"The Spring Festival is coming, and it's time to give yourself a holiday." Seven days before the Spring Festival in 2022, after completing a day's work, "post-90s" full-time digital blogger Liu Xiaoxiao left the computer desk, turned into the kitchen and fried himself with a sector of shredded potatoes, a sector of leeks and a sector of sausages with garlic leaves.
Since leaving a company three years ago, he has been "working" for himself. There is a loft apartment near Ganjiang River in Nanchang. The first floor is his studio and the second floor is his living room. He doesn't have to get up early to catch the subway, punch in and out of work every day, and deal with "office politics". He can wake up naturally and arrange his own work rhythm.
His day's work and life were carried out in loft apartment. In just a few years, Liu Xiaoxiao earned the down payment of a house. In 2021, he finally owned his own house and paid off the mortgage by himself every month. In Nanchang, he became a high paid freelancer.
enter the industry with interest and enter the " KOL circle"
For Liu Xiaoxiao, the biggest change in life in 2021 is that he bought a house with more than 2 million yuan through his own efforts. The down payment is basically earned by himself, and the monthly payment is also self-supporting.
Speaking of being able to make money by interest and earning a high salary among his peers, Liu Xiaoxiao's experience on this road is more bumpy.
Many young people in Nanchang yearn for Changsha, the capital of neighboring provinces with more employment opportunities and lower house prices. When Liu Xiaoxiao just graduated from university in 2016, he also went to Changsha for more than a year to engage in the geological work of his major, but he thought of leaving a year later.
Because of his obsession with digital products, Liu Xiaoxiao "mixed" digital forums when he was in college. In 2016, relying on his interest and research, he made his first number on today's headlines.
From 2015 to 2016, it is the rising era of "today's headlines" under byte beat. In the past, people mainly read reports from the four major news portals and traditional media. Without exception, they all adopted the "editing system". Today's headlines take the lead in adopting the "arithmetic system". Although it has attracted a lot of controversy, they rely on accurate content distribution technology to maximize the content consumption based on personalized recommendation, and today's headlines stand out, Byte beating has also become an emerging Internet company that can compete with bat.
Behind the rise of the Internet, a large number of freelance content creators have emerged, of which Liu Xiaoxiao is one.
In the initial stage, today's headlines spared no expense to support content creators. In 2015, they launched the "ten thousand people and ten thousand yuan" plan and content entrepreneurship incubator. A year later, the total number of headlines rose from 30000 to 300000. In 2016, today's headlines spent another 1 billion yuan to support short video creators.
"At that time, I learned in the group playing digital that today's headlines were very 'hot' and suitable for registering with the we media platform, so I made my own number, which was updated by interest in my spare time." Liu Xiaoxiao said.
As a result, the headline of Liu Xiaoxiao's initial water test attracted the attention of 60000 fans in more than a year. Relying on this number, he had been able to earn basic living expenses, so he quit his job he was not interested in and devoted more time to self media.
At that time, after all, we media was still an emerging industry, and it was not widely accepted as a profession. Therefore, Liu Xiaoxiao went to Zhejiang to help his relatives manage business and use his spare time to do we media part-time.
After six months of formal training, Liu Xiaoxiao wanted to return to his hometown to find a special job for civil servants. Later, the goal of the examination was not achieved. He looked for a job in Nanchang again. After fierce competition, he was admitted by a company. As a result, after only 15 days, the company laid off all the business in Nanchang.
He always wanted to find a serious job, but it didn't go well. Liu Xiaoxiao finally decided to work full-time as we media, and his we media became more and more handy. This is probably because he didn't want to plant flowers and flowers and didn't want to plant willows.
In the words of the industry, Liu Xiaoxiao officially entered the "KOL circle". KOL, originally its literal meaning - key opinion leader, refers to a person or account with appeal, influence and credibility in a certain field. Later, KOL gradually evolved into a nickname for content creators with "big V" and more fans in China. Moreover, KOL not only creates content, but also launches brands to help businesses connect products with audiences.
In recent years, KOL marketing has become an unavoidable link in the advertising of businesses. If advertisers want to obtain traffic in the era of mobile Internet, they must carefully understand the KOLs in their industry and contact them for cooperation. The digital technology we media engaged by Liu Xiaoxiao is a huge market in KOL marketing. Many businesses rely on professional KOL to introduce, evaluate and "plant grass" after releasing new mobile phones, computers, wireless headphones, tablets and other products.
When Liu Xiaoxiao decided to work full-time at home as we media, he gradually went deep into the KOL circle of digital technology and became a link in the industrial chain. There are more than 5000 people in his wechat friends list, of which nearly 2000 are peers. There are more than 100 KOL people who are familiar with Liu Xiaoxiao. They are distributed all over the country. Like Liu Xiaoxiao, most of them work at home, make we media a career, and set up a studio in their own home.
becoming a high paid person also has traffic anxiety
KOL circle is also a Jianghu, in which there are many forces such as brand party, public relations company, KOL and network platform. They both cooperate and game with each other.
"KOLs have a variety of groups. Everyone will hold together and bring resources to each other, such as quotation and industry trend. They need to communicate with each other. Businesses will take the initiative to know KOL, and they will also know KOL through public relations companies. Public relations companies basically have a list of KOLs they are familiar with. Sometimes they will add people to the list, and sometimes they will remove people from the list because of some things."
Liu Xiaoxiao's work and circle are online. Although he is his own boss, his work and rest are not healthy. It seems that as KOL in the era of mobile Internet, irregular life is necessary.
Generally speaking, Liu Xiaoxiao doesn't get up early in the morning, starts the day's work in the afternoon, and habitually goes to bed late at night. His work rhythm basically follows the needs of Party A. when Party A's task is urgent, he will stay up late to complete it. On weekdays, we also need to focus on hot spots and find topics like journalists. When something big happens in the digital technology industry, he will quickly publish content.
In addition to today's headlines, Liu Xiaoxiao also operates baijiahao and microblog. At present, there are 1.06 million fans on microblog, which can be regarded as a good achievement in the vertical field.
At present, Liu Xiaoxiao has an income of about 200000 to 300000 yuan a year. The source of income is mainly divided into two parts. The main part is the advertising of the brand, accounting for about 90%; Another 10% comes from the sharing income of the network platform. The average monthly income is about 20000 yuan. Liu Xiaoxiao can earn 50000 or 60000 yuan in special months such as "double 11".
Since he is the boss, Liu Xiaoxiao has to keep his own accounts. "I think I made a lot of money when I was bookkeeping, but I didn't get much, mainly because the collection was relatively slow, and the longest accounting period reached more than two years."
But in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, where Liu Xiaoxiao lives, he is a well paid person.
According to the data disclosed in the recently held press conference on achieving a good start of the 14th five year plan for the economic and social development of Jiangxi Province in 2021, the per capita disposable income of urban residents in Jiangxi Province was 41684 yuan in 2021, which was shared equally to 3474 yuan per month. According to the data of Huajing Industry Research Institute, the per capita disposable income of urban residents in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi Province, was 46796 yuan in 2020, with an average of 3900 yuan per month.
According to the above data, Liu Xiaoxiao's monthly income has exceeded the local average by 400%.
Although KOL is a profession that has been rising for less than a decade, Liu Xiaoxiao feels the trend of more and more oppression. "This industry is advancing very fast. If you are not careful, you will fall behind."
At the beginning, daily sending pictures and texts can attract the audience. Later, Liu Xiaoxiao iterated to make videos. Therefore, Liu Xiaoxiao specially built video scenes at home. Originally, KOL could operate several numbers alone, but now they have formed a professional team, and the content and form are upgrading. In the past, you can always suck powder on a certain platform. As a result, the platform also has a bottleneck period. From headlines to microblog, station B and xiaohongshu, KOLs need to choose which platform to focus on according to the changing trend.
In this era of traffic anxiety, the standard to measure the success of KOL's career is traffic. The digital big V "he classmate" on station B (bilibili.com) quickly became popular by making a video, sucked more than 9 million powder at once, and soon got an exclusive interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook.
In the past two years, Koc's marketing has been more popular than KOL. The rise of e-commerce live broadcasting has attracted more attention and capital from the selling anchor, among which Li Jiaqi and Weiya are the representatives. Unlike the head star big V, some people who have relatively small fans but bring goods directly are called Koc (key opinion consumer). Both KOL and Koc carry goods through marketing, but KOL prefers we media and content creators. They are weakly related to sales and output interesting content in professional fields. Koc is more vertical and cheaper, which is strongly related to sales. They directly explain and promote products.
sub health appears, and massage is the main consumption
Because he chose to do KOL full-time, Liu Xiaoxiao's daily life is inseparable from the Internet. "My life is relatively simple and casual. When I don't want to go out, I play games and chat online at home. Although I always want to cook and eat healthily, I usually order more takeout."
Liu Xiaoxiao can basically complete his work and life day after day without leaving home. When he is hungry, he will order takeout from meituan. If he wants to cook by himself, he will buy vegetables at meituan. The rider will send the dishes home, "half of the dishes are bought online".
He usually buys clothes and digital equipment for himself. He likes JD because the logistics is fast. This year he talked about his girlfriend and knew that girls like to use Taobao. When buying gifts for his girlfriend, he would also go to Taobao. Tired of work, Liu Xiaoxiao played a dozen mobile games "glory of the king" and "League of heroes" for recreation.
Liu Xiaoxiao seldom goes out for consumption. He goes out mostly for dinner and massage. "Massage may be a big expense, because long-term sedentary work at home will lead to backache, so I got a massage membership card. Last year, I recharged 10000 yuan and clicked it every other period of time."
In fact, more bloggers engaged in digital technology KOL choose to live in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, so they can access more resources and obtain higher income. However, Liu Xiaoxiao chooses to live in his hometown Jiangxi, which makes him lose a large piece of income. "The main advantage is low cost, and it is the familiar environment."
He believes that his industry still has great development prospects, but he doesn't know how long he can do it. "This industry updates and iterates too quickly. The waves behind the Yangtze River push the waves ahead. We are also worried that one day we can't do it and will be excluded from the list." Liu Xiaoxiao said.
