My experience of missing five opportunities to make money from self-media

Sometimes, some opportunities are right in front of you, and if you miss them, you need to wait for a while, but it is still unknown. The author summarizes his experience of missing five waves of opportunities to make money through self-media after he came into contact with self-media, hoping to give you some inspiration.

it is a pity!

Since I started to get involved in self-media, I have missed five opportunities to make money through self-media.

Today I would like to share with you some of my past experiences, hoping that they will be of some inspiration to you.

01 My first job was new media operations

The WeChat public account was launched around August 2012, when I was still in college.

Because WeChat had just been released at that time, I knew very little about WeChat public accounts, and I had no idea that writing WeChat public accounts could be monetized. (Awareness determines everything)

Even at that time, the club activities organized by me at school had already started to publish articles on WeChat public accounts.

The first time I really used a public account for work was around October 2013, when I joined NetEase as an intern.

We mainly do new media operations for local real estate channels. Our approach is to operate the official accounts of several real estate projects. We are responsible for writing content, increasing followers, and organizing customer activities. We simply treat it as a tool and a task to be completed.

In fact, at that time, there were already some accounts that copied the content, such as the account "Learn some economics every day". After becoming popular on Weibo, they became more popular when they were posted on official accounts.

02 The headlines that have been on the news for a whole year

As early as 2014, I already loved reading Toutiao.

At that time, I felt that the news content from NetEase and Sohu was not what I wanted to read because it was too official.

But the headlines not only contain news, but also various interesting life information, as well as film and television dramas.

So, after work, I didn't go on business trips on weekends, but just stayed in the employee dormitory in the factory to read the headlines.

In order to save some air-conditioning fees, I even go to the office to wash my hands and stay in the company for the whole day.

At that time, it was purely for killing time and entertainment, and I never thought about how to monetize this thing.

Because I just graduated and have been exposed to very little, my understanding of making money is either to sell goods through e-commerce or to work part-time.

I never thought that I could make money by writing articles and shooting videos. (Knowledge determines everything)

03 The first time I felt the traffic brought by writing

I returned to my hometown in Huangshan briefly in 2015 to sell my own tea, and I also had the idea of ​​starting a business at home.

By the second year after graduation, I already had some understanding of new media.

In 2015, WeChat public accounts were already very popular. When I went home, I updated a few articles and they received a good number of readers.

There was also a person who drove from Hangzhou to my hometown in Huangshan to visit me after reading my official account.

Also because of reading the headlines, I got to know the first generation of self-media influencer on Toutiao - Huanzi TV.

Although I didn’t know how to shoot videos, I still wrote a few articles about agriculture, rural areas and farmers and posted them on Toutiao.

Unexpectedly, after it was published, it attracted hundreds of thousands of reads.

Unfortunately, I was not so sensitive to this at the time, and the threshold for Toutiao to earn revenue was very high.

Although I have several articles with high readership, they are far from meeting the requirements for generating income, so I haven’t updated them since.

If Toutiao was like it is now, where even updating content with zero fans could generate revenue, maybe I would have persisted a long time ago.

04 My friends asked me to work on Kuaishou and Douyin

When I started my business in 2018, I hired a marketing and media manager, and we later became friends.

He used to write articles and edit videos, and made a lot of money on media such as Toutiao, Penguin, and Dayu.

Later, when he resigned in August, he wanted to ask me to work with him on Kuaishou and Douyin.

To be honest, although I knew about Kuaishou before 2018, I had never downloaded it and had never read its content seriously.

At that time, my friend was introducing me to the internet celebrities on Kuaishou all day long, and how these internet celebrities organized birthday parties, did live broadcasts, and sold goods.

At that time, the commercialization of Douyin had not really started, and Kuaishou was better than Douyin in terms of internet celebrities, PK, and monetization.

At that time, my friend was very optimistic about TikTok and thought it had great potential, so he asked me to join him.

However, I just got married in 2018, my entrepreneurial project was not successful, I was under various loan pressures, and I was short of money, so I declined the offer. (Perception determines everything)

05 I shot 30 videos and then stopped updating

By 2020, I had been writing the official account for almost a year, and also recruited some community members through the official account.

Due to the epidemic, many offline activities and businesses are restricted.

Online content platforms, e-commerce transactions, and live streaming activities have achieved unprecedented development. Luo Yonghao created TikTok, and the top two anchors on Tmall have annual sales of nearly 10 billion yuan. The video account was launched with great fanfare, and the founder's IP is particularly hot.

I actually encouraged myself to update 30 videos, but I still didn't stick to it.

In the meantime, I have several good friends who chose to join companies that sell goods through live streaming. Riding on the industry's momentum, they are now doing very well.

One of my friends started his own sock business and is now considered a small influencer in that vertical field.

Another person started his own business last month and now manages a live streaming account with over 100 million yuan in turnover.

But I still remain indifferent!

06 It’s hard to give up or seize opportunities

The reason why I wrote this article and shared it with you today is to tell you that many times, giving up and seizing opportunities are both difficult things.

First, sometimes it’s not that we don’t want to do it or that we can’t see the opportunity, but that our ability to take risks is too weak.

No matter it was 2015 or 2018, I had just graduated for a few years at that time, I had no savings, an unstable job, and the bank had loans, so how could I dare to do that?

Second, opportunities don’t only come once, but will appear repeatedly.

Any of the time periods I just shared is a good opportunity, and there is an opportunity to get involved in content creation.

I used to be very anxious because others told me that I had missed the bonus period, but now I insist that opportunities will always appear.

Third, cognition and ability determine everything. Even if there are many opportunities, it will be useless if you cannot seize them when they arise.

I didn’t understand new media around 2016 because I didn’t have enough knowledge.

In 2018, I wanted to start my own media, but because I lacked the ability, had no money, no connections, no resources, and was afraid of failure.

Fourth, repeated regrets are useless. I find that many people are very good at regretting the past but never take action.

I always know what will happen, but now it's not the same.

We always regret yesterday, but ignore that today will also become yesterday.

So we can reflect and summarize past regrets and experiences, but the important thing is to take action.

Author: Shili Village, WeChat public account: Shili Village (shilipxl)