With a GMV of 10 million in one hour, Guo Youcai has "changed his face"

Some time ago, Guo Youcai became popular with the song "Promise", and many people were still worried whether he could continue to be popular. Recently, Guo Youcai started live streaming to sell goods, becoming the new top talent live streaming, answering this question.

The past September was undoubtedly an eventful one.

First, @Ximba fought against @CrazyLittleYangGe across platforms, and the latter's live streaming e-commerce empire was shaken in a series of storms. Then, @Northeast Rain Sister was questioned for posing for "rice field crabs" and repeatedly failed because of the cassava flour mixed in sweet potato vermicelli. In addition, @Liu Genghong, @Xiaoying's Family, @Tianyuan Denggang and other top influencers have successively encountered "failures" of varying degrees.

At this time, the celebrity @郭有才, who has tens of millions of fans, started his livestreaming sales. According to Chanmama data, @郭有才 started two livestreaming sales in September, with estimated sales of 10 million to 25 million and 750 million to 10 million respectively, and the popularity of both shows was around 10 million, which is a good result.

Guo Youcai Live

After becoming popular in May with the song "Promise", @郭有才, who has experienced suspension and resumption of broadcasting, has not really left the public eye, or "became famous in 15 seconds and disappeared in 15 seconds" like many other Douyin celebrities. On the contrary, he used three or four months to grab traffic and gradually became a new talent live broadcast "top streamer".

However, @郭有才 caught the "late train" of live e-commerce. When the industry dividends fade and the accumulated problems emerge, can @郭有才 still create a business myth? How far can he go on the road of live streaming to sell goods?

01 From explosion to monetization

"Brother Youcai has always said that he wants to give back to everyone when he has the ability. Today is the first time we help a company."
“I need to know how to share all the traffic that my brothers and sisters have given me with people who have dreams, with beautiful scenic spots, and with valuable companies.”

On September 8, @郭有才 started his first live show of selling goods on the stage of Zhongnanmen Ancient City in Tongren, Guizhou. During the two-hour live broadcast that night, he started with singing as usual. Within 3 minutes of the start of the broadcast, the number of people online in the live broadcast room reached 150,000.

Guo Youcai in front of the camera is no longer dressed as "Mr. Tree" during the live broadcast in Heze. He shaved his beard and took off his floral shirt. He was not nervous at all in front of the huge crowds of people, and he seemed very adept at the stage scheduling. Starting from Heze, Guo Youcai started a new outdoor live broadcast mode of "cultural tourism + singing". Tongren, Guizhou is his 17th stop.

Guo Youcai Cultural Tourism Live Broadcast

During the breaks in the live broadcast, he repeatedly emphasized, "Today is a particularly memorable day, and it is also the first step towards talent." An hour later, he officially started selling products, and the products he put on the shelves and explained that night mainly included Liby laundry detergent, Printemps tissue paper, thermos cups and rice.

Guo Youcai Live

According to Chanmama data, the live broadcast attracted 16.11 million viewers. Although the live broadcast lasted less than an hour, the sales reached 10 million to 25 million, which is a very good result. Among them, a Liby laundry detergent set priced at 189 yuan contributed more than 5 million GMV, and the Xin Xiangyin tissue paper set priced at 199 yuan achieved sales of 2.5 million to 5 million.

In terms of the sales model, Guo Youcai's method is somewhat "smart": there are not many SKUs on the shelves, and the brand side directly explains the products and introduces the welfare mechanism, while he is responsible for assisting the explanation. The Liby brand side even demonstrated the washing of dirty clothes on the spot. However, it can also be seen from the live broadcast room that @郭有才 has built a mature team and is very familiar with the live broadcast rules and words.

Perhaps because he "made money", on September 22, @郭有才 started live streaming again, selling Yili milk, OPPEIN kitchenware, dinner plates, Borui razors, etc. Again, there were not many SKUs, and he carefully limited the selection to domestic brands with a certain degree of popularity. The sales of this live streaming reached 7.5 million to 10 million, and the number of viewers exceeded 9.5 million.

After becoming famous with the song "Promise" in May this year, despite many controversies, @郭有才 did not "rise and fall quickly" like most amateur Internet celebrities. On the contrary, Guo Youcai seized the "15 seconds of fame". After four months of operation, Guo Youcai has his own "Talent Team" on Douyin and has opened up his own way to monetize.

Let’s review the rise of @郭有才.

In May 2024, @郭有才 became famous for his cover version of "Promise", and also made Heze South Station famous. In just over ten days, his traffic has reached the peak: his cover song "Promise" topped the QQ Music Hot List, his personal account had more than 10 million fans in ten days, and his live broadcast reward income was as high as 3 to 4 million yuan. He was also quickly hired by the Heze government as a tourism ambassador.

Guo Youcai sings "Promise"

Even from the current perspective, @郭有才's popularity model is quite rich, including grassroots narratives that users love to read and Internet love stories favored by Douyin users, such as "A virtuous wife helps me to reach my lofty ambitions, and I will repay my virtuous wife with ten thousand taels of gold." This type of narrative successfully transferred the popularity of the work to him.

With fame, controversy also followed. On May 20, a netizen reported the chaotic live broadcast of Heze South Station. On May 22, Guo Youcai said in a live broadcast of Heze National Flower Expo Park that he would stop broadcasting for three days, and then appeared in the live broadcast on the 23rd.

In mid-June, after a 19-day hiatus, @郭有才 no longer had a “retro image” when he returned to the camera. When Heze could no longer provide a stable source of popularity for his live broadcast, he started his new series, “Traveling with Music”.

The monetization path of "culture and tourism" not only gave him official endorsement, but also greatly enriched his live broadcast scenes and content. According to rough statistics from Kas, from June to October, @郭有才 toured in Hunan, Anhui, Hubei, Shanxi, Guizhou and other provinces, and was hired as a cultural tourism recommendation officer in many places. His first cultural tourism live broadcast was in Fenghuang County, Xiangxi. The cumulative number of viewers for four live broadcasts in three days exceeded 100 million. Although his popularity has declined since then, it has remained at around 10 million.

02 Outdoor experts are no longer “grassroots”

In fact, there are traces of @郭有才's long-term popularity.

On the one hand, after earning enough traffic and popularity, Guo Youcai began to build his own "Cai Jia Ban", essentially following the "apprenticeship" model of big anchors and expanding his team members. In the live broadcast on June 18, Guo Youcai said that the power of one person is always limited, and in order to achieve better live broadcast effects, he considered setting up a team.

In the live broadcast room of Wuhan Flower Expo in July, @郭有才 announced that he would transform into a mentor and form the "Class 15" team. He would be the team leader and sign grassroots singers with musical dreams. The current team members include @秦科, @九九, @小浪花, etc., and the scale is still expanding. The profiles of these talents' Douyin homepages are marked with the "Class 15" MCN logo, and the words "Thank you for your talent" are written after their personal IDs. This kind of "gratitude" model will not be unfamiliar to users familiar with Douyin.

Guo Youcai, member of Class 15

After the Wuhan live broadcast ended, @郭有才’s fan base reached 16 million, making him a leading figure among outdoor talent anchors.

In order to further attract traffic and expand the influence of "Talent Class", @郭有才 set up the account @音為有才·點唱厅 at the beginning of the month. This account uses "you order me to sing" as the main content format for "like-minded friends" to show their talents, and is in a live broadcast state almost all day. Guo Youcai also dropped into the live broadcast room to divert traffic to it. The account currently has nearly 100,000 followers.

On the other hand, Guo Youcai is also actively connecting with other outdoor talent masters to share each other's traffic pools and divert traffic.

For example, he covered the original song "General" by this year's new outdoor contestant @苍海一舟, and a large number of @苍海一舟's fans went to comment on his video; during the national tour, singers like @牛犇 and @杨雯梓 also went to his live broadcast room to support him; @戚隆, @放放 and other talents who already have a certain number of fans also linked up with him and posted a video saying, "Thank you for letting us know each other", which shows his influence in the outdoor talent anchor circle.

In July this year, the top outdoor live broadcaster @唐艺 started an outdoor live broadcast of rafting in the Mangshan Grand Canyon, and @郭有才 also went to support him. The live broadcast reached 17.89 million viewers that day. Since then, the two have joined forces for live broadcasts many times.

Guo Youcai and Tang Yi live broadcast

As traffic gradually stabilized, Guo Youcai started live streaming to sell goods. He said, "Chinese brands have contacted Youcai... Next, I will help some valuable Chinese brands."

Kas believes that the key to exploring Guo Youcai's success is his personality. The "personality" here refers to the image he presents to the public, which may have some similarities and some differences with the real person.

In short videos and live broadcasts, Guo Youcai has always kept a low profile, calling himself "Brother Youcai" and referring to the audience in the live broadcast room as "brothers and sisters." This low profile has won him the attention of a group of middle-aged fans. Among his fan profiles, users aged 31-40 account for more than 49%.

When fans praised him for his talent, he would show off his "bookish air" more, filming himself slowly walking into the camera while saying "reading thousands of books and traveling thousands of miles". His choice of words and sentence structure and video style were very much in line with fans' preferences.

In the words of his fans, "His language is beyond his education, his dressing style is beyond his age, and his emotional intelligence is beyond our reach." For the outdoor expert, this group of highly sticky middle-aged fans contributes a stable flow of traffic to his live broadcast.

Of course, Guo Youcai was also accompanied by controversy during this process. Some users questioned the collapse of his image, saying, "You said before that you would not sell goods through live streaming, and now it is still the same," lamenting that the end of Internet celebrities is selling goods through live streaming.

A more well-known controversy came from @MR-白冰. In a live broadcast, @郭有才 told fans that a game company contacted him for business cooperation, "the money offered is the most I have ever seen in my life", but he refused because he felt it would lead children astray, "I know what to do and what not to do". Many netizens believed that this statement was directed at the expert @MR-白冰, who fought back in the comment section, saying that advertising is a platform task and that he makes money by advertising, not "begging for food by tips".

In fact, whether it is outdoor cultural tourism or live streaming sales, @郭有才’s path to monetization has precedents to follow.

Going back, there is the outdoor "No. 1" @唐艺, who has 45.67 million fans. She has been releasing videos since 2018. Catching up with the outdoor live broadcast trend, she has become the most popular live anchor on Douyin. Cultural tourism is also an important live broadcast content of Tang Yi. In 2021, she received an invitation from Zhongxiang, Hubei, to perform and broadcast live.

Since then, @唐艺 has also toured major scenic spots across the country and has its own "Tangyi Grand Stage" and "Go Far with Art" IP. In terms of live streaming sales, in 2022, @唐艺 set a record of bringing in 120 million yuan in sales in three months. At present, its average sales per show is about 1 million to 2.5 million yuan.

Since the beginning of this year, the "culture and tourism trend" has become stronger and stronger. In the high-end market, there are big names like Dong Yuhui, and in the sinking market, efforts are made to target outdoor experts. @苍海一舟, who also became famous this year, also relied on the help of culture and tourism. His popularity experience is talked about by fans: he did not release a work before the end of July, but with the configuration of "one person, one dog and one bamboo raft", he attracted tens of millions of fans in 10 months.

Previously, @苍海一舟 always live-streamed in a mask, and only officially "revealed" his face at a fan meeting at the end of July this year. That night, the live broadcast also included the star singer Hu Haiquan, and the live broadcast popularity reached the second place in the top 100 list, second only to Guo Youcai. On Douyin, 苍海一舟 also received invitations for cultural and tourism live broadcasts in Xinxiang, Henan, Wangmangling, Yunding, Taihang Mountains, and other places.

Cang Hai Yi Zhou Live

In 2024, outdoor talents gradually left the grassroots era and found their own stage.

It can be said that @郭有才 is the one who has benefited from the dividends of the times, but for most ordinary people, the dividends of the times always come and go quickly.

For Guo Youcai who seized the opportunity, the next question is: How to avoid failure in live streaming sales?