With a weekly income of 200,000, has Alipay become the “second spring” for store exploration bloggers?

Food exploration videos have always been lukewarm. Except for some popular videos, the traffic of general exploration bloggers is not high. Let’s take a look at this article to see what kind of platform Alipay provides for exploration bloggers.

Gansu Tianshui Malatang is so popular that food bloggers can't wait to try it. The UP host "Daoyueshe Food Encounter" who has tasted food all over the country couldn't resist the temptation and posted two videos of him feasting on the food. One blogger even told us that "half of the diners in Tianshui Malatang are fellow travelers holding cameras."

On the one hand, Gansu Malatang and other food bloggers are taking on a lot of food and restaurant exploration, while on the other hand, the restaurant exploration industry ecosystem is gradually becoming inward-looking. "More than 90% of restaurant exploration bloggers cannot support themselves as full-time bloggers," said Wang Qiang, the founder of a service provider who has been deeply involved in the local life track for more than two years.

According to reports, he has contacted more than 100,000 store exploration bloggers and found that many bloggers are facing the problem of internal traffic and difficulty in monetization. These problems are more obvious among the middle-level bloggers, resulting in most bloggers only being able to take store exploration as a side job.

But at the same time, the growth potential of local life should not be underestimated. According to iResearch Consulting, the scale of China's local life service market reached 19.5 trillion yuan in 2020, and it is expected that this figure will grow to 35.3 trillion yuan by 2025. Therefore, even though they understand the existence of competitive pressure, there are still batches of store exploration bloggers pouring in to find their own pot of gold. The steady recovery of the cultural tourism market has also added fuel to the local life track.

Recently, we surveyed 15 local life practitioners, including service providers such as Wang Qiang, as well as mid-level store exploration bloggers with thousands to hundreds of thousands of fans on the Internet. Some of them are facing development bottlenecks and seeking transformation opportunities; others, in order to get rid of the dilemma of internal circulation, have expanded their horizons to emerging content platforms and improved their commercial value through multi-platform distribution and matrix, including Alipay, which has been active in the content track for nearly a year.

Based on this background, how should mid-level store bloggers develop? And what are the ways to break through?

1. The dilemma faced by mid-level store bloggers is to focus on content and speed

Store visits were once a hot topic that content platforms competed for. In 2021, content platforms led by Douyin launched an offensive in the local life industry, and store visit short videos became one of the main forms of customer acquisition.

In order to recruit more store exploration bloggers, Douyin held the first offline talent empowerment launch conference in Shanghai in June of the same year, directly shouting out the slogan "Too many businesses! Many business orders! Few Internet celebrities, not enough accounts." After that, multiple content platforms such as Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu joined the battle of local life. Against the background of the old saying that the Internet dividends are exhausted, local life has become one of the few incremental sectors. The fierce competition atmosphere not only occurs between various content platforms, but also permeates the middle and lower store exploration bloggers.

Nowadays, what changes have taken place in the status quo of store exploration bloggers? Based on the survey results of 15 local life practitioners, we have summarized the following common points:

1. The era of picking up money everywhere is over. The early days were big but little.

Most store exploration bloggers only need to take simple photos of food and mark the corresponding set meal and discount price to complete a store exploration video, and they can earn commissions and sales share from merchant channels. As the store exploration track enters a mature stage, this kind of crude content produced by assembly lines will most likely be judged as low-quality store exploration videos by the platform, and thus restricted.

"There is a saturation of low-quality influencers, but there is still a huge demand gap for high-quality store exploration bloggers with strong creative abilities," Wang Qiang observed. This situation has directly affected the income level of store exploration bloggers.

Wang Qiang took Douyin as an example. The quote for store exploration bloggers is not entirely based on the number of fans, but is more related to their own expert rating. "The quote for a single store exploration video of a Lv6-7 expert is between 500-1000 yuan, and gradually decreases from there. The quote for a Lv1-3 expert is only 10-30 yuan per video. The former relies on quality, while the latter relies on quantity, and they can post hundreds of videos a month."

Extremely homogeneous store exploration

2. Store bloggers flock to popular cities

From last year's Zibo barbecue to the recent hot Gansu Malatang, when a city has a popular food, naturally a group of store exploration bloggers will flock to it. "Legendary Bo Zai" started creating store exploration videos in early 2022. Before that, he was a practitioner in the catering industry and had a keen sense of smell for food.

At first, he would prioritize visiting restaurants in areas that he was interested in. For example, the first place he created content about visiting restaurants was Yunnan, a place he had longed to visit. But as popular cities such as Zibo, Harbin, and Tianshui, Gansu, became popular, he followed suit, which gave him the opportunity to create hit works. On February 5, he released a video about visiting Gansu Malatang, which has received 710,000 likes on Douyin so far, becoming the work with the highest number of likes in the past two months.

3. It is more difficult for store exploration videos of the same quality to become a hit

Refined operation is the development trend of any content track, which also invisibly increases the difficulty of creation for store exploration bloggers. A mid-level store exploration blogger said that he currently maintains a release frequency of 2-3 videos a week.

Although the production time and quality of creation have not changed, the frequency of popular works has decreased compared to the early days. "The majority of traffic is concentrated in the top bloggers, and the traffic available to mid-level bloggers is limited."

4. Bloggers with thousands of fans who visit stores have no stable business guarantees

In addition to content involution and traffic bottlenecks, some store exploration bloggers told us during the survey that it is difficult to get suitable business orders because they only have a few thousand fans. Some merchants will bypass the platform and contact bloggers privately to assign orders to avoid the platform's commission, but this also lacks the platform's supervision and protection, and may lead to arrears of accounts.

2. Betting on new platforms and actively seeking transformation: the way out for store bloggers

On the road of content creation, problems and bottlenecks are common for bloggers, and the key is how to solve them. In our research, we found that most mid-level bloggers are constantly upgrading their content while also trying to bet on emerging content platforms to gain traffic growth.

Taking "Legendary Bo Zai" as an example, in August 2023, he received an official invitation from Alipay to join the creator group of Alipay Life Account.

At first, he only regarded it as a distribution platform, but he did not expect that through Alipay's profit-sharing plan, his monthly income would be nearly 50,000 yuan. In his opinion, "Alipay's cash incentive is the highest among all platforms."

So far, the highest number of views of a single video of "Legendary Bo Zai" has reached 31 million, and the number of likes has reached 110,000. The video about his visit to the "iron lunch box on the street in Harbin" has also brought him more than 10,000 fans. Currently, the number of Alipay fans has reached 35,000. In the comment area of ​​his Alipay videos, netizens often make comments such as "It looks delicious" and "Where is this store? I want to go!" He found that although Alipay has not been laying out content for a long time, users are very active in interaction. "As a national app, Alipay still has a large number of users."

Like "Legendary Bo Zai", "Xiao Hu Tong Xue Ai Sheng Huo" also joined Alipay as one of the first bloggers invited to join last year. Although "Xiao Hu Tong Xue Ai Sheng Huo" has only 27,000 fans, it has received more than 300,000 yuan in cash incentives through Alipay's on-site support activities.

At present, his two popular videos have received 77,000 and 32,000 likes on Alipay respectively, which has brought him more followers and traffic share. In this regard, he emphasized that not all store exploration videos can make money on Alipay, "Alipay settles according to the effective playback volume. Only by creating content that meets the platform's requirements can you have the opportunity to get a higher share."

For bloggers, original content protection is the driving force to support their continuous creation. If faced with infringement, the power of mid-level bloggers is relatively weak and they need the help of the platform. After "Xiao Zhanghe" joined Alipay Life Account, he encountered the situation where his works were copied and plagiarized by other accounts.

She contacted official personnel to report the incident, and the accounts that copied the content were punished or blocked by the platform. Afterwards, Alipay also transferred the followers of the accounts that copied the content to the "Xiao Zhanghe" account, allowing users to pay attention to the original author himself.

This year, Alipay opened its doors to content creators for the first time. Leveraging the traffic of Wufu, many content creators have gained platform dividends. Public reports show that during Wufu, in addition to the original creation profit-sharing plan, Alipay also launched the "Wufu National Ranking Competition", adding an additional 25 million to encourage and support high-quality content creators.

Creators can participate in the ranking by posting short videos on Alipay based on specific topics, and can receive a prize of up to 100,000 yuan and a gift package for watching the European Cup. "Legendary Bo Zai", "Little Zhang He", and "Xiao Hu Classmate Loves Life" all participated in the event and received a prize of 100,000 yuan and a gift package for watching the European Cup. "I feel that the content operation during this period has been recognized by the platform and users," "Legendary Bo Zai" exclaimed. "Little Zhang He" even earned more than 200,000 yuan a week through the Five Blessings event and traffic sharing.

In addition, some bloggers said in the survey that they are shifting from food exploration to other types, such as more fashionable clothing stores, and outdoor-related parks and playgrounds. "Store exploration is essentially to guide users to go offline, and the budget for some niche high-end store exploration projects is even higher."

3. Will Alipay become the “second spring” for store bloggers?

No matter which content track, there is a certain survivor bias. During the research, we also found that although a few store exploration bloggers have only a few thousand followers, they can earn tens of thousands of yuan a month by offering low prices and posting frequently.

Even so, they still express anxiety about traffic growth and commercial realization. In terms of traffic, data shows that as of December 2022, the scale of short video users in my country has reached 1.012 billion, accounting for 94.8% of the total netizens, and the short video field has approached the growth ceiling. As a result, the ecology of major content platforms has become more mature, the "28 effect" has become more prominent, and it has become more difficult for mid-level bloggers to significantly increase their fans. In terms of commercial realization, the income of store exploration bloggers is mainly divided into two modes: fixed-price commission and cps commission.

Some powerful merchants will ask mid-level store exploration bloggers to post videos and link to group purchases without paying any fees, and then return cash based on the order turnover. "If the group purchases don't sell well, you may only earn a few dollars in commission, and the cycle cost of making the video will be wasted." This kind of situation where people with little influence have no influence is particularly common among mid-level store exploration bloggers.

Based on this background, traffic and growth have become the top priorities for bloggers. They go wherever there is traffic, growth, and money to be made.

Take Alipay as an example. Although it is a latecomer in the content field, its traffic advantage cannot be underestimated. Official data shows that Alipay has more than 1 billion users worldwide, of which 711 million are monthly active users. In addition, Alipay has accumulated local life knowledge through offline payment and mini-programs for many years, which makes store bloggers smell opportunities.

"The legendary Bo Zai" expressed his expectations for the commercialization of Alipay, such as launching video showcases, increasing live streaming sales, etc. "If we can connect the local merchant resources accumulated by Alipay over the years with store bloggers, we will be able to leverage greater business potential."

At the same time, Alipay is also one of the few platforms in the industry that currently provides cash sharing of traffic. In June 2023, Alipay launched a creative sharing plan to give creators real cash incentives. Many bloggers lamented to us, "I didn't expect that I could make money by distributing high-quality videos at the same time." In the invitation plan for experts/MCNs, Alipay also clarified the key content projects that include food exploration, home life, and pan-financial business. On this basis, with the dual blessing of platform-level activities such as Alipay Wufu and traffic sharing, store exploration bloggers may be able to find new opportunities in Alipay. After all, in the content field, only by stepping on the rising period of the platform can you have the opportunity to reap the first wave of dividends.

Author: Xiaoba

WeChat public account: Xinbang