Can foreign bloggers still make money by sitting back and doing nothing?

With the rise of the traffic era, a large number of foreign bloggers have emerged on the Internet, but some of the once popular foreign bloggers have disappeared. What is the reason for this? What should foreign bloggers do to make good use of the Internet and build a good account? Let's explore it together.

"Give foreigners a little Asian Games shock."

With the end of the National Day holiday, the Hangzhou Asian Games also came to an end. This 15-day event, with foreigners as the prominent part, allowed many Hangzhou residents to experience a "painless trip abroad". Topics such as "foreigners come to the Asian Games to buy goods", "not as good as a foreigner in bargaining", and "where can I meet a rich man from the Middle East" frequently refreshed their presence on social platforms.

However, Kass observed that foreign bloggers have entered a period of "demystification" on the Internet. The era when they could win millions of followers by simply saying "I love China" is a thing of the past. The disappearance of the halo has led foreign bloggers active on social platforms to enter a content "battle".

1. Foreign bloggers become popular on the Chinese Internet

In contrast to "disenchantment", domestic users have gone through a stage of "enchantment" for foreign celebrities.

In 1989, when Canadian student Dashan entered the audience's field of vision through the New Year's Eve Gala and other stages, the Chinese people were still in the budding stage of novelty about "foreign faces", and "foreigners playing with Chinese culture" was more like a new talent show. The "Chinese Bridge" series of competition variety shows first held in 2002 and "Happy Chinese" in 2009 actually did not deviate from the purpose of "teaching Chinese".

Since then, variety shows familiar to the post-90s generation, such as "World Youth Talks" and "Informal Talks", have been broadcast, which have helped many foreign friends to appear in China, and guests such as Wu Yuxiang, Belletai, Sasha, and David have become famous. During this period, Weibo became the main portal for foreign bloggers to settle in, and many foreign guests who emerged in variety shows have attracted hundreds of thousands or even millions of fans on Weibo.

After the rise of short video live streaming, foreign bloggers rapidly flooded into the Chinese Internet. Among them are foreign influencers who are well-known on YouTube, as well as foreign amateur bloggers who started from scratch. The Foreigner Research Association, Jerry Guo, and Volav are all representatives among them, and they have ushered in a new trend on Bilibili and Douyin.

The Foreigners Research Association is one of the best in the art of integrating foreign identity with Chinese local culture. Gao Yousi, who emerged from the variety show "World Youth Talk", has a considerable sensitivity to content production. Although the sports self-media he founded in the early stage had a weak voice, after focusing on the differences between China and foreign countries and the experience of foreigners in China, the Foreigners Research Association firmly grasped the traffic code.

"Ever since these foreigners started shopping on Taobao," "Ever since these foreigners were led astray by Chinglish," "Ever since these foreigners were tortured by Chinese dialects and started to doubt their lives."...

The topics selected by Wai Yan Hui focus on the life experiences of foreigners in China, and are conducted in the form of street interviews, which provide the audience with a third-party, foreign perspective, satisfying people's curiosity about cultural differences, as well as the Chinese people's expectations for cultural output and the subtle sense of national pride after receiving positive feedback. On Bilibili, such videos often receive over a million views and help Wai Yan Hui to quickly gain followers.

If we say that Waiyanhui is still an "experience-oriented" group, and the videos have traces of pleasing domestic audiences, the form of street interviews and on-site experiences still provides some authenticity and content depth. In comparison, another means of gaining traffic is even simpler and cruder. The "founder" Volaf achieved a curve overtaking with a wild way, and grasped the essence of the popularity of foreign bloggers in one fell swoop: love for China.

"If you want to be a true patriot, you have to look at Brother Volav." To understand this sentence, we probably have to go back to the first video currently available on his Douyin homepage - in this "greeting" content, he introduced himself "My name is Volav. I am Chinese!"

In the following videos, he tried hard to prove that he was a "fake foreigner" by praising everything about China with exaggerated acting skills. For example, he always mentioned hot pot in the video and did not forget to emphasize, "I really love China." In the early stage, he did not even need much content production ability. The simple sentence "I love China" could help him harvest a lot of traffic.

Tik Tok account @Volaf

After shouting "I love China", Volav has become a wealth code and set an example for foreigners to attract money. His successor @巴哥bart became popular by singing English covers of Chinese hits, which is essentially because of his "Chinese heart". It is worth noting that @巴哥Bart's personality was created by a domestic MCN, which accurately grasps the audience's preferences - people hope to seek cultural identity from foreign bloggers' videos, and this mentality has made a large number of talents popular.

Since then, the content of short videos has been rapidly iterating. Although "praising China" is still the winning formula of foreign bloggers, it has shifted to a more subtle level and is carried out in the form of praising Chinese culture.

Earlier, content platforms had produced many foreign "top streamers". For example, @老外克里斯, who has 20.85 million followers on Douyin, gained a lot of followers due to his series "Daily Life of Foreigners after Staying in China for a Long Time". Setting up a pancake stand in Norway, making chive boxes, and making homemade cold noodles...Chris's familiarity with Chinese culture is undoubtedly favored by the audience.

This series of content has an obvious routine: in the video, he would create daily situations that "foreigners don't understand, but Chinese users are very familiar with", and then show off his skills in making delicious food. After tasting, accompanied by the familiar background music of Douyin, the expressions of the family members who were pulled into this performance changed from doubt to amazement. Although the routine is simple, this combination of cultural output still deeply touched the hearts of the audience.

Tik Tok account @老外克里斯

Similar to Chris, @恩尼斯enes also creates content with the theme of "Chinese and foreign family", but the theme is more inclined towards daily family comedy, and he has also gained tens of millions of fans on Douyin.

Through the videos of foreign bloggers, Chinese cultural labels are stacked up, and the most popular ones are almost all over the place, such as dialects, hot pot, payment systems, etc. The comparison between Chinese and foreign cultures has always been one of the traffic codes. Domestic audiences are happy to see the cultural shock and lifestyle changes suffered by foreigners, and they also prefer to see Chinese culture from a foreign perspective . Some reaction videos have therefore emerged. For example, @不是柯福德, who has 2.07 million fans on Bilibili, not only invites professional musicians to evaluate Phoenix Legend and Jay Chou, but also spends tens of thousands of yuan to cosplay Sun Wukong at foreign comic exhibitions.

B station UP host @不是柯森

Foreign bloggers who are "making money" in the domestic market or MCNs who want to make foreign Internet celebrities famous seem to have reached a secret consensus: to make money in the domestic market, they must add Chinese elements to the content.

However, today, it is obviously not so easy for foreign bloggers who have opened accounts on domestic social platforms to earn traffic.

2. The “Disenchantment” of Foreign Bloggers

"Is there something wrong with the sense of superiority of some foreigners?" Xiaohongshu blogger @卓玛可以 made a video complaining about the privileges of white men, such as special treatment and unequal pay for equal work, which received 29,000 likes.

Since its launch, Xiaohongshu has welcomed a large number of overseas accounts. Facing these foreign bloggers, Xiaohongshu users have implemented the concept of "gaze is a good medicine to dispel enchantment" and embarked on a path of deconstruction. For example, they suggested that a Ukrainian who tried to dress like a Xinjiang person wear grilled lamb skewers, a hat and a beard, which was fully accepted by the other party; they imitated the posts of foreign students who came to say hello and introduced themselves as "I am Chinese, and I like to learn Chinese very much"; they were determined to use earthy love words and Internet jargon to break the other party's language defense line...

In contrast, foreigners began to imitate Xiaohongshu’s routine, labeling their selfies as “185cm tall handsome guy” or “foreigner”, or imitating Xiaohongshu’s photo-editing craze, asking netizens to edit themselves into Chinese scenic spots, etc. Although there are also notes like “How to make friends with foreigners” on the platform, overall, the only things that can attract Xiaohongshu users are the appearance and some stories about cultural differences, and the other things are obviously not so sincere.

Xiaohongshu bloggers @Gleb, @大A, @Nika

The era when foreign identity alone could win a lot of attention is a thing of the past, and it is difficult for content platforms to easily produce foreign top streamers . Apart from factors such as cultural confidence and the strengthening of national strength, this disenchantment stems from many aspects.

First, the influx of a large number of foreign bloggers has made the track increasingly crowded , and the same type of content has distracted the audience's attention and also worn away a lot of novelty. Previously, most of the famous bloggers were overseas students, and the rise of social media is bringing more Internet celebrities and amateur bloggers to the Chinese network, thus accelerating content competition.

Taking Bilibili as an example, the music track alone includes @MayTree五月树, who is good at restoring classic BGM with pure vocals, professional musician @JoeCreator, @拉美小姐姐Waleska, who produces music reactions, and a large number of professional bands and music producers.

B station UP host @JoeCreator

In the popular fields of store visits, food broadcasts, travel, culture, etc., there are many foreign bloggers who devote themselves to them. The content will be pushed to users only after a round of elimination, which also makes many low-quality reaction creators gradually disappear in the long river of content. After all, when realizing that the praise and flattery of foreign bloggers is probably just a traffic business, the audience also becomes picky about the content with peace of mind.

When we turn our attention to the content of foreign bloggers, we will find that the controversy appeared very early - Volavf's "slogan-shouting" style of patriotism soon became a template and was applied to foreign bloggers' videos. Although he himself was ridiculed as the "hyperthyroidism generation", it did not prevent him from making a fortune in the traffic business.

At one time, entering the Chinese market to earn money after failing at YouTube was seen as a second spring for foreign artists, and this “money-making” behavior caused disgust among many users. When faced with videos by foreign bloggers, another group of users had more complicated feelings. On the one hand, they wanted to see Chinese culture from a foreign perspective, but on the other hand, they were bothered by the fact that the bloggers were deliberately pandering to them for traffic, which was insincere.

The most important point is that bloggers who benefit from traffic because of their foreign status often "crash" due to cultural and sensitive issues.

Earlier, there was a foreign blogger @信誓蛋蛋, who once had nearly 4 million followers on Bilibili. He became famous because of a video praising the convenience of WeChat in mobile payment and instant messaging. Later, his content turned to spoofs, novel challenges and survival in the wild. His homepage had dozens of popular videos with more than 4 million views, and he almost firmly sat at the top of the funny area.

But in 2019, after being accused of using insulting BGM, staged videos, and lacking product certificates, Xinshidandan quickly lost fans, regardless of whether it was groundless or not, and faded out of Bilibili the following year. Since then, Xinshidandan has started to switch to multiple platforms, such as signing a two-year contract with Xigua Video, drifting on TikTok, and appearing in Taobao live broadcast rooms. The damage caused by public opinion made them fall from the peak of popularity, and their popularity has also been declining.

Another example is @韩国东东, who recently made a comeback. She was unfollowed by many people because she deliberately blurred the Chinese style and the Oriental style in one of her videos. Users who knew her dark history did not buy into her comeback. The same thing happened to the Korean food blogger Hamzy. After she said that gimbap belonged to Korea and liked a YouTube post that slandered China, her popularity in China plummeted. Such things have reduced users' enthusiasm for foreign bloggers.

B station UP host @韩国东东 and @信誓蛋蛋

In addition, "stop updating" is also an important factor affecting the content of foreign bloggers. Celebrities who come to foreign countries face the dual problems of "leaving and staying" and the vitality of the content. It is not easy to achieve a balance.

It is worth mentioning that in the context of cultural exchange and collision, although foreign bloggers no longer have special filters, content with Chinese elements will still attract the attention of the audience . For example, even the "Little Prince" of Qatar, who became popular during the Qatar World Cup, after opening an official account on Douyin, his account also intentionally connects with Chinese culture in the video to establish a closer connection with users.

After the traffic gradually became evenly distributed, we looked at the foreign bloggers active on the content platforms: the content of Waiyanhui became verticalized, and showed a trend of exploring social issues, such as the return of cultural relics from the British Museum and "Is the low salary due to my lack of effort?"; @小鹿绅士, who has 1.2 million fans on Bilibili, focused on both cultural and food themes, and even opened a "Authentic English" course; there are also many foreigners who have settled in China, who have taken localized content to the extreme.

Ultimately, only content consumers can prove what is truly viable content.

Author: Lin Wu

Source: caasdata (ID: caasdata6)