Bloggers anxious about business orders flock to Xiaohongshu to become buyers

As the advertising market gradually tightens, many bloggers are facing the dilemma of fewer business orders. In order to find new sources of income growth, more and more bloggers are flocking to Xiaohongshu and transforming themselves into buyers, realizing the commercial value of integrating product quality and effect through live streaming.

In the past year, in the blogger circle that mainly relies on traditional advertising income, there has been frequent news that even with millions of fans and tens of millions of video views, advertising inquiries have decreased.

Brand owners' advertising budgets are visibly decreasing, and they are more cautious about advertising. Brands are no longer just pursuing "brand effect", but also looking at actual conversions and clearly calculating ROI (return on investment). Bloggers who make a living from this are naturally the most sensitive to changes in the industry.

It is clear that content creation alone can no longer meet brand needs. A blogger told Tech Planet that too many business orders often limit performance and cannot fully demonstrate their characteristics in content cooperation. More importantly, some bloggers have made decent money by transforming into live broadcasts. The choice of brands has also shifted from a passive system of accepting business orders to a more proactive system of deepening cooperation with truly recognized brands.

This is confirmed by the latest rise100 annual list released by Xiaohongshu e-commerce. Compared with 2023, the number of people becoming Xiaohongshu buyers is 8.1 times that of last year.

However, becoming a buyer does not mean that advertising cooperation can no longer be done, but rather that the buyer can cooperate with brands in advertising + live broadcasting, and improve their commercial value by combining products and effects. As one buyer said, as commercial value increases, the number of advertisements received will also increase.

Many people have tried to explore new ways out, but they often have many concerns. In the past, the rapid development of traditional live e-commerce has made the outside world accustomed to thinking that the industry has been monopolized, the cost of live broadcasting is high, and this is a game that only belongs to the top players. Even if there is still market space, many people are worried that they have no experience in live broadcasting in the past, and will end up paying sunk costs such as money, time, and energy in vain.

In fact, 67% of the buyers on the rise100 list have fewer than 500,000 followers, and 19 of them have less than 100,000 followers. The buyer with the lowest number of fans has just over 10,000 fans.

Buyers who took the first step in transformation have reaped the first wave of dividends, but is this a game for only a few?

1. Take the Choice into Your Own Hands

Bloggers who have not received any advertisements for a long time usually fall into such a moment, gradually rising from income anxiety to self-doubt and denial, and repeatedly jumping between the thoughts of continuing to persevere or giving up.

Brand advertising revenue is a buyer's market. Bloggers must accept the ever-changing screening rules. Advertising revenue will also be affected by both the advertising market and the platform's commercialization policies.

The biggest motivation for bloggers to transform is to change this passive waiting state. Buyers can control their own live broadcast rooms, have actual sales conversions, let brand customers measure, and can also actively connect with more customers.

In the past, when brands approached blogger @Healerzzz to collaborate, they would quote prices based on her recent blog traffic, fan data, and personal style, and the collaboration process was full of uncertainties. After becoming a buyer, @Healerzzz has more choices in her own hands. If she chooses the right products for each live broadcast, the results will not be bad, and she can also get more feedback.

For many bloggers, the most difficult step in their transformation to buyers is often taking the first step, and they often have to go through a long psychological struggle.

The biggest doubt of @恩恩妈咪, a full-time mother born in the 1990s, was whether she could succeed with zero experience. She shared a video on the renovation of the study area in the children's room on Xiaohongshu, which attracted many mothers' attention and inquiries. Relying on her parenting experience and knowledge, she took this opportunity to start live streaming and share various school supplies. Her monthly sales have increased from five figures at the beginning to millions of buyers now.

Tech Planet noticed that Xiaohongshu buyers are different from the anchors in traditional e-commerce. They focus on the personalized needs of very precise groups of people. As long as they can meet the precise needs of users and have experience in a certain field, they have the opportunity to achieve good results.

@小文梨子, a buyer born in the 2000s, only targets one group of people: female college students who need products with high quality and price ratio. She posts notes every day to share good things, and launches products through the small list of products on Xiaohongshu. She does not do live broadcasts, but has sold hundreds of thousands of products per month. Buying on Xiaohongshu has also become the first job for a group of young people entering the workplace.

An interesting phenomenon is that this is almost a kind of e-commerce startup with the lowest cost. When relying on low prices to win and investment, you need to recruit operations, assistant broadcasters, central control, pitchers, etc. Each of them is an investment, but in Xiaohongshu, there is another face.

Take maternal and infant buyer @Hzirisxy as an example. In the first six months of live streaming, she completed all the tasks by herself. As the business expands, she has now formed a small team. She is mainly responsible for product selection, and the other three employees are responsible for editing, business affairs, and assistants respectively.

These are also the reasons that prompt more people to try transformation, but obviously, it is not something that can be done overnight.

2. The commercial potential behind being a buyer

Many bloggers who decide to transform themselves into buyers not only want to change the passive advertising income situation, but also see the commercial potential behind it.

Many brands plan their advertising budgets at the beginning of each year or before the beginning of each quarter, and bloggers’ advertising revenue can often be predicted at this time. However, live streaming brings in variables, and if live streaming is done well, it can break the ceiling of bloggers’ revenue.

Some bloggers are seen by more businesses after live streaming, which brings new advertising opportunities and deeper cooperation.

When @Hzirisxy first started to transform into a buyer, she suspended advertising cooperation due to the heavy workload of live streaming. However, due to the outstanding live streaming data, she often appeared on the buyer list released by Xiaohongshu e-commerce, so more merchants found @Hzirisxy and hoped to establish dual cooperation with her in note-taking and live streaming.

After collaborating with the outdoor brand Salomon on multiple live broadcasts, sports buyer @姜斯达 not only created multiple million-dollar products and sold-out records, but also gained a deeper understanding of Salomon. As a result, he carried out more in-depth cooperation with the brand, such as special live broadcasts of new product launches, and was also invited by the brand to the store broadcast room to do new live broadcasts.

@Healerzzz also mentioned that as she cooperated with more and more brands, she changed her cooperation with some brands from "mixed" to "small special" cooperation, and the number of live broadcasts increased from 1 to 6 per month, and monthly sales jumped from 200,000 to 8 million.

There are also some vertical buyers who conduct cross-category live broadcasts based on their fan base and life status to further increase their live broadcast revenue.

Caption: Buyer @Cookie Mom loves to eat cookies.

@Cookie mom loves to eat cookies is a full-time mother. At first, she only shared children's clothing and baby products. However, this year, many fans asked her about the clothes and jewelry she wore during live broadcasts, and kept posting requests for "same style" in the comment section. So she started to put related products on the shelves in the live broadcast room, because the clothes she selected are usually classic and versatile, and because she takes care of her children every day, she is more picky about the fabrics of clothes, and her bags are mainly practical, which attracts many like-minded fans to buy. By sharing fashion outfits across industries, @Cookie mom loves to eat cookies's monthly income has directly quadrupled.

Live streaming has great commercial potential, but some bloggers are worried that such commercialization will cause fans to unfollow them. Bloggers who have already tried the transformation believe that although some fans will be lost after live streaming, many new fans have also been attracted. They believe that as long as buyers maintain professional product selection and the content is not perfunctory, users will not blindly reject commercialization.

Fashion buyer @yizhiyoujudi

After doing buyer live broadcast, her fans increased from 38,000 to 370,000 because of her product selection and content, which were loved by many fans. @Hzirisxy mentioned that live broadcast increased the frequency of her interaction with fans, and the two sides were like friends who shared with each other online, and the fan stickiness was greatly improved.

The number and stickiness of fans are not only important positive feedback for a blogger/buyer’s creation, but can also bring benefits to the blogger when quoting for brand cooperation.

3. Brands need to attract customers and also need sales. Where are the opportunities for bloggers?

Buyer live streaming opens up the entire chain from product promotion to sales, which is more in line with the current changes in brand marketing strategies.

@一颗KK, who transformed from a soft furnishing designer with 10 years of experience to a buyer, believes that buyer live streaming is a model of "product and effect integration". It is no longer the original model of just promotional exposure without actual conversion, but a closed loop through live streaming with goods. When the value of the blogger is magnified, business orders will naturally increase.

This is consistent with the current trend of brands focusing more on actual conversion needs. The value of bloggers is also further magnified, and through sincere product selection and sincere recommendations, fans can save time and effort in purchasing products.

Moreover, today’s brand marketing strategies are more diversified. They no longer simply look at the number of fans, but comprehensively cover bloggers at different stages. This means that buyers of different types and with different numbers of fans have more opportunities to be seen by merchants.

For example, the nourishing brand Yanziwu has more than 50 cooperative buyers every month. In addition to cooperating with benchmark buyers and celebrity buyers, it also maintains stable daily sales through paid cooperation with mid-level buyers and pure commission cooperation with daily broadcast buyers.

As outdoor brand Salomon deepens its cooperation with buyers, it gradually expands the scope of cooperation with buyers in cross-country running, professional outdoor sports and other subdivided sports. Although these buyers do not have many fans, they can help brands convey their brand concepts in a certain field and accurately sell their products to the right people.

In addition, just as there are cross-category groups that promote products, brands now not only cooperate with vertical buyers, but also cooperate with buyers based on scenarios and groups. This means that buyers can cooperate with more types of brands.

The buyers that Yanzhiwu cooperates with are not limited to the food category. They will look for suitable buyers based on the different consumption scenarios and needs of bird's nest. In the cooperation with fashion buyer @李白白, although she will not focus on explaining bird's nest porridge, she will eat a bowl of it when it is time for dinner during the live broadcast, and while eating, she will share her real experience such as "The bird's nest porridge is good. I rely on it to replenish energy every day during the live broadcast" to guide orders.

At present, brands are looking for business certainty, and bloggers are also looking for the right to choose their income. Transforming from blogger to buyer not only meets the brand's demand for "product and effect integration", but also brings bloggers more stable income.

Text | Lin Jing This article is written by the author of Operation Party [Tech Planet], WeChat public account: [Tech Planet], original/authorized to be published on Operation Party, and any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.