How does millet build a theme store?

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The most commendable part of the Millet theme store is that it is no longer dominated by vendors, but it has formed a relatively independent economy, allowing many third-party designers and producers to share its "dividend".

The four-year World Cup is in full swing, careful rice noodles must have found the millet officially has launched a free "World Cup theme" for rice noodles use. For a considerable part of rice noodles, millet mobile phone most attractive to them is that there are a large number of themes to choose from.

For the company that is now eyeing the "kill" millet, although in the hardware has been able to do not inferior to millet, but in the software level, the advantages of MIUI is still very obvious, MIUI after 4 years of iterations, not only built a solid software ecology, but also summed up a set of effective methodology.

Want to shrink from the software ecology and millet distance, first of all to understand what is the play of millet.

In the Miui ecosystem, theme shops are undoubtedly the most distinctive part of the system. The theme shop itself is not mysterious, many mobile phone manufacturers have similar services, but most of the manufacturers are their own money to invite designers to make the theme, and the number is very limited. Millet's Theme shop is different, it has no longer rely on manufacturers to put money on the lead, but to form a relatively independent economy, similar to Apple's App store, so that a large number of third-party designers and producers also share its "dividend."

According to MIUI product manager Huffei introduced, the current millet theme designers, individual operation of the highest single month income can reach 7, 80,000, the company's operation of one months hundreds of thousands of of income is not a problem.

Millet theme stores have been included more than 4000 sets of themes, including fees and free ratio in 3:1, the highest number of downloads of free topics can be tens of millions of charges, the theme on average has tens of thousands of sets, the best selling has more than 50,000 sets. Nowadays, the theme store can bring about 2 million yuan of income for millet every month. In addition, according to the official millet statistics, about 60% of the Millet users will use the theme of service.

Millet This set of theme ecology is how to build up?

The first stage: natural growth

Millet is not aware of the potential of the theme at the beginning, in the two years after the release of Miui, the theme of Millet ecology has been in a state of natural growth.

With the increase in the size of MIUI users, some rice noodles began to spontaneously produce MIUI theme and uploaded to the forum to share with you. Millet editors will be the theme of the unified collection of millet in the official theme library.

In addition, Millet will hold a theme design competition, the official put out a small amount of money as a reward, encourage enthusiasts design themes. However, the early theme contest is more from the perspective of marketing, hope that this way to further let Miui in the user to establish a good reputation.

By the end of 2012, through this natural growth, millet has collected about 1000 sets of themes.

After two years of operation, millet officials also began to realize the user's strong demand for the theme, so from the second half of 2012, Millet began planning to set up a theme store. "Our idea was very simple, that is, the theme is a fun function." There is a need for beauty and personalization, and no one likes the same thing. Huffei, director of Millet products, told business value.

In the preparatory stage, millet in fact did not have a clear commercial objectives, followed by the introduction of the market mechanism, the purpose is to enhance the operation of the theme shop efficiency. Because whether by official sticker money to do the theme, or rely on enthusiasts by the spontaneous upload of interest, efficiency is very low, and the quality of the subject will be uneven. Millet hopes to reverse the current situation through market forces, "we make a money-driven ecology of the fundamental goal is to make the plate bigger." Let the user have something fun. ”

The second stage: the construction of chain, system operation

After making up his mind to build a theme ecosystem similar to the App Store, the first thing that Millet does is to plan a set of themed platform systems.

The System Package topic upload, publish, update mechanism and process, edit audit and recommendation process, and user's payment process. Millet spent three months to develop a platform system, and released in November 2012.

With the foundation of the platform, the next thing to do is to attract people to the platform.

Millet Theme Store the first batch of seed designers rely on contacts and relationships attracted, because of the previous operation of the theme design contest, millet and some of the industry design site established a relationship, and met a group of professional designers, relying on this layer of relationship, Millet began to find some familiar designers to manuscripts, The official Millet team helped them turn the design into a theme that could be run on the phone at the end.

On the other hand, from the user's point of view, most of the early rice noodles are the depth of the Internet users, for the payment of this matter, relatively easy to accept. As a result, seed designers soon received rewards. Although at that time a theme one months of sales are only hundreds of yuan, but at least let the designers see the hope, through the designers of word of mouth, more and more designers began to try to design the theme store for millet.

Here, we need to have a brief understanding of the production process of a topic.

The production process of the topic is divided into two parts. One is the design of the theme, such as the design of the icon, the background pattern, these need to play the designer's creative ability. Another link is the production, the designer's material needs to go through some technical links to become a real run on the MIUI system theme.

Most designers are only good at the art part, not in the technology, so in a set of topics in the production process, it is necessary for designers and producers of these two types of cooperation can be completed, indispensable.

Although Millet has its own official theme production group, but after all, the staff is limited, the initial can also make the theme for designers, but with the expansion of the size of the designer, this way is obviously unsustainable.

"One of the things we've always thought is that if you want to cultivate ecology, you have to be able to pass it on." You must not put your skills in your own hands, so that the ecology will not grow up. "Huffei said.

In order to cultivate technical personnel, millet began to actively hold the line of lectures, free to the vermicelli in the theme of the production of the training, in addition, millet officials began to make tutorials to facilitate enthusiasts to learn, through these ways, millet gradually cultivate a group of people who master the theme of production skills.

At this point, the theme of the production chain of the most important two roles have been in place, millet theme of the ecological foundation chain is also completed.

"Then we start matchmaking, like which designer has a new plan and who can help." For example, think 300 dollars of production costs, you can accept. Through our matchmaking, we can slowly play their own. ”

According to Huffei, many millet theme makers are now able to earn thousands of yuan a month, "some better producers, one months to earn 6, 7,000 dollars is not a problem." "Even a good theme maker was recruited directly into the millet job.

The third stage: perfecting the details and cultivating the ecology

Although the basic ecological chain has been set up, there are still a lot of details to be solved.

First, the relationship between the designer and the producer is a matter of economic interest, so it involves the question of trust. For example, there is the risk of a creator stealing a designer scheme, or a designer protesting the possibility of a production fee.

As a platform, Millet has set up a set of evaluation management system, similar to a star scoring system, to both designers and producers open to both sides to build trust in this way.

Meet some "difficult" designer, Millet also has its own countermeasures, "for example, sometimes some designers are very strict, very easy to ' seriously ', we took over by our own team to do." "Huffei said.

In addition to the question of trust, how to retain good designers is also a thorny issue.

Millet Theme Shop is a market-oriented ecology, which also means the existence of risk, the designer to create a set of topics will take more than a week, but the cost of such a large amount of energy to make a theme, it is likely to be in the market by the cold shoulder.

In order to solve this problem, millet for designers launched a "guarantee mechanism", that is, to the designers promise, if the theme of sales can not reach a certain amount of sales, then the government will pay subsidies to the designer. Through this way, to lift the worries of many designers. It is reported that more than half of the active designers can enjoy the guaranteed.

Some may worry that such a mechanism would lead to a sharp rise in the cost of operating the theme stores, but that is not the case, "last year it took tens of thousands of dollars to subsidize it." "Huffei revealed.

Another need to pay attention to the details is that the designer wants to launch a theme, the need to hire the author of the cooperation, which means that the upfront need to invest a certain amount of money, and the production of a theme of the usual charge is 300 to 800 yuan, depending on the difficulty of the subject. To this end, millet officials will also be a premium designer for the production fee subsidy to encourage them to create.

Through the introduction of market mechanisms, millet theme stores in 2013 ushered in the outbreak, the year has more than 2000 sets of themes, is the previous two-year total of twice times, the current millet monthly storage theme has been able to reach about 400 sets of scale. And some designers even set up a studio for the operation of the company, rather than just a single fight.

The future: Bigger business

At present the main theme of millet or in a single sales, the average price of about 6 meters (equivalent to 6 yuan), but the Millet team has been exploring more play.

Millet officials, for example, want to lower the average price of the subject by a monthly service, thereby further reducing the threshold for use of the subject. According to Huffei, the current Internet industry virtual goods sales about a few, that is, 1% of users will pay to buy value-added services, and she also said that the millet theme of the pay situation than 1% of the industry average slightly higher.

In addition, Millet has been trying more advanced play-through the theme of the sale of peripheral products. For example, in some theme of the download page, will prompt the user has the same section of the color shell sales, users can click to jump to the Millet shopping mall under the single purchase.

Although Millet's theme shop has begun to take shape, Millet has a grander vision for the commercialization of themed shops.

Millet co-founder, MIUI head of General Hong Feng told business value, the future theme of the main income may not come from the C-end users, but the B-side of the business. In his view, the theme is a transfer of corporate culture is a very good carrier and way, before the millet has cooperated with Coca-Cola launched related topics.

"If a brand click ads on the value of a lot of money, a theme above all of your elements, users are used every day, then you say how much it cost?" Hong Feng said, "and through the theme, the brand can find its natural fans, because you just see who is in the end to know." ”

Since last year, some film and television plays in the publicity and promotion also began to find millet cooperation, through the theme to expand influence. Prior to the release of "Captain America", Millet also worked with the group purchase site to launch the theme of the United States captain, only the first week of time to download the amount reached 550,000 times.

However, the current cooperation between millet and business has not involved too much "real money", but from the expression of Hong Feng can feel that the commercialization of corporate customers has been put on the agenda, sooner or later will start.

For all depending on the millet as the enemy of the manufacturers, millet theme store operation is undoubtedly a very high reference value. The industry's "soft and hard" combination is not only to make a beautiful rom so simple, around ROM there is actually a lot of work to do. In fact, the annual shipments in tens of millions of mobile phone manufacturers have the capital and basic to learn Millet theme store play, and only when these manufacturers really build a set of independent theme of the ecology, "beat Millet" will not degenerate into an empty words. (This paper is the first titanium media)

Source: http://www.tmtpost.com/117613.html