With a monthly income of over 300,000 yuan, have small and medium-sized creators found the last blue ocean in Alipay?

Contentization is something that almost all major Internet companies must do. Now Alipay is also entering the content market. What changes have taken place in Alipay’s content ecosystem?

“Alipay may be the last blue ocean that all bloggers must enter.”

On June 12, at the first content open day of Alipay, financial blogger "Sun Dalu" said this. In February this year, she joined Alipay and earned 1,000 yuan from her first video. Her monthly income has stabilized at 20,000 to 30,000 yuan, and her current number of fans has reached 93,000.

Before this, she had been in the self-media circle for many years and had 2 million fans on the Internet, but she considered herself to be just a "butt anchor". After joining Alipay, the platform's traffic and monetization support gave her a sense of immediate return, and she also regarded Alipay as one of her most important content management positions.

There are many creators who have similar feelings as "Sun Dalu".

This is also reflected in the first content ecology report card submitted by Alipay: in the past year, the number of monthly active creators on Alipay has increased 10 times, and some creators have a monthly income of more than 300,000 yuan.

Based on the existing achievements, Alipay once again sent out a signal that it will focus on content, announcing that it will invest 1 billion in cash and 10 billion in traffic to support content creators. It will also introduce advertising resources worth 100 million to provide creators with commercial monetization opportunities.

From first opening it to creators in May last year, to the announcement of the full opening of the UGC entrance by Life Account in November last year, to the latest release of traffic and monetization policies, Alipay has become more and more determined in the content track.

During this period, what changes have taken place in the Alipay content ecosystem? Which creators have made their first fortune on Alipay? Can Alipay become a new outlet for creators?

1. With 1 billion in cash and 10 billion in traffic, Alipay is determined to develop content

Content-based development is almost the general trend of all major Internet platforms nowadays.

For Alipay, which has 800 million monthly active users, content is an important window to showcase the diversity of its functions.

The Xinbang editorial department has observed that currently Alipay content is mainly distributed in the "Today's Hot List" and "Video" channels on the homepage, which not only covers the real-time hot topics of the day, but also provides personalized content recommendations based on user preferences.

When the content is moderately generalized, the user scale and usage time of Alipay content show a positive growth trend.

Official data from Alipay shows that over the past year, the average daily number of users consuming Alipay content has increased eightfold, and the average consumption time per person has doubled.

If there is a demand for content, then there naturally needs to be content supply, and this is the opportunity for creators.

In May last year, Alipay was officially opened to content creators, and then launched a creative profit-sharing plan at the end of June. Creators can join the plan if they meet the corresponding conditions such as the number of fans, number of videos, and number of views. This move also made many creators discover for the first time that "you can make money by posting videos on Alipay."

According to the latest data from Alipay, 140,000 creators have entered the profit-sharing plan, with the highest monthly income exceeding 300,000 yuan.

It is worth mentioning that as the growth of the short video industry approaches its ceiling, the incentives for creation on major platforms have weakened, and the most obvious point is the revenue from video playback. A creator once told us that in the past, a popular video with tens of millions of views could easily get a cash incentive of thousands to tens of thousands of yuan on a short video platform, but now there is basically no cash incentive.

At this point, Alipay, a latecomer, is still in the early stages of recruiting creators. It announced that it will continue to increase its content investment on the basis of existing support, and is expected to invest 1 billion in cash and 10 billion in traffic to support high-quality creators by the end of the year. At the same time, Alipay continues to recruit high-quality creators from the entire network, and top authors can get a guaranteed minimum of 5,000 yuan, with a maximum incentive amount of 30,000 yuan.

In terms of on-site infrastructure, Alipay also opens up more service scenarios for creators, improving their publishing, interaction and distribution efficiency.

It is understood that Alipay’s positioning of content is to fully integrate with the end-user’s mind and high-frequency scenarios under the premise of being a non-independent content App.

At present, Life Account has been connected with 27 high-frequency service scenarios in the Alipay App, such as travel, medical care, and membership, providing creators with more distribution platforms. Whether it is real money incentives for creators or the huge traffic of Alipay itself, these are extremely attractive to "bottom-end creators" looking for opportunities. As soon as the open day ended, some creators had already sorted out "traffic-saving tips" to share with peer communities.

2. Pan-financial intelligence + local life, a breakthrough in tapping into Alipay’s content dividend?

No creator wants to miss the bonus period of a content platform, but how to reap the benefits is also a "science".

Facts have proved that simply moving and distributing content will not really capture Alipay users. "Host Azhe" said, "Each platform has its own attributes. You can't use the same method to make TikTok as you did to Xiaohongshu. The effect will not be good."

When it comes to content creation, Alipay is neither Douyin nor Xiaohongshu.

After running wildly on the road of content for a year, we have gradually found our own content route - while developing in a diversified way, we amplify the pan-financial and local life content that grows based on the minds of end users.

As an app that started with financial payment functions, Alipay has a pan-financial quotient gene, which is strongly linked to keywords such as financial management and investment. The high degree of scene adaptation, coupled with the growing trend of "making money" in the past two years, has laid the foundation for the rapid development of pan-financial quotient.

Data shows that general financial business has become the fastest growing content category on Alipay in the past year, with one in five Alipay users liking to read general financial business content.

Therefore, more and more financial creators choose to use Alipay as an important content platform, and the number of accounts opened increased sixfold in 2023. The editorial department of Xinbang found that more than 70% of financial bloggers with more than one million fans on the entire network have already settled in Alipay Life Accounts.

In the opinion of "Sun Dalu", it is not easy to create financial content. On the one hand, the track is becoming more and more inward-looking and excellent creators are emerging in endlessly. On the other hand, many platforms that mainly focus on entertainment content cannot attract traffic with financial content at all.

"Sun Dalu" believes that Alipay is the most conducive platform for the growth of financial content on the entire network. After joining in February, her first video reached 1.73 million views, and the content incentive income reached 1,000 yuan. Not long after, her video about "How much money can you make if you deposit 1 million in the bank" became a hit on Alipay, with 4.3 million views.

From February to June, "Sun Dalu" maintained original content on Alipay every day. As of now, the number of fans has reached 92,000, and the cumulative income of the account has exceeded 110,000. In particular, the income in the past month was nearly 50,000 yuan. She believes that "on Alipay, it is about both dreams and money."

There are many financial creators like "Sun Dalu" who earn both traffic and money. Data shows that in the past year, among all the creators with high commissions on Alipay, general financial creators accounted for a quarter.

In addition to financial content, local life is another breakthrough for creators to tap into the Alipay content dividend.

Alipay's strong life service attributes have become the basis of its local life traffic. In a treasure city recommendation activity launched last year, 3.7 million Alipay users participated in recommending their hometowns, which also brought new opportunities to many local life bloggers.

In March this year, Xinbang conducted a survey on local lifestyle bloggers and found that "more than 90% of store exploration bloggers cannot support themselves by working full-time", but many mid-level and even low-level store exploration bloggers active on Alipay have successfully monetized. In the current context of the crazy internal circulation of short videos, finding platforms that still have dividends is the simplest and most efficient way to solve the problem.

"The legendary Bo Zai" is one of the representative cases. He made store exploration videos and had only a few hundred thousand fans on the Internet, but he earned 200,000 yuan in the first month after joining Alipay. His hit video "Iron Lunch Boxes on the Streets of Harbin" has been played more than 46 million times.

Alipay will continue to increase its support for the two types of special content: general financial literacy and local life. The Xinbang editorial department has seen that the site has launched many related content incentive activities and has also launched an exclusive financial literacy channel.

It is reported that in terms of local life, Alipay will also match upstream cultural and tourism resources.

These actions have pointed out a clear development direction for creators, but they do not mean that as long as they create general financial and local life content, they will definitely reap the benefits. Creators who are not in these two fields will have fewer opportunities.

It is understood that Alipay's content incentive sharing is settled based on three dimensions: the original quality of the content, the degree of user preference and the effective playback volume of the content. Creators of other content types, including general entertainment, comedy, knowledge, home, etc., as long as they publish high-quality original content that is loved by users, will get good traffic results and revenue.

3. In the era of internal circulation, can Alipay become a new way out for small and medium-sized creators?

Over the past year, the editorial department of Xinbang has talked to many creators. Their biggest concern about Alipay’s layout in the content track is that it will only be a “three-minute heat”.

After all, before Alipay, many platforms also tried to develop content and live broadcasting, and some of them received mediocre responses. But Alipay spent a year verifying the feasibility of this path with a series of data, such as a 10-fold year-on-year increase in the number of monthly active creators and an 8-fold year-on-year increase in the number of daily content consumption users.

The support policy of 1 billion in cash and 10 billion in traffic demonstrates Alipay's determination to continuously invest in the content field in the long term, and it is by no means just trying to test the waters in the market.

Feedback from creators waiting to see what happens

For current content creators, especially small and medium-sized creators, Alipay still has a lot of room to make money.

As we all know, Internet traffic has entered the stock era. The QuestMobile report shows that the scale of active mobile Internet users in China will reach 1.232 billion in March 2024. The growth rate of active users has narrowed, and the increase in users has decreased compared with the past.

The Matthew effect is becoming more and more obvious, and mid- and low-end creators have to work hard just to gain traffic and revenue.

The Xinbang editorial department has noticed that in the past one or two years, some small and medium-sized bloggers who were unable to gain popularity have even given up creating content.

"Attracting traffic and updates on a mature platform is not friendly to newcomers. You can't make money and there is no traffic. Finding a new platform in its rising period with both traffic and money will provide faster growth opportunities. " "Host Azhe" expressed his opinion. The reasons why he is optimistic about Alipay are, first, its 1 billion user base, and second, its deep traffic pool, which has opened up 27 high-frequency service scenarios within the App.

Although Alipay is still a newcomer in the content creation industry, it has spent a year building the video and live broadcast infrastructure, opening up and continuously improving commercialization. In the near future, it will also add short image and text capabilities, and further lower the threshold for creation, providing batch posting, related synchronization, topic selection guidance, intelligent creation and other capabilities.

In terms of content revenue, after comparison, the editorial department of Xinbang found that Alipay's content incentives can be said to be the largest in the entire network, and the maximum monthly income limit is also higher than other platforms . Some people have achieved a monthly total income of 300,000.

At the same time, the commercialization forms of the back-end links such as Alipay video sales and live streaming sales are also being built and improved, and more diversified commercialization models will be tried soon.

There is no doubt that Alipay can provide a new way out for creators who are struggling in the internal competition, one that can bring both traffic and money.

"For small and medium-sized bloggers, don't wait and see, come in early, the competition here is not that fierce, with 1 billion in cash and 10 billion in traffic in 2024, this is the last depression where content is king," said "host Azhe" giving advice from a "veteran."

Author: Xiaoba; Editor: Truffle

Source: WeChat public account: Newrank (ID: newrankcn)