The GMV of a single game is less than 25,000, and the top streamer with 20 million fans can’t sell the goods

Live streaming is a hot topic on the Internet. Almost all the comedy talents that emerged during the period of Douyin's traffic explosion have chosen their own path, either actively or passively. However, they have continued to lose fans due to the lack of follow-up content, or stopped updating due to the disbandment of their partners. This article analyzes the traffic code, business route and other aspects to analyze why the top streamer with 20 million fans can't sell goods. Let's take a look!

Another Douyin drama expert with tens of millions of fans has turned to live streaming to sell goods.

On April 21, Zhang Ruoyu launched his first live streaming show on Douyin, and invited the comedy talents @山城小栗旬的髮髮日记, @深情航仔, and @永琪吗 to help out. The live streaming room instantly became a large-scale talent show and live show. The entire live streaming lasted nearly 3 hours, and the products on the shelves were mainly snacks and beverages, daily necessities, and beauty and skin care products.

Zhang Ruoyu caught the "late train" of live streaming sales. However, he seemed to have not yet adapted to the transition from a content expert to a sales anchor in the live streaming room. Whether it was product explanation or mechanism explanation, he seemed immature and unfamiliar.

Judging from the data, his debut performance was not ideal. Although nearly 2 million people watched both live broadcasts, the average sales per show was only 250,000 to 500,000 yuan, which is not in line with his over 18 million fans. Now, a month has passed since his first live broadcast, and the influencer's sales performance has still not made a splash on Douyin.

In 2020, the drama track of Douyin was in its golden age. Zhang Ruoyu was the one who "benefited" from the traffic dividend. Relying on the "Humble Life" series of drama short videos, he not only accumulated tens of millions of fans, but also established his classic image of wearing a mask on his face and getting beaten up every day. Others who rose to fame at almost the same time as him included @疯狂小杨哥 and @疯产妹妹.

Since then, these comedy masters have taken different paths, some have lost fans due to the lack of content, some have stopped updating due to the disbandment of their partners, and some have entered the red ocean of live streaming. In 2023, the once glorious comedy masters have each headed for different distant places.

1. Live streaming of goods by an expert with 18 million fans is not well received

Zhang Ruoyu's experience in establishing his account can be largely summarized as "gaining tens of millions of followers by living a humble life of getting beaten up."

In April 2020, Zhang Ruoyu updated his first VLOG#张若宇的谦的谦的谦的谦的幸福生活. In the video, he put a mask on his face and pointed the camera at his yard to introduce it. He received his first "beating" of the day for calling his mother "Swallow" a nanny. Another important person, his grandmother, also appeared in the video. He called the bamboo broom he held an "electric guitar". The magical contrast brought about a sense of humor, which made this video receive more than 2 million likes.

@张若宇TikTok account

After he changed his content creation theme to record his family's daily life, his account entered a period of rapid increase in followers. In front of the camera, Zhang Ruoyu often tested the edge of "seeking death", showing his "humble life" at the bottom of the family food chain to users, and produced many popular works with more than 2 million likes.

As the content is updated, more and more family members are involved in the filming, and their respective video images are gradually clarified, such as the grumpy but cute mother "Ms. Yan", the grandmother "Ms. Tao Tao" who is proficient in all kinds of weird golden sentences, and the quirky sister, etc. These characters have won the love of users and even boosted the monetization ability of personal accounts.

When turning to live streaming to sell goods, Zhang Ruoyu deliberately released a short video to warm up the trend, interviewing family members and friends about their views on his live streaming sales. One user advised him in the comment section to "choose products carefully and don't ruin your reputation."

@张若宇TikTok account

However, it is not easy to transform into live streaming sales. Although the live streaming debut had the help of three comedians @山城小栗旬的髮修日记, @深情航仔, and @永琪吗, turning "selling goods" into a large-scale "whole-life" scene, and the degree of exaggeration was even a bit like @疯狂小杨哥's "reverse sales", the performance of the "protagonist" Zhang Ruoyu was a little immature and he was not used to the local environment.

Different from the image of someone who was repeatedly on the edge of "self-destruction" in the short video, Zhang Ruoyu who appeared in the live broadcast room was more like an ultimate "socially anxious" person. The visible awkwardness and nervousness showed the word "unfamiliar with the business" to the fullest.

Whether it is product explanation or mechanism process, Zhang Ruoyu is not very good at it. For example, when introducing a sunscreen, he only gave a few simple introductions, and needed @深情航仔 beside him to remind him to "apply it on your hands to show everyone the texture" and "talk about the overall feeling of use and the feeling of getting started". The latter even personally demonstrated the correct way to explain; when explaining the product in detail, Yamashiro Oguri Shun also took out a piece of paper and asked him to "read it", reminding him sentence by sentence, "Then what? Are there any gifts?"

Even so, there were cases of mispronouncing product names, sending wrong gifts, and following wrong links during the live broadcast. When introducing a wet wipes product, Yamashiro Oguri Shun and Yongqi directly let Zhang Ruoyu stand behind them and give on-site guidance and teaching.

The nervousness and awkwardness of his first live show did not completely disappear when Zhang Ruoyu and his sister were live streaming together. When it comes to "live streaming of goods", Zhang Ruoyu is still at a loss and stumbles, and sometimes even needs his sister to remind him to "cue" the process. His sister, who is good at controlling the situation and picking up jokes, was quite harsh in her words, "9.9 yuan for 40 packs, and then what are you going to do? Do you want to get in the car?"

The capable sister in the live broadcast room formed a sharp contrast with Zhang Ruoyu, who was so nervous that he shed tears on the spot. The "humble" character in the short video was perfectly replicated in the live broadcast room.

@张若宇live streaming

In terms of sales performance, Zhang Ruoyu's live broadcast popularity and sales have dropped precipitously since the live broadcast on April 25. According to Chanmama data, Zhang Ruoyu has broadcast 17 live shows in the past 30 days, with an average of 558,000 views per show and an average sales of only 50,000 to 70,000 per show. The frequency of sales has also decreased. The most recent live broadcast was on May 16, which lasted about an hour and a half and had sales of about 10,000 to 25,000. The data performance is even worse than that of small Internet celebrities.

The low sales volume is also related to its product selection. The products on the shelves in its live broadcast room are mainly food and beverages, and daily necessities, but the average order value of these products is mostly 9.9 and 19.9 yuan. When users are "supporting the audience" rather than "supporting the money", the low GMV is not so surprising.

2. Drama experts who are looking for their "home"

Looking back at the drama and comedy masters that emerged during the Douyin traffic boom from 2019 to 2020, they all chose their own paths, either actively or passively.

There may be many reasons why Zhang Ruoyu switched to live streaming to sell goods.

On the one hand, in the current environment, advertisers are becoming increasingly cautious in their advertising and are constantly cutting brand budgets, which is like a bolt from the blue for drama influencers who mainly rely on "planting grass + window display" to monetize.

Kas observed that although Zhang Ruoyu's Douyin works are not short of brand owners' investment - in recent videos, he has cooperated with Jietu Automobile, Zulijian, Amul, Wallace, Zhuanzhuan, etc. However, in the iteration of Douyin, the competitiveness of comedians in brand matching and advertising placement seems to have gradually lost to some accounts that are grass-planting in nature. Therefore, the reduction of grass-planting advertising income for content creators is almost inevitable.

In comparison, although the boom has passed, live streaming with goods is still seen as a way to monetize with faster returns and higher returns. There are many myths of Douyin's live broadcast rooms creating tens of millions of GMV in a single day, and there are too many precedents for content influencers to transform into live streaming with goods on the platform.

Losing followers may be another factor. Before announcing the live streaming of goods, Zhang Ruoyu was in a stage of continuous loss of followers, with a loss of 93,000 followers in the past 30 days. On the day with the most serious loss of followers in the past three months, 10,000 fans unfollowed him. His first live broadcast on April 21 brought him nearly 5,000 new followers, but overall, the trend of losing followers is still obvious.

Although the probability of influencers becoming famous overnight is getting lower and lower, Douyin is still the Douyin where new influencers emerge in large numbers. Multiple reasons, such as the changing tastes of users, fierce competition in the field, and weak content in the later period, make the loss of fans an unacceptable and helpless thing. In the eyes of brand owners, it may mean a decline in the commercial value of influencers. Rapid transformation while maintaining a certain level of popularity may be a good strategy.

However, Zhang Ruoyu was late in the transformation to live streaming. The previous transformation wave had already swept Douyin, and the "predecessors" included @毛光光, who played multiple roles and was known as the "saleswoman", and @祝晓涵, who became famous for the small drama of fake father-daughter love. In the field of live streaming, it is not only @张若宇 who is facing the pain of transformation. Looking ahead, there is also @陈翔六点半. After the live broadcast was unpopular, @陈翔六点半, who had nearly 70 million fans, quietly withdrew from the live broadcast competition.

The drama expert who has figured out his own traffic code and business route most clearly on Douyin is @疯狂小杨哥.

In 2018, Xiao Yangge made his mark on Douyin. In 2019, his content creation shifted from couple jokes to family pranks. His exaggerated and crazy content quickly attracted a large number of fans. For quite a long time, @疯狂小杨哥 almost dominated the Douyin monthly fan growth list.

@Crazy Little Yang live streaming

In March 2021, Hefei Three Sheep Network Technology Co., Ltd. was established, with Zhang Qingyang as the legal representative. Since then, @疯狂小杨哥 has started live streaming and bringing "crazy" and "entertainment" into the live streaming room, which has brought his account to another peak in terms of fans. On November 3, 2022, the number of Crazy小杨哥's fans exceeded 100 million, making him the first anchor on the platform with over 100 million fans.

@疯狂小杨哥 is also exploring more business channels, such as opening up IP live broadcast slicing authorization. According to media reports, Crazy小杨哥 can get 16 million in live broadcast slicing commission every month. At the same time,小杨哥 is also operating private domains, improving supply chains, building WeChat applets, and launching小杨珍选.

In the past six months, Xiao Yangge has made frequent moves, such as spending 100 million to buy a building, "reconciling" with Wang Hai, who had "exposed" the power of a wall-breaking machine in his live broadcast room, taking steps overseas, and announcing the launch of the "Zhong Xiaoer" APP mall. At the same time, controversy still exists. In April this year, the false propaganda in the live broadcast room of Crazy Xiao Yangge was also criticized.

@疯狂小杨哥 is a minority after all, and it is often difficult for successors to climb over this mountain. Similar successful transformation experts include @广东夫妻, who also started out with funny jokes. The number of fans of Guangdong Couple has reached 52 million. However, after experiencing the glorious period of bringing goods, the influencers inevitably face a situation where sales have shrunk significantly and the number of fans has declined.

After earning tens of millions from advertising, some people have disappeared in the long river of content . In 2020, another plot expert who emerged on Douyin was @疯产妹妹, who quickly became a top streamer by showing her love-hate relationship with her besties. The "his shooting" mode from the perspective of besties was also imitated, which led to a large number of besties accounts.

In August 2022, @疯产妹妹 announced a "peaceful breakup", and the peak number of fans of this phenomenal account finally stopped at 44 million. After "breaking up" with Shao Yuxuan, Zhang Xiaohua did not activate the account again, and the last video became a "sentimental scene" for fans. But the fans who stayed there are also gradually dispersing. Within 30 days, the account lost nearly 450,000 fans, and the total number of fans dropped to 37.77 million.

The new account opened by Shao Yuxuan has become her base for updating her daily fragments. She occasionally broadcasts live to chat with fans. She currently has 4.928 million fans and has not yet found new monetization channels.

After leaving the golden age of traffic, comedians are still looking for their own "home".

Author: Chao Guan

Source: WeChat public account: "CaasData (ID:caasdata6)"