It’s hard to create a god with live streaming sales: Tianya failed to restart, only 360,000 were sold in 7 days

Recently, Tianya Community launched a "seven days and seven nights" live streaming event to "save" Tianya Community. However, the results of this live streaming event seemed to be relatively bleak. What are the reasons behind this? Let's take a look at the author's interpretation and analysis.

In the field of live streaming sales, there are too many stories of "getting rich overnight". The success of "Dongfangxuan" and others has stimulated more and more companies to flock to live streaming sales.

Recently, an outdated platform that owed 10 million yuan in debt also regarded live streaming as its last straw.

The Chinese community platform Tianya attracted attention for launching a "seven-day and seven-night" live-streaming sales event, hoping to raise 3 million yuan to restart the platform. However, the result was not as expected: 360,000 yuan of sales were made in 7 days, and a total of 149,900 yuan was earned including rewards.

Tianya's first live streaming sales campaign ended in failure. Did Tianya think that live streaming sales was too easy? Or is it that live streaming sales is no longer a good thing?

1. 360,000 units sold in 7 days

The live streaming sales event "Restart Tianya for Seven Days and Seven Nights" organized by former Tianya employees and old users came to an end at 8 pm on June 3.

Song Zheng, former executive editor of Tianya Forum, finally announced the income of the past seven days in the live broadcast room: the live broadcast room achieved a total sales of 361,000 yuan, the income from live broadcast rewards was 65,600 yuan, and the direct income from live broadcast activities was 149,900 yuan; plus donations from netizens of about 54,800 yuan, the total was only 260,000 yuan, which is far from the 3 million goal that Tianya originally wanted to achieve.

On the afternoon of June 5, Song Zheng said in an interview with Upstream News that he had just arrived in Hainan to continue communicating with Tianya founder and chairman Xing Ming about the follow-up. He said: "This restart was not successful, but the important thing is that we restarted the friendship of Tianyaers (registered members of Tianya Forum). It is just a temporary suspension. We will be back after at least a week of rest."

On June 6, the official Weibo account of "Restart Tianya" also wrote "We have not given up, we will continue, we just went offline, but our fighting spirit has not been lowered", and released a post-survey questionnaire #Seven Days and Seven Nights Restart Tianya#.

It is reported that the 7-day "Restart Tianya" live streaming sales event was launched because Tianya has really reached a critical moment of life and death.

In April this year, the news that Tianya Forum was offline and users could not log in became a hot topic. It was reported that Tianya Community owed Hainan Telecom more than 10 million yuan in server fees. Due to its inability to pay, Tianya packaged the website data for download and sold the remaining assets to Hainan Telecom.

At that time, some netizens launched a "tide of mourning". Some media reported that Tianya Community had already fallen apart, and employees left one after another due to delayed wages and social security and provident fund payments.

However, later on, there was a rumor that there was a new solution: if a fee of 3 million yuan could be paid, Telecom would agree to allow Tianya to resume access first. This rumor was later confirmed by Tianya founder Xing Ming.

So how could Tianya, which was heavily in debt, raise the 3 million yuan? Tianya founder Xing Ming contacted Song Zheng, the former executive editor of Tianya Forum, hoping to find a way to make some noise. Song Zheng finally chose live streaming to sell goods - it is reported that this method was also introduced by Tianya netizens.

Therefore, there was this live streaming sales event called "Restart Tianya", the purpose of which was to raise the 3 million yuan.

2. Why did it end so miserably?

In the field of live streaming, there are too many stories of "getting rich overnight". Live streaming sales of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions can help a company have a second spring, find new growth points, and even achieve business transformation. Dongfang Zhenxuan is an example.

But Tianya still thought this matter was too simple.

Before it became popular, Dongfang Zhenxuan had already taken root in the live streaming sales track for a year. At the beginning, Dongfang Zhenxuan was a live streaming sales platform focused on selling agricultural products established by Yu Minhong at the end of 2021.

In fact, before Oriental Selection became popular with its "bilingual live streaming sales", it also went through a long period of downturn.

From March to May 2022, in the 14 live broadcasts in which Yu Minhong appeared, the average number of viewers per broadcast was 33,000, the average sales per broadcast was only 2,821 pieces, and the average sales per broadcast was 132,000 yuan. Yu Minhong himself also responded to this matter positively, saying: "Now that Oriental Selection has just started, the daily sales are still pitifully small, only a few hundred thousand yuan."

Dong Yuhui, who is very popular now, has also encountered the situation where "there were 20-30 people in the live broadcast room. They didn't buy anything, but just squatted there to grab red envelopes and make fun of the teacher's appearance."

In addition to its accumulation, the most important reason why Oriental Selection can become so popular and continue to be popular is its unique live broadcast style and content output capabilities.

On the other hand, Tianya plunged into live streaming with almost no preparation and enthusiasm: there was no professional team that understood live streaming, no excessive publicity and preheating, the anchors were all users and former employees, and they hadn’t even thought about what products to sell...

It is understood that those who organized this live streaming sales event were all old netizens and former employees of Tianya, who had almost no experience with live streaming. Some of them downloaded Douyin for the first time, and they were also "learning and selling at the same time" at the live streaming sales event.

In addition to Tianya commemorative shirts, mugs, commemorative cards, etc., the products on sale in the live broadcast room are mostly snacks and household daily necessities, with very few categories.

One user commented on the video and complained: "So many people gathered, it's just a Buddhist way of selling goods." Another user said: "The main reason is that the product selection is not good enough. I bought everything I could buy over and over again, but I couldn't buy many things."

The performance of the live broadcast room was not satisfactory. The anchor was too far away from the camera, and was complained to be "more like a living room". There were even some rollover accidents, such as no sound, unclear words on the products, and some sales products lacked cover pictures...

In terms of pre-event promotion, Tianya only released posters for this live event on its TikTok account and Weibo. Moreover, this TikTok account was originally Song Zheng's personal account, and currently has only 35,000 followers.

Tianya did not invest in this event, nor did it prepare any welfare products...

In addition, Tianya chose to start the live streaming sales activity during the 618 event. The big anchors were fighting fiercely, and most users went to the big anchors' live broadcast rooms to grab Apple phones, leaving even less traffic.

Many Tianya netizens only learned about this news after the video "Restarting Tianya live broadcast and selling 360,000 goods in 7 days and 7 nights" was listed on the Douyin hot list.

3. Is there still a chance for Tianya?

Looking at the long term, if Tianya is really restarted, what will happen?

On the evening of June 1, Xing Ming had an online conversation with Pan Luan, a well-known technology self-media person, and Pan Haidong, the founder of Hudong Encyclopedia and investor of ByteDance. The topic was "Where will Tianya go after the restart?"

During the two-hour video call, Pan Haidong said bluntly: "Regarding Tianya, I talked to Bytedance's investment department, and everyone is really not interested, absolutely not interested, because (Tianya) is completely out of the trend of the times."

Products that do not keep up with the trend of the times will eventually be abandoned by the times.

Not only that, Tianya’s live streaming sales event has hardly caused any discussion in the industry.

First of all, in the eyes of most people, Tianya is indeed no longer in line with the trend of the times. Some practitioners in the live broadcast industry said: "Tianya is hard to save. Putting aside the business model and talking about feelings is unrealistic and too extravagant. It is natural for it to be eliminated."

Secondly, they wanted to save themselves by selling goods through live streaming, but from an industry perspective, the entire live streaming event, from data to content, had no highlights and no surprises.

If Tianya wants to save itself through live streaming, it still needs to find its own new story in the live streaming track. Judging from the response of Tianya netizens, Tianya's business model may have been abandoned by the times, but Tianya's IP still has vitality.

Therefore, if you really want to transform into an e-commerce company, you should put aside your burdens, select products carefully, talk about products well, and make your live broadcast room professional. Hoping to impress users with emotions and bring goods with emotions will ultimately have limited volume and is unsustainable.

Furthermore, judging from the current development status of the entire industry, it can be seen that it is no longer possible to create a legend through live streaming e-commerce.

The entire live streaming e-commerce environment has changed a long time ago. It is no longer possible to stimulate user nerves and easily increase GMV by entering the market with traffic and capital.

One obvious change is that this year short video platforms are focusing on shelf e-commerce, returning to the essence of business, and no longer obsessed with the myth of traffic.

On May 9, at the "Gravity Conference" held by Kuaishou E-Commerce, it was announced that the shelf field had been upgraded, and different scenarios such as recommendations, shopping malls, searches, and stores had been integrated.

On May 16, at the Douyin E-commerce Ecosystem Conference, Wei Wenwen, president of Douyin E-commerce, also said: "By operating the shelf market well and linking it with the content market, Douyin E-commerce driven by the dual scenarios will achieve sustained and rapid growth."

Therefore, having content alone is not enough. Instead, platforms are trying to find ways to allow merchants who may not be able to create content but can do business to find business opportunities on the platform.

Both experts and merchants must return to the traditional logic of e-commerce business, and stores, products, and operating methods have become the top priority. If you can only tell stories but not sell goods, or have no good products, you are doomed to not go far.

Author: Chang Mei; Editor: Qiu Yuan

Source public account: Xinbochang (ID: New_bc), focusing on live streaming, live e-commerce, and short videos.