Why People Are Willing to Pay for Zhihu Live

What Is Zhihu Live?

Zhihu, the largest knowledge platform on the Chinese Internet, has generated more than 15 million questions and 55 million answers since it was first launched in 2011. Most of them are answered by users for free, and some high-quality answers or articles can be opened in paid reading mode after being reviewed by the platform.In 2016, Zhihu launched a real-time audio Q&A product called “Zhihu live”, where users can share their knowledge, experience and insights on specific topics. Paid listeners can ask questions and get answers in real time. As of March 13, 2019, the platform has hosted 8,529 live sessions, with an average of over 250 live sessions per month.

There is no specific price or length for Zhihu Live. The price range for each live is 9.9 RMB to 499.99 RMB, depending on its length and quality. The live speaker can also set the price according to the actual situation; each live is usually controlled between 5 minutes and 120 minutes. 

In 2017, as the Internet environment continues to change and Zhihu Live continues to grow, Zhihu launched an all-round optimization of it, specifically setting up a variety of important features such as no-reason refunds, evaluation mechanism, and copyright protection to better match the diversified needs of users, fully optimize the usage mechanism of the Zhihu platform, and improve product quality and service quality. At present, Zhihu live remains strong and vibrant, which is welcomed by many university students, white-collar workers and senior managers.

Combination of Celebrities And Influencers

With the combination of knowledge and celebrity, users are greatly attracted to the platform. In recent years, live streaming as a product of the new media era has encountered bottlenecks in development such as single mode, and the survival of traditional influencers is facing great challenges. The knowledge celebrities that appear on Zhihu live are gradually changing the traditional profit model of celebrity. They use their professional knowledge, summarize their experiences and improve the quality of information, and receive a great deal of popularity among users.

For example, lyricist Gan Shijia launched a live lecture on “How a song lyric is filled into a melody” on the platform, sharing examples of his lyric writing and talking about his expertise in an easy-to-understand way. In addition, when promoting, the platform also intentionally uses celebrity-related words such as “Xue Zhiqian song lyricist” and “lyric story with SNH48” as recommendation words to attract the public, which strongly increases the popularity of the lecture. With the dual production and drive of celebrities and knowledge celebrities, the course was sought after upon launch, and the platform usage rate was increased, and some niche cultures were presented to users.

Community Effect and Interactive Mechanism

Visibility and professionalism are crucial for paid knowledge sharing platforms. The stronger the visibility and expertise, the more consumers are willing to choose. However, this also creates a problem: the products with less attention in the market do not receive proper attention, so interactive communication platforms are created. Strange visitors are linked to each other, and through the continuous spread of interpersonal relationships, these products gain access to the corresponding communication channels, making the process of long-tail communication more fluid and providing inexhaustible power for the development of the paid economy.

Zhihu live also makes use of the original ecology of the Zhihu community to bridge the communication gap. Through the existing Q&A community, Zhihu live also enhances the interaction between users. In the Q&A community, the “Zhihu live” section was created, where speakers and general audiences can ask and answer each other’s questions and can exchange live lectures and recommend great lectures. This initiative has yielded great results, and one of the most popular questions in the index of “in-depth discussions among friends” under this partition is “What are the most recommended Live you have participated” The number of followers is 2,402, and the total number of views is nearly 300,000.

In addition, in order to prevent the long-tail communication gap, Zhihu often places relevant lectures in prominent positions such as opening screen ads and the “Recommended” section on the home page to recommend the less seen live lectures and attract more users to watch them. With the help of Zhihu community, Zhihu live has a strong interactive platform for users, providing every user with the opportunity to express their opinions and share knowledge, which promotes the spread of its own content.

Revenue Analysis of Zhihu Live

There are two main payment methods for Zhihu Live – single session payment and monthly membership payment, and most of the Live content currently online support users to try some of the content.

From the analysis of revenue data, there are obvious differences in pricing strategy and number of listeners for different categories of Live content. In terms of total streams, the three categories with the highest revenue are education, career, and psychology. The total number of viewers and total number of sessions for education and career are significantly higher than other categories.

In terms of single session revenue, the more professional content, the higher the bargaining power. For example, the pricing per session for the legal and business categories is significantly higher than that for the lower threshold categories such as food and life. In addition to the Nobel Prize winner in economics mentioned above, famous entrepreneur Kai-Fu Lee, famous investor Li Xiaolai, etc., have achieved a single session of more than 100,000 RMB.

From the average number of followers, we can see the distribution of network users’ interests and needs, from high to low: education, psychology, reading and writing, lifestyle, food, career, medicine and health, sports, business, design, law, travel, music, film and games, finance and economy, Internet, art, science and technology.

Some Insights

Combined with the development of Zhihu Live in the past three years, we can see that the basis for the operation of paid knowledge sharing platform is the value of its content and the accurate matching of content distribution.Among them, the production of valuable content must be based on the collection of various high-quality producers. It is a must for paid knowledge sharing platform providers to bring in excellent producers and famous influencers to achieve fan attraction, select suitable content areas, and have complete copyright management and media operation capabilities.

Accurate distribution is also important. In the vast sea of information on the Internet, it is a must for paid knowledge sharing platforms to make the knowledge users arrive smoothly. Imagine, if users need to spend a lot of time screening information, then even if the knowledge is excellent, it can’t get the long-term favor of users.