Everyone is talking about doing self-media, so how can you make money from it?

1.Traffic Monetization

This is the most basic way to monetize. You post videos or articles on a platform, and the platform gives you earnings based on the number of views you get.

The traffic earnings on each platform are different. For example, for videos, Bilibili pays about 3 yuan for every 1,000 views, while fan rewards (similar to likes) are also available. For original videos on Toutiao, the earnings can be around 20 yuan per video. (Please refer to the official figures for the exact ratio, and the final amount is subject to tax deductions.)

In this regard, WeChat Public Account may be a good starting point. A well-written article can easily get over 100,000 views. Many WeChat public accounts can earn very high revenues just from the ad cards in the middle or at the bottom of their articles.

In addition, many text-based self-media can directly insert product cards and earn a sales commission from them.

If you want to rely on traffic monetization, your videos need to have extremely high popularity and a large number of views.

Moreover, you must continuously produce high-quality videos or text content. After all, no one can predict which video will go viral. Sometimes a carefully crafted video may have average views, while a seemingly ordinary video may reach tens of millions of views.

There are many platforms available for self-media to join now, such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Baijiahao, Toutiao, Yidianhao, Dayuhao, Sogouhao, Sohuhao, Fenghao, Bilibili, iQiyi, etc.

If you have a good command of English, you can also consider posting your videos on YouTube. For example, Li Ziqi has over 7 million followers there, and her annual earnings from video view shares alone can reach millions of dollars.

The People's Daily even published an article advocating that self-media should be as brilliant and confident as Li Ziqi.

Currently, many domestic manufacturers hope to go global and increase their visibility worldwide. In addition to large-scale advertising, finding cultural symbols like Li Ziqi has become an increasingly popular choice. Therefore, more and more self-media are beginning to showcase themselves on major international platforms.

The current popularity of VLOGs is fundamentally because every UP main hopes to become the next Li Ziqi. With the advent of the 5G era, we have reason to believe that more and more Li Ziqis will emerge in China.

2.Platform Support,Creation Incentives

To attract more creators to join and bring more traffic to the platform through original videos, platforms offer various forms of incentives to authors.

For example, Toutiao and iQiyi used to offer monthly subsidies of several thousand yuan to those who produced high-quality videos with good view counts and could consistently update at least four videos per month.

During the early stages of the Toutiao Q&A project, to attract high-quality contributors, a batch of experts were signed up, each responsible for questions in one or several fields, with a guaranteed income of at least 20,000 yuan.

For example, Bilibili's various support programs.

Now, platforms still offer rewards for outstanding content creators, but not necessarily in cash. Instead, they provide traffic. For example, Toutiao and iQiyi often conduct evaluations of self-media, and all selected self-media will share hundreds of millions of traffic. This is actually more exciting for self-media than cash rewards.

3.E-commerce Sales

For those who are just starting out in self-media, relying solely on traffic is definitely not enough to make a living. Therefore, most of them have opened their own Taobao stores, WeChat stores, or platform-based e-commerce shops. They use high-quality content to bring traffic to their stores.

If you don't have your own store, it doesn't matter. You can distribute products from other stores in your videos or articles. The commission share for distribution can sometimes be as high as 60%. You don't need to produce goods yourself. As long as you have enough traffic on your self-media platform, you can earn a decent income through distribution.

For example, if you make food videos, you can sell ingredients or kitchen utensils related to your content.

A while ago, the Zhangqiu iron pot became popular due to the "A Bite of China" series. The daily sales volume through various self-media platforms was an astonishing number.

In this regard, Douyin and Kuaishou are leading the way. It is common for top influencers to generate millions of dollars in sales during a single live-streaming session.

Take the cosmetics field, which many women are interested in, for example. You must have heard of LJQ.

Selling your own products is a monetization method chosen by most internet celebrities or self-media operators. In China, there is no shortage of manufacturers who can produce goods. You just need to contact them to provide you with a private-label product, and then you can earn considerable income through your self-media platform.

4.Knowledge Payment, Customized Tutorials

To understand this monetization method, just take a look at the education institution public accounts. They push educational articles every day and then promote their main products, such as "Basic Photography Tutorials," which are knowledge payment products.

Sometimes, educational platforms will also commission you to create a series of tutorials, collaborating either through a buyout or a revenue-sharing model. You can also publish books and earn royalties.

It should be noted that many self-media on major platforms are currently using the same套路.

First, they show off their self-media revenue streams. Then, many fans will ask to be led. These self-media will then sell their self-media operation techniques in the form of teaching courses, or require students to buy their products, which are actually generic items.

Among them, the most frequently mentioned method is the simple and crude video re-uploader, that is, downloading videos from foreign websites and publishing them on domestic self-media platforms after a certain amount of editing.

In addition to direct re-uploading, there is another method called video mixing, which involves finding many similar videos and making them look completely different through certain editing techniques. Of course, there is still a clear theme. This method has low cost, low legal risk, and can quickly gain traffic.

However, in the long run, these methods are not sustainable. After all, the threshold is too low, and there are certain legal risks.

5.Expanding Business Sources

This monetization method also applies to bloggers who make tutorial content. Since they make tutorial content, they definitely have expertise in a certain area. For example, if you make photography tutorials, you will have photography enthusiasts asking if you take on product photography jobs.

Therefore, self-media is also advertising for oneself, which can bring more business opportunities and increase business volume.

6.Manufacturer Cooperation

Manufacturer cooperation or product advertising is something that all self-media hope to achieve. The main cooperation methods are the following three:

➤Soft Article Advertising

This type of cooperation has been around since the Weibo era. It requires self-media influencers to have certain writing skills or average readership, or to be opinion leaders in a certain field. Such cooperation is usually settled in the form of advertising quotes.

➤Product Review Reports

They can be in the form of text and images or videos. There are two types of cooperation settlement methods. One is cash settlement based on advertising quotes. For smaller accounts, product exchange is adopted, that is, the product is kept after the review. You can keep it for yourself or sell it on platforms like Xianyu for cash.

➤Exhibitions or Special Sharing Sessions

If a self-media influencer is a Key Opinion Leader (KOL) in a certain field, they will be invited by manufacturers to share at exhibitions or to hold special sessions at conferences, sometimes even conducting national tours.

When we see self-media celebrities earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, we must also think about the hardships behind them. Generally speaking, it takes about half a year to a year of continuous high-quality content production to start generating some income. Therefore, newcomers to the industry must be mentally prepared and keep going in order to reap the rewards.