Recharge exceeded 23 million in one day, and revenue exceeded 100 million in 8 days. Is the first year of paid short dramas here?

Nowadays, the popularity of short dramas is getting stronger and stronger. In the past one or two months, short dramas on mini programs have been constantly popular. The first year of paid short dramas has come. Is there still a chance to join the market now? Let's take a look together~

Recharge exceeded 23 million in one day, and revenue exceeded 100 million in 8 days... In the past month or two, mini-program short dramas have attracted attention from both inside and outside the industry with their amazing ability to attract money and incredible investment-to-production ratio. 2023 is also known as the "first year of paid short dramas."

Different from the short dramas on long and short video platforms, mini-program short dramas use mini-programs as the carrier, are two or three minutes long, and have up to 100 episodes. They are mainly monetized through user recharge payments.

However, the model of paid short dramas has actually existed for a long time, but now with mini programs as the carrier, more ways of playing have been developed. At a time when short dramas are so popular, is there still a chance to enter the market now?

1. Is it more profitable to make short dramas than movies?

"The revenue of "Wushuang" exceeded 100 million yuan in 8 days"

"Tenglong's 24-hour recharge exceeded 22 million yuan"

"The Dragon Transformation" surpassed 23 million views in 24 hours after its release"

…

Recently, the battle reports of these short plays have been wildly shared on the WeChat Moments and many social networks, and have attracted the attention and discussion of many professionals.

Some people realized it later: "This is very popular recently!" Some people sighed: "It makes more money than making movies!" Some people calmly said: "I have been doing it for a long time."

These works that have sparked discussion are short plays, or more accurately, mini-program short plays.

What are mini-program short dramas? As the name suggests, they are dramas that are broadcast on mini-programs and last only two to three minutes per episode. Another feature is that unlike short dramas on long video platforms and short video platforms, mini-program short dramas often require users to pay to watch the entire episode.

Some industry insiders said that although they are all short plays, there are differences between them.

This year, the short drama "Escape from the British Museum", which only has three episodes, became a hit and caused heated discussions. The cumulative number of views of this short drama, which is only 17 minutes long, on Douyin has exceeded 400 million. Its plot and concept also broke the public's stereotype of "bloody and vulgar" micro-short dramas.

But in fact, the mini-program short dramas that are attracting much attention today are fundamentally different from short dramas such as "Escape from the British Museum" in terms of content, production and monetization model.

In terms of content, the mini-program short dramas are rich in types, and some people describe them as "video versions of online articles." Among the three short dramas mentioned above, "Wushuang" is about the urban god of war, and "Hua Long" is about the god of war's son-in-law.

When some short video practitioners first started making short dramas, they were puzzled: many of them were forced twists and forced excitement, so why did so many people spend money to watch them?

In fact, the bigger the reversal and the stronger the sense of satisfaction, the stronger the user's willingness to pay for it. Therefore, mini-program short dramas need to set up a sense of satisfaction and reversal to constantly stimulate the user's satisfaction point.

In terms of monetization model, these mini-program short dramas usually have 80 to 100 episodes. The unlocking fee for each episode ranges from a few cents to a few dollars. It costs dozens to hundreds of dollars to watch the entire series. In addition to unlocking a single episode, you can also choose monthly packages.

2. Development History of Paid Short Dramas

As early as 2019, the continued popularity of short videos combined with traditional TV dramas to create "micro short dramas". Short video platforms directly purchased high-quality micro short dramas with real money, while long video platforms such as iQiyi and Youku launched a profit-sharing model to encourage the production of high-quality short video content.

The short drama payment sharing model of the long video platform is similar to that of the web drama. It is divided into different levels according to the content, and the unit price is set according to different levels. The producer and the platform then divide the revenue according to the revenue sharing, which includes the membership payment period revenue sharing, advertising revenue sharing period revenue sharing and investment promotion revenue sharing.

In 2020, short video platforms have begun to explore the model of paid short dramas. For example, on Kuaishou, a short video team produced paid short dramas and put them online. However, most of them are short, with a short duration of two or three episodes and a long duration of 20 to 30 episodes.

At that time, some practitioners believed that short videos were gradually developing into micro short dramas, which was a combination of new media and traditional film and television. With the continuous development of media, users are pursuing not only fragmented entertainment, but also spiritual and cultural needs. Micro short dramas contain the "shortness" of short videos and the "entertainment" of film and television dramas.

But at that time, short videos' exploration of paid short dramas did not cause much splash. This was related to the size of the entire market and users' consumption habits.

In 2021, Kuaishou launched the "Spark New Force" support plan for the two-dimensional short drama track. In August, it added a "short drama creator" entry function to the institutional service platform to attract more high-quality short drama creators to settle in.

In September, Douyin officially increased the exposure of short drama content and was reported to be testing a payment model for short dramas, adopting a pay-per-episode model with a minimum of 1 yuan per episode. This year, Douyin also officially launched the "Short Drama New Series Plan", which has two profit-sharing policies: cash profit-sharing and traffic profit-sharing. Short dramas with a single episode duration of 1-5 minutes and feature films with 12 episodes or more can participate in the cash profit-sharing, with a maximum cash incentive of 1 million yuan.

In 2022, the emergence of many popular and high-quality short dramas has once again attracted attention to short dramas.

Many excellent micro short dramas such as Mango TV's short drama "Ming Nian Wu Ming" and Kuaishou Star short drama "The Princess Is Above" have become popular. Surprisingly, micro short dramas are no less inferior to traditional film and television dramas in terms of content and texture, further raising the ceiling of short drama production.

3. Is there still a chance to enter the game now?

It can be seen that there are precedents in the short video industry for both the exploration of short drama content and the exploration of payment models. However, it did not cause much splash at the time.

Nowadays, with the explosion of short drama content and the expansion of the market scale, the content foundation has been provided for the popularity of paid short dramas. The "Micro Short Drama Market Report for the First Half of 2023" shows that a total of 481 new micro short dramas were released in the first half of 2023, exceeding the 454 new dramas released in the whole year of 2022, which shows the rapid development of micro short dramas.

Secondly, the carrier of paid short dramas has changed from short video platforms to mini programs, breaking the constraints of the platform and providing more room and possibilities for operation. Today's mini program short dramas are actually a business of "content + production + investment".

At the content level, there are online literature platforms and screenwriter teams; at the production level, there are traditional film and television companies, as well as short video production teams; at the traffic level, similar to game buying and advertising, the materials delivered, the people reached, and the conversion rate all determine whether a drama can be popular and how much profit it will make.

At present, it is understood that the investment market for mini-program short dramas has reached a daily consumption of tens of millions. According to ByteDance's monitoring data, the annual turnover of paid short dramas, mainly mini-program short dramas, is about 18 billion yuan.

As early as February this year, Xinbochang paid attention to the "short drama distribution" gameplay, which is to obtain the content authorization of the short drama, create it through secondary editing, and then put information flow ads to guide users to pay to watch the complete short drama content. This gameplay is also called "short drama mounting", which is mainly completed through mini programs. (For details, see: New business derived from short dramas: editing videos, hanging links, earning commissions...)

In terms of monetization capabilities, wealth myths such as "invest hundreds of thousands, shoot for a week, and recharge over 100 million" are also attracting more entrants.

Xiao A, a practitioner in the short video industry, has now resigned from his original company and joined the short drama track. Xiao A said that good dramas can really make money, but it is impossible to judge whether a drama is good or not, and we can only look at the market reaction.

Initially, he mainly distributed short dramas from large companies, such as Honey and Jiuzhou; now, their team has also begun to make self-produced dramas, cooperate with film and television production companies, and create a mini program platform.

A certain Hengdian production company was previously mainly engaged in filming and production, and its relevant person in charge has now stated that it will launch its own mini program platform next month.

However, as the competition in the industry becomes increasingly fierce, all companies are making efforts. Xiao A said that those who want to enter the market still need to have a certain amount of funds. Another practitioner also said frankly: "It depends on whether the capital side has sufficient resources."

However, in the face of the proven monetization model, the entrants do not seem to have thought too much. Since the popularity of short dramas is still burning, it is most important to enter the market first and seize the dividends.

Author: Changmei WeChat public account: Xinbochang