How to create a million-level virtual anchor from 0 to 1?

After more than a year in the industry, with nearly a million fans and a monthly turnover of one million, how did the phenomenal virtual anchor @金桔2049 become successful? Let us reveal the secrets today.

On December 16, the final night of the virtual track of the Douyin Live Annual Ceremony, fans sent 25 carnivals in a row in the live broadcast room of @金桔2049. With the support and protection of other fans, @金桔2049 finally won the title of "Top Ten Virtual Champions of the Year".

Jinju2049 joined Douyin in November 2021 and initially tried short videos, but when traffic performance was poor, she chose to switch to live streaming. Her live streaming debut was very successful and she soon became a phenomenal virtual anchor.

Not long ago, Xinbochang had a conversation with Juzi, one of the core founders of the team behind Jinju and also a Jinju person. Therefore, we were able to understand the growth story of this top virtual anchor of Douyin, and also tried to explore how to create a million-level virtual anchor from 0 to 1 at a time when virtual live broadcasting is so popular.

1. Annual competition of virtual anchors

"Thank you, Aunt Ten, thank you to all the aunts, and thank you to my precious children."

On December 16, when the title of "Top Ten Virtual Artists of the Year" popped up in the live broadcast room of Douyin virtual anchor @金桔2049 (hereinafter referred to as "金桔"), she quickly stood up excitedly, but couldn't find the right way to express herself for a while. She kept expressing her gratitude to all the fans, and finally bowed to the camera.

It is understood that for the first time this year, Douyin Live added a virtual track to the "Colorful and Diverse Race" in the annual ceremony, and set up corresponding annual ceremony rewards.

The annual competition of the virtual track started on December 10 and ended on December 16, lasting seven days. In the end, Jinju stood out from the crowd and won the "Annual Virtual Top Ten" of the virtual track.

Before participating in this annual ceremony, Jinju was already well-known on Douyin live streaming.

This is the first time that Douyin has set up a track for virtual anchors in the annual ceremony, so it is also the first time that Jinju has participated in the annual ceremony. Previously, Juzi, one of the founders of the Jinju team and also a member of Jinju, told Xinbochang: "It is difficult to participate in the annual ceremony, and there are certain risks."

However, the intensity of the competition was beyond the team's imagination.

Taking the last game on December 16 as an example, the "Tenth Aunt" whom Jinju thanked in the live broadcast room suddenly swiped 25 carnivals in the live broadcast room that night, which directly caused "Huazi rain" in her live broadcast room.

In addition to Auntie Ten, there were also Auntie Seven and other fans who were also actively protecting Jinju in the live broadcast room. The overwhelming gift special effects made Jinju so excited that she was crying "like a fountain" throughout the whole process. She couldn't stop thanking the fans and also performed hard in the live broadcast room to give back to the fans.

Watching 25 carnivals in a row is something that is rarely seen even in the live broadcast rooms of top anchors, but this scene was staged in the live broadcast room of a virtual anchor, which once again made people realize the virtual anchor's amazing money-making ability and fan stickiness.

Jinju now has 900,000 fans on Douyin. Whether in terms of fan size, popularity, or monetization capabilities, he is at the top of Douyin's virtual live streaming track. However, few people know the growth trajectory of this virtual anchor and the situation of the team behind him.

Why did kumquat become so popular?

2. Go viral with live streaming

"Our company was established in September 2021, and the founding team consists of four people."

According to Juzi, she started working in operations after graduating from university and has operated several top IPs. In the process, she not only gradually came into contact with Douyin, but also noticed the content track of virtual idols. At that time, compared with foreign countries, the length of domestic virtual human content was relatively blank, especially in the field of 3D realistic virtual humans, where there were almost no mature and excellent cases.

So, Juzi found a senior modeler who graduated from an art academy, a technical classmate who graduated from the United States, and a company manager who was responsible for both marketing and operations. The four of them decided to start a business together to work on a virtual human project, and the virtual human Jinju was born. In addition to being the person in the middle, Juzi also took on the work of Jinju's content operation.

After the team planned for more than half a year and invested hundreds of thousands of yuan, Jinju's first short video content was officially released on Douyin on November 3, 2021. In this video of less than 1 minute, Juzi and the team showed the virtual person Jinju from various angles in standing, sitting, and moving postures through multiple scenes. One of the hot comments under this content is: "Is it a real person?"

It is precisely because of the realism of the 3D realistic style virtual people, which forms a gap with the setting of the virtual image, that it brings users a very strong, novel and interesting experience, allowing Juzi and the team to initially achieve good data in short videos. It also fits their idea of ​​making good short videos, accumulating fans and traffic for the account, and then carrying out commercial monetization.

But the actual situation was not as good as expected. After the first video was released, the team soon encountered the situation of "no improvement after making three or four videos".

“We started off in the wrong direction.”

When reviewing the reasons for the failure of the early short video, Juzi explained that the team's original plan was to create an entertaining and lightweight virtual anchor, emphasizing user interaction. In view of this setting, their early planning was very rich and even "seemed very complicated."

When using short videos to generate traffic, the team only had 4 people, which was a shortage of manpower. At the same time, the technology was not outstanding and the short video content was ordinary. However, looking at the market, there are many high-quality animation IPs in the short video field, and their content is more expressive.

Based on this situation, Juzi and his team quickly changed their thinking and decided to look for a breakthrough in the live broadcast field.

Unexpectedly, the live broadcast, which was originally used for technical debugging, had a maximum of 30,000 people online at the same time, and the total number of viewers for the entire live broadcast reached 500,000. The account generated income and its followers increased rapidly.

The team was deeply impressed by Jinju’s live broadcast debut, having just recently celebrated the first anniversary of Jinju’s live broadcast.

"When we first started broadcasting, we gained 150,000 followers in a week."

When Jin Ju talked about her first live show on Douyin, her tone and emotions were somewhat excited. This live show, which was not expected to be very successful, became a highlight in Jin Ju's live broadcast career, setting records in all data.

In the review, Jin Ju mentioned that as a newcomer, her account enjoyed some traffic support from the platform. More importantly, she and her team's creative planning of content was more targeted in the live broadcast.

On the one hand, Juzi and his team can not only bring users a new visual experience through cool scenes, fast switching and various novel and interesting appearances; on the other hand, after studying some ways of playing entertainment live broadcasts, they choose to connect with real anchors to make fun of each other, create jokes, and output interesting live broadcast content.

If you search for content related to Jinju today, you can still see many famous scenes of her livening up with other real people, animations, or virtual hosts.

3. Create a training-type virtual human

Through live streaming, Jinju not only allowed the team to better unleash their technical and content capabilities, but also quickly achieved good results in commercial monetization.

“The first live broadcast may have very few sound waves, but in the first month, the sound waves reached hundreds of thousands. Now, it is basically no problem to reach millions of sound waves every month.”

Juzi told Xinbochang that the team has not raised any funds except for the initial investment of 500,000 to 800,000 yuan. Not only that, the team is now expanding, and at the same time, it will invest money in technology upgrades every period of time, so that Jinju can use the latest platform technology in the live broadcast room to present the latest effects to fans.

"About 90% of our company's revenue in the first quarter of this year came from Jinju's live broadcast, and the remaining 10% came from advertising and promotion."

In terms of income structure, Juzi and his team originally relied heavily on live broadcast rewards from Jinju. However, as the Jinju IP matured, the team also explored other commercialization methods.

Nowadays, Jinju has started to achieve some good results in advertising endorsements and commercial promotions. By November, the proportion of Jinju's live broadcast income and advertising and promotion income became 50-50.

In addition to new business explorations, Juzi also revealed that Jinju has also begun live streaming on VR platforms such as Pico to achieve better content presentation.

Regarding the planning of Jinju, Juzi said that the company still has many ideas, but the essence is still the same as many virtual people. "We will slowly establish the character IP, and then enrich various contents around the IP, such as animation series, big movies, etc., and there will be some new linkages later."

When asked whether this approach is intended to make Jinju a virtual idol, Jinju said that he and his team are still a group of down-to-earth people. If Jinju must be positioned, they are now creating a virtual person who is being cultivated and a virtual IP is being developed according to the preferences of fans.

In addition to continuing to develop the Kumquat IP, the company is also expanding, intending to replicate Kumquat's successful experience and create more virtual anchors.

According to Juzi, the company has launched its second virtual anchor, Chu Xin, who also uses Douyin as the main platform for development and has 57,000 followers. The data of the account and the live broadcast room are stable, which is also due to the team's experience and success in Jinju.

After replicating Jinju's successful experience on Chuxin with great results, the team has been planning the third virtual anchor.

When asked what he thought of the current virtual anchor market, Juzi said that most of the companies currently entering this field are technology companies. These companies have shortcomings or fixed thinking in content operations. At the same time, their core monetization capabilities are not in the content, and there are not many content companies currently entering the market.

However, she also believes that the entire market and track are clearly thriving. For example, Douyin has set up a corresponding virtual live broadcast department and has already invited Jinju to sign a contract.

Nowadays, all live broadcast platforms are accelerating the layout of virtual live broadcasts to grab the ticket to the metaverse. There are still many opportunities for industry organizations, but it is better to enter the market as early as possible.

Author: Aligu

Source: New Broadcasting Station (ID: New_bc)