"From today on, we will stop."
Recently, the up owner "King Xu who lives by his face" with nearly 4 million fans in bilibili released a video saying that he would stop for a while in the future. Another up owner, "-lks-", who has more than 3 million fans, also publicly announced that he would temporarily stop watching.
Two million fans, the up owners, have successively announced that they will stop working, which has attracted the attention of the outside world. On April 2nd, it was reported that a number of up owners intensively and publicly announced the suspension of updates, and "bilibili up owners initiated a wave of suspension of updates" also rushed to Weibo for hot search.
However, an insider in bilibili explained to the The Paper reporter that the statement of "stopping the shift" is not accurate. Only some up stops for personal reasons, and it is not a collective behavior. On the afternoon of the 2nd, "King Xu, who relies on his face to eat" also responded in Weibo: "Today, these two hot searches are a bit inexplicable, and I don’t know who arranged them. The reason why I stopped working is very clear in my video, all of which are my personal reasons."
"I’ve been making videos for more than ten years, and bilibili is just one of my publishing platforms, so I have nothing to do with bilibili if I stop. It’s purely my personal business. Moreover, engaging in content creation is actually no different from ordinary work. It is normal for some people to make money and others to lose money. It is not necessary to make a fuss about people from all walks of life. " "King Xu who lives by his face" wrote in Weibo.
In Weibo, "-lks-" said that the individual’s announcement to stop the shift has nothing to do with the economic situation, and the income in bilibili this year is no less than before.
Collective stop?
The decrease in income makes up owners "unable to make money"
"It’s hard to say that there is a collective stoppage of up owners, but the decline of mid-level up owners is clear, and it didn’t start recently." In an interview with a reporter from The Paper, bilibili up said, "Cat sauce that doesn’t eat grass and peppers".
In the view of "cat sauce that doesn’t eat grass and pepper", since bilibili adjusted the internal incentive mechanism last year, the platform income of up owners has become less and less. Generally, up owners don’t expect to make money through bilibili. "Poor works have no income, and good works have no income. I am sorry to pay, and the total income after incentive adjustment has dropped by more than 30%."
"The main reason for stopping the shift is that it is indeed impossible to make money, and it is even more impossible to make money than in previous years." He said frankly.
The Paper reporter learned that the revenue sources that up owners can get from bilibili are divided into two parts. One part is related to video submission, including punch-in challenges, video creation incentives and other projects, and the other part is related to advertising and promotion with goods, including advertising sharing, offering a reward for goods, fireworks business list and other projects. In addition, there are similar forms of fans’ "charging".
Since last year, bilibili has changed the creative incentive rules of up owners for many times. A large number of up owners reported that their income was reduced on social platforms, and even some up owners claimed that their income was reduced by 90% at the highest. For example, Master Tree, the owner of up, said that the video he played in bilibili for 100,000 yuan at most, but after the revision, the income of the new video compared with the same data decreased by more than 40%.
"In fact, bilibili’s video playback revenue was the highest in the whole network before, and 1 yuan’s income was almost 300 (times). Now it is expected that the creator’s investment will be reduced due to financial pressure." A content industry practitioner revealed to reporters, "From the results, bilibili has reduced the general investment in up owners, especially the waist up owners with the highest proportion, and gradually strengthened the right to speak on the head and middle up owners."
The reporter found that video creation incentives are an important part of up owners’ income through bilibili, but bilibili has not published a clear calculation formula.
The data shows that with nearly 1.5 million fans, the up owner "Feng Ge is on the run", with an average video click volume of about 1 million and the update frequency of 3-4 days, but the total income last year was only 70,000 yuan. According to another waist up owner, the 22 videos he created have a total broadcast volume of nearly 700,000, but the income is only more than 1,000 yuan. "Cat sauce that doesn’t eat grass pepper" takes its own works as an example. Since March last year, the team has created more than 100 videos, with a total income of less than 3,000 yuan.
Last year, 9.1 billion yuan was distributed to up owners. Is that enough?
In addition to official incentives, another important income comes from advertising revenue obtained by up owners. According to several up owners, the positioning of the platform in bilibili is different from that in Tik Tok. The platform allows creators to implant advertisements in videos, which can earn extra advertising revenue at the same time with low share. "However, not everyone’s videos are suitable for advertising. bilibili’s share of my overall income is very low, and it only accounts for less than 1% of your total income." "Cat sauce that doesn’t eat grass peppers" revealed.
However, influenced by multiple factors such as the external environment, the number of advertisements received by up owners has also decreased in recent years. "In the past two years, the competition in the industry has been increasing, and more and more people have entered the market. If you don’t strive for innovation and change, you will easily be eliminated." A waist up owner revealed to reporters, "On the other hand, the rise of short video platforms has also divided the use time of users’ bilibili, so that the chances of receiving business orders have dropped." In his view, the rise of new technologies such as artificial intelligence has also accelerated the "survival of the fittest" of the industry itself.
Bilibili’s constant adjustment of the incentive mechanism may be related to its annual revenue losses. On March 2nd, Billie Billie (nasdaq: bili, 09626.hk) released the unaudited financial report for the fourth quarter and the whole year as of December 31st, 2022. According to the financial report, the total revenue of bilibili in fiscal year 2022 increased by 13% year-on-year to 21.9 billion yuan, and the annual net loss was 7.5 billion yuan, up by 10% year-on-year. In the fourth quarter of last year, the revenue reached 6.14 billion yuan, up 6% year-on-year, and the net loss was 1.5 billion yuan, down 29% year-on-year.
"It is expected that in 2023, our overall loss will be narrowed more obviously, and the goal of breakeven will be achieved in 2024." In the conference call after the earnings report, bilibili ceo Rui Chen said.
It is worth noting that the financial report shows that in 2022, the operating cost of bilibili was as high as 18 billion yuan, up 18% year-on-year (the operating cost in the fourth quarter was 4.9 billion yuan, up 4% compared with the same period in 2021). bilibili said that the increase was mainly caused by the increase in revenue sharing cost and content cost. Among them, revenue sharing is mainly an incentive or sharing for up owners in live broadcast and advertising business, reaching 9.1 billion yuan, an increase of 18%.
According to Zhongtai Securities Research Report, at present, bilibili’s business is divided into four parts, namely, mobile games, value-added services, advertising, e-commerce and others, among which value-added services and advertising will become the focus of bilibili’s future revenue growth. Value-added services are divided into paid subscription and live broadcast reward. Paid members are subject to the supply of ogv content (professional copyright works exclusively purchased and played). Under the background of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, it is expected that the growth rate will gradually slow down, and live broadcast will become the core growth point. It is estimated that the compound annual growth rate of revenue of this business in the next three years will be 20.1%. Effect advertising is the focus of growth, and it is estimated that the compound annual growth rate of revenue in three years is 20.5%.
Editor-in-Chief: Qin Hong
Text Editor: Dong Siyun
Author: The Paper
Source: vision china
Photo editor: Yong Kai