, were frequently watching interesting short videos, and naturally placing orders for all kinds of strange things.

Behind the spectacular rise of short videos are a large number of content creators (not necessarily celebrities or opinion leaders) who continue to upload their works. Public data shows that as of June 2020, nearly 300 million users have posted works on Kuaishou. In the first quarter of 2020 alone, 1.8 million content creators on Bilibili submitted 4.9 million video contents, and multiple content sections including life, entertainment, technology, and knowledge have all seen an explosion.

At the same time, an opposite idea exists in my mind - with the continued prosperity of short videos and influencers selling products, making money is not an easy thing.

Last year, Qingya, a "veteran" in the field of WeChat content entrepreneurship, pessimistically stated "How I lost 10 million in short videos". Later, Qingya himself came out to clarify that he used the more than 4 million yuan from selling the official account to switch to short videos, and lost nearly 5 million yuan in half a year.

In the past year, countless video columns have suddenly closed or stopped updating. A well-known video program said in its last video: "The Internet is actually a wasteland full of corpses. Most of what you can't see are actually corpses." "Most Internet programs die suddenly, and soon no one remembers them anymore. Giving them an ending at this time is a waste of money."

On the one hand, short videos continue to prosper commercially, while on the other hand, content creators are suffering. What is the current situation of the short video field in China? Why is it so difficult for short video creators to make money? In 2021, how can 300 million short video creators break through? All these issues are worth pondering.

01 The high threshold for creating short videos may not be what you see

In my previous article "10,000-word review of 2020: 8 trends, 3 insights, and 1 belief", I mentioned a point of view: "No matter what your education, origin, background, what you like, and what you are good at, you can put yourself on the video platform and be seen by everyone. As long as you have a mobile phone and register an account, you can start posting videos and live broadcasts. But the real difficulty is that you have to learn to separate your life personality from your professional personality - to play the right role in the right place and at the right time."

Here, I would like to make a further analysis: what everyone thinks may be wrong, and what you see may be a superficial phenomenon. For example, you may not have noticed the high threshold for creating short videos.

1. Interest threshold: What kind of high-quality content can’t even be produced by Nobel Prize or Pulitzer Prize winners?

There is a video on domestic social media: an electrician is eating on a high-voltage line, with 500 kilovolts of current under his feet and a deep abyss below. There are a lot of such contents on short video apps, including people sleeping on high-voltage lines.

Why haven’t we seen these interesting contents before? This kind of real scene and experience cannot be created even by Nobel Prize or Pulitzer Prize winners, and it is impossible for writers and photographers to climb up the high-voltage lines. Now every worker on the high-voltage lines has a mobile phone, and there is 4G signal in the mountains. These very unique and wonderful contents can be easily presented through the APP.

This is an era where everyone can create high-quality content. Everyone has had special and wonderful moments. By taking a picture of it and uploading it to the APP, you can easily complete the creation of high-quality content.

Luo Pang said that he has liked watching teachers solve math problems on short video platforms in the past six months. It’s not that he particularly likes math, but when he sees some difficult math problems being solved by others in no time, he feels like his brain is opened up and it’s a very pleasant experience. Why didn’t I see these interesting contents before?

Luo Pang believes that solving math problems is too tiring if you read books, look at pictures, watch TV, or listen to audio. After a long time, you will hate math. However, short videos make such "annoying" things vivid and interesting. You say, short videos are really powerful?

YouTube, a video website owned by Google, publishes a wide range of content. Even novice gynecologists who have just graduated in the United States for a few years mostly learned how to cut the umbilical cord of pregnant women on YouTube.

Have you noticed that the high-quality short video content I listed above either has professional and specialized thresholds, or is particularly challenging to your imagination, and cannot be produced casually.

2. Professional threshold: The difficulty of creating high-quality content is underestimated

A long time ago, I heard a PhD from a communication university talk about how difficult it is to shoot videos. Graduates from the Communication University have to shoot videos because of academic requirements and out of personal interest in following the new media trend. However, after they have gone through the planning, preparation, production, release, feedback, optimization and re-creation of the video program, most of them ended up in vain. Many people even gave up on themselves and said “I will never make videos again”. Most of them died in the first link.

Over the years, people have always been talking about the popularity of mobile phones and the lowering of the threshold for video production, saying that "pictures and text are dead, video is king", and even naively believe that they can create a good video by turning on the mobile phone camera and speaking and editing in one shot. But do you know how high the learning threshold for video creation is?

If the focus is on filming, the learning of audio-visual language is inevitable, including the camera techniques of push-pull, pan-tilt, and follow-up, and the selection of far, full, medium, and close shots;

If the main purpose is to appear on camera, you need to understand the script, language expression, and paralanguage to some extent. It is "metaphysical difficulty" to express yourself naturally without a script and have a good sense of the camera.

There is no filming or appearance on camera, just "taking what is available" to edit the video. In addition to the script, practicing the voice-over is even more important. The speaking speed, tone, pauses and stress will enhance the viewing experience of the video.

Any creation requires a long period of maturity, and creative training itself is enough to "kill" most content creators. For content creators, the most expensive thing is pain, not emotion.

Content production is becoming more and more expensive. Now the cost of making an excellent short video is no less than that of shooting an online movie. It is very difficult to win, not impossible, but your investment is much higher than in the past.

Fan services are becoming more and more expensive. Three or five years ago, a popular anchor’s impromptu personal performance could easily attract a lot of attention, but now it requires the support of an entire team.

Nowadays, high-quality domestic self-media content is also created based on indicators and teams. For example, the animated short videos produced by YiDu magazine once had a very advanced communication effect among its peers. They quantified the content production through a series of indicators, including duration, density of laughs in a fixed time period, etc. "For an 800-word script, there are clear regulations on the number of knowledge points and the logical arguments." The script, creativity, and animation are all created together.

The continuous output of high-quality content increasingly relies on teamwork. "Influencers" are no longer struggling alone, but are mass-producing through team collaboration. Naturally, the cost of creation is also incomparable.

3. Rights threshold: Content creation must be inimitable, which may not only be a copyright issue

Xu Bing, "the Chinese artist most concerned by the international art world," believes that today we are in a multi-layered state of life created by digital technology, which makes us passive in distinguishing true from false. Today, everyone is performing a double act with their own mobile phone. What we release to the world is entirely me and my mobile phone working together to express to the world who I am, what I look like, and what I want to say. It seems that whether your life is real is not important, the key is how you "create" your life.

Since your life is all about "creation", copyright issues are always with you.

Many years ago, many celebrities and opinion leaders created a large amount of high-quality content. Due to copyright (ownership confirmation) issues, "two entire generations (nearly 20 years) owe these content creators copyright income."

The biggest problem now is not the confirmation of ownership, but plagiarists and imitators, which are particularly annoying.

There is a celebrity called "The Genius of Merchandising" who uses the fanciest words, packages the cheapest goods, and sells the most bizarre and unlikely services. In just three months, the "little genius of merchandising" has accumulated more than 7 million followers on Douyin. The MCN agency behind him also took advantage of the situation and created two accounts in succession, "Liu Guixiang, the Showcase Manager" and "Little Bargaining Expert".

However, it wasn’t long before a large number of copycats and imitators emerged. “The Little Genius of Displaying Goods” once wrote in his profile, “Except for the list of people I follow, all others are copycats.”

According to incomplete statistics, accounts such as "The Little Fairy Who Sets Up Goods at Stalls", "The Funny Little Genius", and "The Little Cousin Who Sets Up Goods at Stalls" are visible imitators of the "Little Genius Who Sets Up Goods at Stalls" on the Douyin platform, and the number of their fans exceeds 100,000 or even exceeds 1 million. It seems that imitation and plagiarism are "highly rewarding" things.

02 What can we rely on to achieve a breakthrough in content creativity?

I have a basic prediction: there will be many content creators on the wealth list 10 years from now. Chinese content creators can generate dozens or even hundreds of IPs with annual revenues exceeding 100 million yuan by relying on culture and content copyright sales income.

I believe that in the future, whether it is graphic, long video, short video, or VR, each of us should get a reasonable income as long as we have the ability to create content.

So, what will the future breakthrough in content creation depend on?

1. Creative level: systems are more important than people

Wherever you pay attention, wealth will follow. To maintain user attention over the long term, there must be a continuous output of high-quality content, which cannot be achieved by any one person because people may interrupt.

No matter how smart or perseverant a creator is, he or she still has human weaknesses, his or her moods may fluctuate, and he or she may become emotional. One day he or she may be absent-minded, or have an argument with someone, or be in a bad mood, or be poached by another boss... Even if you have produced a hit content before, it will be the last hit.

A mature content team must have a time-tested creative system. For example, Rick and Morty, the animated series that has received the best response from global audiences in recent years, has a "story compass" system in its creative process: the plot should proceed to which step at what time, and any creative settings that the creators come up with must be incorporated into the normal rhythm, and there will never be a problem of starting well but ending badly, with no idea where to go next.

2. Strategic level: The real advantage is the cost of creation

In the past, everyone believed that the success of Weibo, Tik Tok, Kuaishou, and Bilibili came from celebrities, because celebrities have traffic. However, in recent years, short video platforms have generally emphasized "content is king". After upgrading the algorithm, even if all the celebrities in the user's subscription list stop updating, it will not affect consumers (fans) from obtaining a steady stream of content of interest. Among the 300 million content creators, there will always be particularly good works that can be selected.

So, what are the real advantages for content creators in the future? It's the cost.

Note: If you want to be famous, besides being more interesting than others, your most important basic skill is to reduce the cost of creation.

Tutorials on short video platforms will remind everyone: the first few seconds of the video are particularly important, and you must do everything you can to use the first few seconds to attract everyone's attention. Because most people will decide in the first few seconds whether they want to continue watching. As long as you can watch the first few seconds, the dropout rate will be much smaller later on.

Most short videos are usually less than 30 seconds long. If you have been attracted by the beginning of the video and watched to the 9th or 15th second, it actually becomes a "sunk cost". Most people will choose to just watch to the end. There are only a few seconds left anyway, so they want to see what kind of revelation you are going to make later.

Tik Tok’s earliest forms of following and imitating music and dance greatly reduced the difficulty of creating video content. Only by continuously reducing the cost of user behavior can mass content creation gradually rise. This is also the reason why all major video platforms are promoting their own short video creation tools.

3. Fan level: Good content comes from interaction

During the Chinese New Year, I talked with several PhD students who had returned from studying abroad, and unexpectedly discovered that they all watched the TV series "Mountains and Seas", and watched it repeatedly several times. Is the TV series particularly good? No, they are all watching the barrage.

Barrages are the result of fan interaction and are a form of secondary creation. I am very sure: good content comes from interaction. The basic consensus in the industry is that "content output and fan interaction should maintain a close to 1:1 investment."

Users born after 1995 and 2000 are generally willing to share to show their presence and gain recognition.

Traditional content production is mostly one-way, stable, and slow-paced, more like a broadcast; today's content creation must be multi-directional, compact, fluctuating, and high-frequency, more like a party.

If you look at many video apps and game apps, you will find that the most popular content creators are not the legendary camera experts or game masters, but warm-hearted players who are good at interacting with fans and stimulating their enthusiasm.

Some people believe that the most powerful thing about Bilibili is that it provides creators with thousands of "supporting actors", and these "supporting actors" are barrages. "A video is incomplete without comments."

There is a short video showing a bicycle colliding with a tricycle. The cyclist falls off and lands on the tricycle and is taken away by the tricycle. Just watching this video, you might say "ha, that was a near miss". But at this time, two comments passed by, one said "No time to explain, get in the car", and the other said "It's just like love." Did it hit your funny spot?

The real value of barrage lies in "re-creation in interaction" and "fans creating with you". You contribute 10% to create good content, and the other 90% depends on your fans. While broadcasting its self-produced drama "The Sky of the Wind Dog Boy", Bilibili took the initiative to launch a prize-winning submission campaign, encouraging users to use the video materials of the TV series to edit new content.

"You have to turn the stairs into a big keyboard that can produce piano sounds when you step on it, so as to stimulate everyone's interaction." Learn to mobilize the creative energy of fans.

4. Strategic level: Timing and rhythm are the most important

Some investors believe that they can make a comprehensive judgment from the two perspectives of "business of the times" and "business of opportunity" to gain a three-dimensional insight into the business trends currently occurring.

From the perspective of "business in this era", Harvard Business Review once mentioned a concept called "content economy". Celebrities and social networks have deeply penetrated into modern business, and the content covers all products and services related to consumers - it can be a game, a topic, a variety show, a live broadcast, including the experiences and feelings accumulated by consumers. For consumer brands, content has become the “third communication element” besides products and services.

From the perspective of "business of opportunity", content creation can be regarded as a kind of entrepreneurship, and the bonus period of "content entrepreneurship" can be divided into three stages: the investment bonus period, the content bonus period and the operation bonus period.

1. The bonus period of launch: The characteristic is that the cost of acquiring customers is very low, probably just a few cents. This was the case with Weibo in 2012, Douyin and Kuaishou in 2018, and WeChat Video Account this year.
2. Content bonus period: The core is that content creation must be good enough. Either by targeting a niche group of people or a niche field, you can attract a large number of loyal fans, such as "Liu Shenleilei Reads Jin Yong" and "Uncle Kai Tells Stories".
3. Operation bonus period: This era will test your business operations and sense of rhythm. For example, in early 2019, when you created content on Douyin, your followers increased very quickly. However, after more than half a year, if you continued to use the same methods and routines, your followers did not increase as quickly, as there was a large amount of competition among creators in each segmented content section.

Comparing the pace of content entrepreneurship in the past 10 years, we can wait and see whether the next wave of momentum transfer will be WeChat Video Account.

Of course, being able to stick to the right direction is a big challenge. However, the challenge is actually greater in terms of whether one can strike the right timing and rhythm in the right direction and keep up with the evolution and iteration of different content platforms.

The business of the times may not be easy to miss. As long as the direction is right, opportunities will emerge in endlessly. If the business opportunity is missed, there will never be that trigger point again, which will be very regrettable.

03 Summary

In the past year, many changes have taken place in video content creation. Both game live streaming platforms and video platforms are facing new integration. The new concept of medium-length videos has been born between long videos and short videos. The music and audio fields are still undercurrents. It is very worth looking forward to whether new technology drivers will emerge in the 5G era and whether AR and VR will be truly commercialized.

I have always believed that truly good content must be the result of your inner collision with this era. How you and I feel about the world and how we understand everyone's most widespread inner anxieties determine the spiritual temperament of the content you create. Whether it is a tragicomedy or a farce, what you see in it is yourself, and the moment it touches you releases a certain anxiety.

There is only one standard for creating good video content: to what extent, within what scope, and in what time dimension, it can reach more people's hearts.

The real scarce resource is time. What video content is worth users' time and affects users' life experience is what creators should consider most.

Author: IMS Li Meng

Source: Li Meng (ID: imslimeng)