7 ways to monetize Xiaohongshu in 2023

In recent years, Xiaohongshu has become the main battlefield for brands and businesses to operate and realize commercial realization. It is also a platform for personal creation to tap into traffic and realize realization. The author of this article has sorted out and shared 7 ways to realize the Xiaohongshu platform for your reference. Let's take a look!

In the past two years, Xiaohongshu has been very popular, and "planting grass" has evolved from an innovative marketing to a more common and popular marketing form.

The latest data shows that Xiaohongshu currently has over 260 million monthly active users, more than 20 million monthly active creators, and an average of more than 3 million notes published per day, making it a well-deserved "consumption decision-making" platform in the minds of many young users.

Xiaohongshu is not only the main battlefield for many brands and businesses to operate and realize commercial monetization, but also a stage for countless individuals to create, tap into traffic and realize monetization.

Today I will organize and share 7 current ways to monetize Xiaohongshu for reference by brands and individuals.

1. Advertising Monetization

Advertising cooperation is a common and widely accepted form of cooperation on the Xiaohongshu platform. It is mainly suitable for individual bloggers, and the cooperation modes are divided into passive and active.

1. Passive cooperation

The passive way is to wait for brand merchants to come to you, ask you to publish soft advertising notes, and give you corresponding rewards.

The cooperation methods include:

Text/video promotion: Bloggers need to edit their own notes to promote the product. Video promotion will cost more.

Direct posting: Bloggers directly post the copy and pictures provided by the brand. This type of fee will be lower.

Send-to-sale: Brands will send products to bloggers for review, either giving the products to bloggers without compensation, or negotiating compensation separately;

Paid store visits: Similar to Douyin, it invites influencers to visit stores, usually suitable for industries such as catering and entertainment;

Others: store distribution, experience officer cooperation, etc.

Generally speaking, the more vertical the blogger's content is, the more likely it is to attract relevant businesses to cooperate. The more fans you have, the higher the quote will be. Generally, the advertising quote is 10%-20% of the number of fans, which depends on the specific situation of your account.

There is also a type of amateur account, which can get advertising cooperation with 100 fans. Because compared with hiring big bloggers at a high price, finding more amateur accounts in batches and dispersedly often has a better communication effect.

In addition, since the number of private messages from strangers in Xiaohongshu is limited, in order to allow merchants to contact you, you must leave a contact email address in your personal profile.

2. Actively seek cooperation

For example, in WeChat mini-programs, there are many announcement platforms where PRs and intermediaries will post some cooperation recruitments and look for bloggers to cooperate with. The form of cooperation is the same as above.

It should be noted that this kind of cooperation through unofficial channels not only involves risks of violations, but also transaction risks. Currently, there are many scams on Xiaohongshu that use cooperation as an excuse, which need to be carefully identified.

2. Official Cooperation Monetization

Xiaohongshu officially provides a platform for advertising cooperation: the Dandelion platform.

Merchants can choose suitable bloggers or MCN agencies to cooperate with on the platform, and can screen according to account verticality, blogger personality, fan data, and credit status.

Bloggers need to submit an application to join the platform. The entry threshold has been lowered. Previously, it required more than 5,000 followers, but now it is more than 1,000, and then the professional account certification is completed.

Application process: Click [Creation Center] - [More Services] - [Content Cooperation] - [Apply for Activation]

After the application is approved, you need to set a quotation, otherwise it will not be visible to the brand. Application process: [Creation Center] - [Dandelion Brand Cooperation Center] - [My Quote]

Bloggers can also actively sign up for cooperation according to brand needs through the "Recruitment Cooperation" function in the background.

Because it is an official cooperation channel, the overall cooperation will be safe and standardized enough to avoid many risks, but a certain handling fee will be charged based on different cooperation models.

3. Private Domain Traffic Monetization

Now more and more businesses and individuals are beginning to import platform users into private traffic pools.

The benefits of doing this are: it can establish deeper links with users, effectively avoid platform risks, and make better use of marketing activities to promote conversions.

Especially for some high-order categories, such as diamond jewelry, luxury goods, etc. The user decision-making cost is high, and it is difficult to make an order decision based on a few notes. If you want to convert, you often need professional consultants to connect with them.

Therefore, many businesses regard Xiaohongshu as a channel for attracting traffic from the public domain, digging out their target users and converting them into private domains. The same idea can also be used to attract users to e-commerce platforms for transactions.

It should be noted that Xiaohongshu has very strict restrictions on external traffic and will not let you divert traffic easily, but it does not 100% prevent it. It is still feasible as long as you master the skills and scale.

Conventional private domain traffic diversion methods include homepage traffic diversion, pinned notes, private message traffic diversion, etc. For specific methods, please refer to my previous article: "7 Tips for Xiaohongshu to Quickly Drain Private Domain Traffic!"

4. Knowledge payment monetization

The monetization method of knowledge payment is mainly for knowledge bloggers, who generally need to have their own mature course products and monetize by opening a column.

There are three types of courses in the column: live courses, video courses, and 1v1 consultations. For example, if you are a blogger in the education industry, you can make relevant recorded courses and upload them to the column for users to learn directly.

Like notes, high-quality columns will also receive strong support from the official. The official will select some bloggers who are running high-quality columns to provide them with official internal 1v1 application guidance to ensure that high-quality content receives more attention.

After opening a column, the column entrance will be displayed on your personal homepage.

However, the column is not open to everyone. It requires more than 10,000 fans and an official invitation to open it.

If you have several thousand fans, you can also actively apply to try to open it.

Activation process: [Professional Account Center] - [Anchor Center] - [Column]

5. Live streaming monetization

Xiaohongshu’s live streaming has been very popular recently. Last month, it announced the launch of the “Fashion Spark Plan”, which will provide tens of billions of traffic support for fashion merchants and anchors.

When personal bloggers conduct live streaming to sell goods, they can choose suitable products to sell based on the positioning of their account and fan portraits, and earn commissions on the products.

Before enabling the live product selection function, you must complete real-name authentication, professional account authentication, and have more than 1,000 fans.

Specific process: [My] - [Creation Center] - [More Services] - [Live Selection] - [Live Shopping Bag/Small List] - [Product Selection Center]

There are different categories of goods in the product selection center, and the commission ratio is marked on each product. The anchor can choose low prices, hot-selling products, or fan portrait recommendations to quickly select the product selection category.

In addition, Xiaohongshu, like other live broadcast platforms, also has a reward function for live broadcast. If you are an entertainment blogger, beauty blogger, knowledge blogger, etc., you can increase your income through live broadcast. You can also consider using live broadcast to attract private domains and further guide conversions.

6. Store Monetization

Xiaohongshu's store can also be understood as Xiaohongshu's e-commerce platform. In the past two years, Xiaohongshu has also attached great importance to this business, and the threshold for opening a store has also been lowered. Currently, you can open a store with 0 fans, but you must be certified as a professional account.

If you have your own products, you can set up a merchant in the store and use the content of the notes to attract users to come to the store and buy.

However, due to the low conversion rate of Xiaohongshu stores, and the need to pay store deposits, technical service fees, and payment channel fees, it is recommended that bloggers or corporate accounts with more fans continue to do so. If the attributes and user portraits of your products are particularly suitable for the Xiaohongshu platform, you can also give it a try.

The store certification application is divided into: personal store, individual business store, general enterprise store, and specialty store/flagship store. Different types support different product categories and pay different fees.

Specific application process: [My] - [Creation Center] - [More Services] - [Open a Store] - [Store Application]

7. Account Trading and Cashing Out

There is currently a certain market for account buying and selling, and the user group has strong purchasing power. It is best to have an account of a certain vertical type.

To realize monetization, you need to have 10,000 followers, and the price is around 1,000 yuan. This type of account is suitable for bloggers who have not yet authenticated their identities, because one ID card can only authenticate one account on Xiaohongshu, and the authentication cannot be cancelled, so the authenticated account cannot be transferred or sold.

It usually takes one or two months to create an account with 10,000 followers, so it is suitable to be done as a side job or part-time job. If there is a reliable and stable partner, you can consider mass production.

The above are the 7 common monetization methods of Xiaohongshu.

In short, if you want to realize better monetization, the form is secondary. The key is to make the content valuable and impress users so that they are willing to pay for you.

Author: Yan Tao

Source: WeChat public account: "Yan Tao Sanshou"