The character of "profiteer" is well-established, with 1 million followers in 7 days

"Swindlers" sell products with double-digit costs at "sky-high prices" but are unexpectedly popular among consumers, with fans increasing by almost a million and sales rising rapidly. "Swindlers" seem to have become the traffic code of short video platforms. What is going on? The author of this article will expand on this topic. Let's take a look.

@老九好茶, who sold tea costing 20 yuan for 88,000 yuan , gained more than one million followers in 7 days ; @临期也狗, who sold milk costing 7 yuan for 100 yuan , gained 1.44 million followers in a month ; @尖商胖丁, who claimed to be an undercover agent of the Association of Unscrupulous Merchants and exposed the chaos in the food industry , gained 1.41 million followers on Douyin and 540,000 followers on Kuaishou in a single month .

In addition to the extremely rapid increase in followers, the most puzzling thing is their extremely high sales. Compared with Xin Jifei, who became popular after exposing industry insider information, but then his reputation quickly polarized after he started his journey of monetization, "swindlers" seem to be more trusted by consumers. @老九好茶 live broadcasts sales, with an average sales of 1 million to 2.5 million per show , @临期也狗one month GMV is estimated to be 5 million to 7.5 million , and @尖商胖丁 has 19 live broadcasts with an estimated total sales of 5 million to 7.5 million . (Data source: Feigua Data)

Data source: Feigua Data

Suddenly, like a spring breeze, "profiteers" seem to have become the latest traffic code for short video platforms.

1. Insider information leaks have always existed in the industry, but monetization is the problem

In fact, this kind of industry secret revealing personality is not a new term, but 20 years ago, they seemed to have a more formal name - undercover reporters. It can even be said that this kind of industry secret revealing has long become the content of the program that early TV reporters have played out. The competition is about who can dig out the more cruel and deadly inside information, preferably the kind that can make the audience burst into swearing after just a glance, which is simply the best news headline of the day.

With the advent of the Internet age, this type of content remains an enduring hot topic. In online question-and-answer communities such as Zhihu, the most common content is various industry insider information. The mention of words such as "inside information, revelations, top secret" usually arouses users' strong curiosity and a "watch the fun" mentality, which causes a large number of users to flock to the video to watch and encourage sharing and forwarding.

As for the content of the answers, some are true and some are false. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be the classic quote on Zhihu: “Go to Zhihu and share the story you just made up.”

If you really recall these contents, it is not difficult to find some cases where the personalities of whistleblower bloggers have collapsed, such as answering 120 insider questions of different industries in 30 days, and changing jobs every 20 days on average since graduating from college. But for the audience, no one cares whether these things are true or false. On the one hand, it is natural that people are curious about industries they don’t understand, and on the other hand, these contents can also become topics for future conversations with others.

In the video era, this is also the enduring traffic code. In fact, because videos contain more real-life content, they are easier to gain the trust of the audience.

However, this type of content can naturally get enough traffic, but how to turn the traffic into real money is the biggest problem for this type of blogger. In fact, many viewers have also raised similar doubts in the comment section.

After all, most of the bloggers who are involved in investigations or undercover investigations, or to be more straightforward, appear as messengers of justice who expose industry secrets, are not actually industry practitioners. The most common way to monetize is through advertising or direct e-commerce sales. The problem is that these video creators are attracting fans' attention by revealing various inside stories, so in the process they can only stray from the track they are targeting to receive business orders.

But whether it is accepting advertisements or directly promoting products, the essence of this behavior is still to use one's own credit to endorse the product. After all, the audience's logic is simple. Since they can investigate so many industry insider information, they can naturally investigate whether there are any problems with the products they recommend. Once they make mistakes in product selection, it means that their own credit is greatly reduced.

The audience will begin to doubt the possibility that previous content was fake, and the collapse of the righteous personality and the polarization of reputation are almost inevitable.

The reputation of blogger Xin Jifei, who was known for exposing additives, has reversed and attracted a lot of controversy, all since he started promoting "natural MSG extracted from mushrooms".

So, there won’t be any problems in accepting promotion from Internet giants, right? Unfortunately, although this will not bring any credit crisis, not everyone can receive such advertisements. For example, Pinduoduo, the Internet company that spends the most money, can be seen in almost all kinds of videos promoting “10 billion subsidies”, but after careful comparison, it is not difficult to find that those who can receive Pinduoduo’s advertisements are almost all top Internet celebrities in various regions.

Not to mention, every step of this type of investigation, evidence collection, analysis, testing, etc. requires a huge investment of time, energy, and even financial costs. Otherwise, it will be difficult to conduct in-depth investigations and unearth those unknown real industry secrets.

If you still need to rely on e-commerce to realize your profits, it means you need a huge product selection department. If you can’t become a top influencer, it’s almost impossible to support such a large team. Otherwise, you can only be a mid-level influencer, and it’s difficult to become a top influencer.

2. "Crooked businessman setting up" clears obstacles to cashing out

Thus, a new type of personality began to appear. Since the personality of the messenger of justice will easily collapse as long as he sells goods, why not just try the personality of the "profiteer"?

After all, he is a dishonest businessman, and making money is his real purpose. If he doesn't make money, his image will collapse. Just like what netizens commented: "You know he is lying to you, and his main focus is sincerity." After all, the mainstream routine of all kinds of bloggers in the past was "altruism", that is, everything they do is for the sake of their fans, finding good products for fans, and lowering prices for fans. Fans are my family.

But this altruism is inherently anti-human. Consumers have always had an indelible sense of suspicion. Then, as the income of various Internet celebrities was exposed, it was a bit like what Guo Degang said in his crosstalk: Why are actors not allowed to wear jewelry on stage? The audience looked at the actors and the tickets, and they couldn't help but think: "This guy spent my money on jewelry!"

This is quite harmful to the actors on the stage, not to mention the various anchors who are based on "altruism"? So looking forward, basically, as long as the anchors become big, if there is a problem in product selection, it will be difficult to turn around.

On the contrary, the core of the personality of this type of unscrupulous anchor is "selfishness" which is in line with human nature. A careful observation of the anchors who have become popular recently, whether it is "Tea Seller Laojiu" who gained a million fans in 7 days, "Linqiyegou" or "Sharp Merchant Fat Ding", their main feature is sincerity. Basically, you can tell that these people are not good people just by looking at their smiles.

To a certain extent, their personalities can be said to be stereotyped to the extreme. Even the header images of various videos highlight the style of unscrupulous businessmen that people imagine. Combined with performances and speaking styles that embody the flavor of everyday life, as well as various funny and down-to-earth jokes, their personalities are almost firmly established.

For example, the classic speech of tea seller Lao Jiu is that as a serious tea anchor, he has a bottom line and a purpose in selecting products: "Maximize profits, don't care about quality, don't care about the lives of fans, take a bath and massage after the live broadcast, put aside personal qualities, and enjoy an immoral life."

Logically speaking, fans would be disgusted by such words, but interestingly, fans seem to like this tactic. Many fans left comments: "I feel uncomfortable if I am not cheated by Lao Jiu for a day. He could have robbed me of my money, but he still gave me a bag of tea that cost 20 yuan. He is really a good person."

After all, after so many years of baptism in the Internet era, "family members" has gradually become a micro-business routine. What's more, not every anchor is a top-tier player with strong bargaining power with brands. In the end, "lowering the price to the lowest price on the entire network" has become a routine. At this time, this sense of reality that it is obvious that I just want to make some money can make consumers feel more at ease.

3. Not necessarily the most favorable, but definitely the funniest

Personality only clears the obstacles to monetization, but increasing followers purely by relying on personality may not necessarily be effective. After all, as mentioned above, there is never a shortage of bloggers on the Internet who offer various types of content such as anti-counterfeiting, evaluation, unveiling, insider information, etc. If you want to attract fan groups, you must ultimately return to the content level.

Insider knowledge is the basic ability to get started. Regardless of whether the content is true or made up, being creative and arousing people's imagination is the foundation of this type of content. In fact, this type of story can be true or false, some are based on personal experience, and some are completely based on imagination. There are similar topics on various websites: "I always thought that XXX's content was of high quality until he talked about my professional field."

This also illustrates a problem. The gap between industries is much larger than we think. The saying "different trades are like different mountains" is exactly this truth. Almost all industries have their own jargon, habits, and professional knowledge. It is almost difficult for people who don't understand the industry to judge the authenticity of the other party's content. For example, the jargon in the Internet industry such as "grasping hand", "closed loop", "empowerment", "cooperation" and so on, not to mention laymen, sometimes even practitioners feel headache when they hear it.

Therefore, making the content logical, or even sounding real to laymen, is more important than whether the content is actually true. The key to whether a hit can be created lies in the various golden sentences that can leave people with memories, or in other words, this is the key to making bloggers like Lao Jiu become popular.

Compared with the past, when pan-entertainment content relied on creating a tense and angry atmosphere and generating anxiety to attract traffic, it obviously had a higher audience and fan stickiness, and users tended to like it more. After all, there are too many anxiety-inducing issues in today's environment, and if anxiety is created too much, it will become worthless. The audience does not need to be educated, as long as they have fun.

We can also get some clues about this from the replies of Laojiu’s fans – they don’t miss any jokes, they don’t buy any things, they watch when the show goes on and leave when it goes off, they don’t spend any coins, and their main focus is companionship.

To a certain extent, I would rather be cheated openly by Haocha than suffer losses secretly by other bloggers. After all, I just heard a joke. What's more, these bloggers' live broadcasts are almost always in warehouses or offline stores. These are all credit endorsements to some extent. What's more, with offline stores and warehouses, I feel that the monk can run away but the temple cannot.

Moreover, these bloggers are almost all good at their own business and have some experience in product selection, channels, and supply chains. At least they don’t need to start from scratch like professional anchors. They have stronger control over costs and goods. Even if some problems arise, it will not have much impact on their personal image, and they will not face the risk of losing a large number of fans in an instant.

Conclusion

In general, insider information has attracted people's attention, and the humorous and down-to-earth style has retained these users, and finally the "profiteer businessman" character has cleared the obstacles to monetization. Therefore, "profiteer businessman's revelations" will probably become a traffic outlet for some time to come, and even more and more.

In fact, there have been more and more whistleblower accounts in various industries recently, and their style and even appearance are quite similar to Lao Jiu. But it is undeniable that the average customer spending in these tracks is not high. Lao Jiu says that he sells a cake of tea for 88,000 yuan every day, but the actual unit price of the goods sold is almost no sky-high product. If this model is copied to other industries, the average customer spending may become the first obstacle.

Author: Innocent Roland

Source: WeChat public account "Morketing (ID: Morketing)"