The live broadcast sold 25 million in one day. How long can he continue to rely on the traffic of "Searching for Relatives"?

Can amateur internet celebrities find a balance between word of mouth and commercialization? This is a question worth pondering. This article will deeply analyze Jie Qingshuai's success path and the challenges faced by amateur internet celebrities, and is recommended for Internet friends to read.

"The poor boy was found by his biological father overnight and became the son of a billionaire!"

In December 2023, after Xie Qingshuai's life story was reported by many media, it immediately became the focus of everyone's attention.

Xie Qingshuai, born in August 1998, was trafficked to a couple with limited financial resources when he was three months old. He grew up in a typical left-behind children family. His parents had to go out to work to make a living, leaving him to depend on his elderly grandparents.

For more than 20 years, his biological father, Xie Kefeng, has been searching for his son and working hard to make money in order to find him as soon as possible and provide him with better material conditions. Although he denies the title of "billionaire" given to him by the outside world, Xie Kefeng, who started from scratch, has indeed accumulated wealth, "not hundreds of millions, but tens of millions". In order to find his son as much as possible, Xie Kefeng once offered a reward of one million.

In order to make up for the reunion with his second son, Xie Kefeng once said that he had prepared three houses for Xie Qingshuai and would give him more of his family property in the future. Xie Qingshuai, on the other hand, established the image of a filial son who never forgot his original intention and made it clear that he wanted to repay his grandparents who took care of him.

With the refreshing narrative of the male protagonist "changing his fate against all odds", Xie Qingshuai and his family quickly attracted fans, and the popularity continues to this day. Currently, @解清帅's Douyin followers have risen to 3.541 million, and the total number of fans of the whole family account is nearly 7 million. On July 29, the sales volume was 25 million to 50 million.

In the past two or three years, more and more amateur internet celebrities have had their reputations ruined. Why was Jie Qingshuai able to successfully transform from a hot topic figure to a top influencer? Can his path to success be replicated?

1. Sales exceeded 25 million in a single day. Did Jie Qingshuai make the right bet?

Just 23 days after becoming famous for his story of finding his relatives, Xie Qingshuai chose to quickly monetize the huge traffic and started live streaming to sell goods on Douyin.

On December 23, 2023, Xie Qingshuai's mother, sister, brother and sister-in-law appeared in the live broadcast room. The enthusiasm of the crowd created a data peak, with the highest number of people online at the same time exceeding 100,000+ and sales exceeding 10 million. At that time, Xie Qingshuai's Douyin fans were 2.89 million. The next day, the data dropped sharply, with sales of only 1.4 million.

At that time, some users were already dissatisfied with this phenomenon. Some people thought, "Look at so many lost children being found, how can there be so many news updates every day? I personally think that this is just a prelude, and they are indeed businessmen. Those who support it are really amazing, this is how leeks come from."

Nearly nine months have passed, and through intensive output of daily family content, Jie Qingshuai's number of fans has increased to 3.541 million, and the number of fans of his family has also increased slightly, with the total number of fans of the whole family approaching 7 million.

Douyin of Xie Qingshuai and his family

In July this year, his girlfriend Wang Zhengzheng made a public appearance, and by producing carefully planned content, they successfully created a new topic.

On the morning of July 24, Xie Qingshuai first posted a video of going to meet his long-distance girlfriend. In the video, he was holding flowers, saying that he was going to meet someone he particularly wanted to see. That afternoon, Xie Qingshuai posted another video of his girlfriend, who turned around and snuggled in his arms, triggering comments like "It's over, I'm in love" and "I watch TV series every day."

On July 25, Xie Qingshuai released a video of him bringing his girlfriend home to meet his parents. From then until August 10, the Chinese Valentine's Day, Xie Qingshuai and Wang Zhengzheng released multiple videos recording their love life, sharing sweet dates and confession scenes. The number of likes on the related videos ranged from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, and the popularity was not low.

Screenshots of Xie Qingshuai and Wang Zhengzheng’s TikTok videos

The consecutive release of multiple love-related videos led to a significant increase in his fan base, reversing his previous downward trend. After that, the performance of his live broadcast room soared.

On July 29, Xie Qingshuai announced the official opening of the studio and conducted a live broadcast to sell goods. Xie Qingshuai's sister, girlfriend, brother Xie Qingdong and many other family members came to the scene to sell goods together. Xie Qingshuai wore a black Zhongshan suit, while his girlfriend Wang Zhengzheng and sister wore white cheongsams of different styles. They looked harmonious and pleasing to the eye. Soon after the live broadcast began, the number of people online at the same time exceeded 100,000+. According to statistics, Xie Qingshuai broadcast five live broadcasts that day, with an average sales of more than 1 million per show, and the highest even exceeded 10 million; the total number of viewers reached 21.816 million; and the total sales reached 25 million to 50 million.

Among the large number of Douyin e-commerce influencers, Xie Qingshuai's performance can be said to be outstanding. On July 29, he even surpassed the recent hot chicken @与辉同行, whose sales on the same day were 10 million to 25 million.

However, the favor of traffic did not last long. On July 31, Xie Qingshuai conducted another live broadcast to sell goods, and the estimated sales volume dropped to 1 million to 2.5 million, a drop of nearly 90% compared to two days ago.

If you think about it carefully, there are many people who have successfully found their relatives after being abducted or lost. Why was Xie Qingshuai able to successfully transform into a salesman?

Kas believes that, first of all, Jie Qingshuai did not always use "low-class origin" as his core character setting, but instead closely linked his personality and character with the values ​​generally recognized by netizens, such as self-reliance, filial piety to grandparents, and loyalty to lovers, which are all character settings that are more attractive to target users.

For example, according to public reports, Xie Qingshuai was admitted to Hebei Handan University at the age of 18 to study sports. In order to reduce the burden on his family, he worked part-time to earn money. He worked as a model and a waiter. As long as there was an opportunity to make money, he never let it go. After graduation, he joined a small decoration engineering company with a monthly salary of 5,000 yuan. In addition to earning living expenses for himself, he also provided living expenses for his elderly grandparents.

Secondly, watching the development and transformation of ordinary people after their gorgeous transformation is the interest point of many Douyin users, that is, they have a strong tendency to like watching the show.

Just like the big anchors on various platforms who love to do wedding live broadcasts, birthday live broadcasts and other special live broadcasts outside the platform promotion period, Jie Qingshuai also created enough gimmicks for the 7.29 studio premiere. He released a video 19 days in advance, announcing the establishment of a studio, and said that "part of the income will be used to help some people in need", which increased the favorability of some users. More importantly, he used emotional topics such as love, confession, and adding parents as the entry point, adding content highlights to the live broadcast room beyond the low-priced attributes of the goods, thereby attracting users to enter and stay.

Screenshot of Jie Qingshuai's Tik Tok video

It seems that Xie Qingshuai's life trajectory of being loyal to his girlfriend, not overly dependent on his family of origin but starting a business together, and choosing to help others, echoes the simple values ​​of the Chinese people's desire for family harmony and mutual support. Guo Youcai, who became popular on Douyin in the first half of this year, also has a similar character background - his mother-in-law did not despise him and encouraged him to "start a family first, then start a business", and his girlfriend Su Chang never left him, all of which turned into a story of "a virtuous wife helped me to soar to the sky, and I returned my virtuous wife ten thousand taels of gold" and circulated on the Internet.

Finally, Xie Qingshuai and his family have high financial resources and are able to build a professional content, operation, and traffic investment team to make preliminary preparations and on-site response work for their live broadcast room.

After analyzing his inventory, Kas found that in the past 30 days, the category with the highest sales in Jie Qingshuai's Douyin live broadcast room was daily necessities, accounting for 46%, followed by food and beverages and beauty and skin care, accounting for 14% and 10%; the items with the highest sales were Tianhai Tibetan steaks, Liby laundry detergent, Tianhai Tibetan lobster tails, Yunyu silk quilts, New Balance sneakers, Hanshu family mask sets, Robin Hood couple down jackets, etc., all of which are popular products verified by the market, with a customer unit price ranging from 99 yuan to 399 yuan, and estimated sales of 1 million to 2.5 million.

This product selection and grouping mechanism is also in line with its fan profile. Among its live broadcast room viewers, males account for 54%, slightly higher than females. In addition, users aged 31-40 account for the highest proportion, reaching 46%, followed by users aged 24-30, accounting for 22%. In other words, the needs of family users should be its primary consideration, and choosing to list a large number of daily necessities and food is in line with e-commerce logic.

Interestingly, among influencers with the same level of sales (sales exceeding 10 million in the past 30 days), Jie Qingshuai obtained more free traffic recommendations by strengthening his content capabilities, thereby reducing the proportion of paid traffic. The proportion of recommended feed flow in his live broadcast room reached 66%, and paid traffic accounted for 11%.

When the distribution of goods in the live broadcast room is reasonable and matches the target audience, and the anchor's ability to carry traffic is qualified, a good large-scale live broadcast can be completed. For example, after releasing multiple love videos, the live broadcast theme is also strongly related to it. The "Qixi Skin Care Special" live broadcast on August 9th is estimated to have sales of 1 million to 2.5 million yuan.

2. Amateur internet celebrities frequently fail. Can reputation and commercialization be balanced?

Xie Qingshuai is still just an exception and a lucky man.

Three years ago, Kas discussed an industry phenomenon: once an amateur internet celebrity who started out as a "low-profile" blogger becomes a top blogger and has far more attention and material conditions than before, he will inevitably face more scrutiny and frequently fail. Because when they rely on their influence to monetize, live in a big house, get rich, and their living conditions change greatly, there is a sharp contrast with their early status, and the audience's psychology will also change from sympathy and understanding to doubt and dissatisfaction. For example, common criticisms are "having a company", "not real", and "just wanting to make money".

For example, on October 30, 2021, the top rural celebrity @牛爱芳小春花 launched her first live show. This live broadcast was a special show for the kitchen appliance brand Wahson, with total sales of 26.408 million. However, after the live broadcast, negative comments emerged one after another, and she lost more than one million fans.

Kass once analyzed the reasons for its rollover:

First, in 2020, @牛爱芳小春花 mentioned in a video that she does not promote products, and then "slapped her face", which made some fans feel uncomfortable. The filter of "simple and honest" that the influencer had been given before was shattered the moment she entered the live broadcast room to promote products.

Secondly, the live broadcast room sold air fryers for 199 yuan, embossed woks for 179 yuan, and blenders for 269 yuan. After comparing prices, some consumers found that the products in the live broadcast room were more expensive than other brands, which led to negative comments such as "high price difference" and "cheating", and many people unfollowed the platform in anger.

Thirdly, many people questioned the authenticity of @牛爱芳's Xiaochunhua persona. In order to shoot videos, she pretended to be a farmer working hard. The content of the videos were all preset scripts. Even the "Building a House" series of videos that attracted countless fans were considered to be "acting."

Here, Kas still does not encourage amateurs who rely on hot events (such as looking for relatives, street shooting, etc.) to become Internet celebrities and immediately choose to enter the field of live streaming. Live streaming e-commerce has been around for 8 years, and the requirements for people, goods and venues are getting higher and higher. Practitioners are getting more and more competitive, and there are still only a few who can successfully break out of the circle. An amateur with a good reputation may be drowned in the saliva of netizens because of mistakes in bringing goods. For example, the duck head brother of the Eight Bureau, who was noticed by netizens because of the fire in Zibo in 2023, also stopped shortly after trying live streaming, and the number of fans stagnated.

@梓博鸭头小哥 Screenshot of Douyin live broadcast room

Let’s think about this question again from the beginning: Can amateur internet celebrities find a balance between fan evaluation and monetization ability?

Kas believes that the two are actually complementary. The "failure" cases we have seen so far are actually caused by paying too much attention to the routine and consistency of the content format and ignoring the essence. More sincerity, less routine, maintaining professionalism and verticality are the foundation for content entrepreneurs.

For example, bloggers can tell their fans that their actual living conditions have improved after commercialization. It is not difficult to show real life, but it is difficult to overcome the hurdle in your heart and accept the resulting popularity gap. Since you want to be a lifestyle blogger or a personal IP, why not be more real?

Furthermore, content creators should not try live streaming to sell goods without thorough preparation.

In previous articles, Kas also emphasized a point of view that in 2024, the intensive collapse of influencers is undoubtedly a loud alarm bell. The more top influencers are, the more "dangerous" the road to monetization will be. Whether it is within the content or outside the content, only by being cautious can we go further on this road.

It has long been a trend for content experts to transform into live streaming sales, but live streaming sales still have high requirements for the quality of the anchor, the quality of the supply chain, and the execution ability of the team. It is difficult for ordinary people to have the energy to resist the scrutiny of thousands of netizens. It is also difficult to continuously update content and maintain fan stickiness after being evaluated and complained too much. After becoming famous overnight, hastily entering the river of live streaming sales may be "a waste of effort".