The age-old problem of vertical media: The heavy traffic is hard to bear

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

Caixin net changed the east of the family, this is worth looking forward to, but the media sector is still a sigh of voice.

I was curious to check the wealth of the new network data, the day there are 150,000 people visit the Web site, a total of more than 1.2 million browsing, the average of 8 pages per person. This set of data surprises me because they outline a successful vertical site, not the other way around. On the internet, a sign that the quality of a Web site is good for reading is 5 of the average number of pages, and the new financial indicator is as high as 8, indicating that Ms. Hu led her editorial team to do a high level of vertical web site.

But people still generally believe that the new network is not successful, why? Because its advertising revenue is too small, even can not support themselves. But the advertisement income is few because the traffic is too small. On the Internet, there is no tens of millions of traffic on the success of the word, the new capital pricing confirms that investors expect it even more than that. However, the wealth of the new gene determines it is never a big traffic site, the future can not become a big traffic site!

Opponents will take Sina and Tencent's financial channels as a counter example. I found that Sina Financial channel on the same day there are indeed 4.38 million of visitors, Tencent Financial channel also has 1.04 million independent visitors, the two figures seem to be a new growth space is still very large, but carefully analyzed, Sina Finance's per capita browsing number is only 1.8 pages, Tencent only 2.2 pages, indicating that their visitors are portals imported, that is, from the portal home or client by a news topic to attract readers into the. This is a significant number of readers, but they should not belong to the target audience of Caixin, they are concerned about the news, and the new readers are interested in in-depth reporting, they are just ordinary readers, and the new readers are really concerned about the financial problems of the people of the country. From The Advertiser's point of view, the two are different advertising audiences. Therefore, the new money can not go and Sina Tencent's financial channel than, there is no comparable. It is very likely that the target readership of the Caixin net is between 15 and 200,000.

In fact, it is not just a new financial net this situation in the vast number of vertical Web sites generally exist, the content can no longer achieve tens flow, because any one has a unique positioning of the vertical site is aimed at relatively small, limited market capacity fundamentally determines it is a small and beautiful fate. Science and technology have done a good job of several major vertical websites currently visit users at most only more than 100,000. Even a news aggregation site like a drawer or a courier, as long as it has a positioning, can only meet a certain part of the readership, rather than all readers, the drawer at the highest level of 100,000. Unless the platform contains all the positioning.

The pattern of this market is not the internet era, the paper media age is the case. Magazines of every kind are only thousands of to tens of thousands of of the circulation, with the exception of popular distribution, such as "reader", need warm people too much. In other words, the pattern of market demand has not changed radically because of the internet, and there are still so many people concerned about the depth of financial reporting that they have not turned their attention to financial news because of the Internet.

But the audience has been able to successfully feed a paper, why when the media moved to the Internet can not be fed? The answer is: ads on the internet have become too cheap!

In the internet age, advertisers are the biggest winners.

In the golden age of paper, a publication of 20,000 copies of the magazine, a version of advertising costs 80,000 is often the case. Even if a magazine can be read by 2 people, the cost of advertising is 2 yuan per person. Newspaper situation better, the North Green newspaper issued 500,000 copies, full-page ads 200,000, advertising to reach the cost of 0.4 yuan per person. On the internet, Sina's top banner advertising costs 1.5 million yuan/day, the corresponding browse volume of 15 million people, the average advertising costs per person only 0.1 yuan!

Even if the above example is limited in representation, it is enough to show that the Internet's advertising performance is far more cost-effective than the paper media!

Traditional media to move on the internet, the original advertising feast but instant into small rice pumpkin soup, unless the readership is 10 times times growth. Just like finance new such vertical website, market segment is limited, turn to the Internet the growth of readership is far from offset the decline of advertising price. But Caixin network in vertical site performance has been quite good, whether it is the user flow or actual income, or a single user to produce value, should have been vertical news sites in comparison.

More other vertical web sites, a good mix to earn a little money, reluctantly maintained, by the VCs are called "cactus", meaning to die not long.

Market demand is still there, but the product can not sell the price, how to do? The only way is to transform the production process, significantly reduce production costs. Now the vast majority of the so-called new Media vertical Web site, the production process almost copy the traditional paper media, there are editors, editing team, there are columnists, there is a market, there is sales, only a printing department, but by a larger, more expensive web site technical team replaced.

Abandoning all traditional media thinking and starting completely on the Internet, think of a question: how can I use the Internet to meet the market demand that has always been there? Revisit the traditional elements of editor, editor, writer, market, and sales to see if they are in your new process. Can the characteristics of the Internet be solved at low cost or even without cost? This process can be counted as the so-called industry generation, it is bound to be the first of various factors of production deconstruction and reconstruction.

The pioneers of such thinking and attempts are numerous, and new solutions abound, but so far we have not seen a truly successful new media. The first thing we see is the pattern of keeping a writer, the so-called media. A writer to achieve a media, do not need to edit, do not need editors, the market and advertising sales are also given to the platform, the advantage is very low cost, the disadvantage is from the words, can not guarantee the reader's reading quality, who knows how long the reader's patience can be maintained? The second is to retain only the editor-in-chief model, like the micro-trust public platform, A chief editor of a public account, the editorial team's work was done by a person in chief. The advantage is also very low cost, the disadvantage is still unable to guarantee the quality of reading, a person's power is too thin.

So we can infer that a successful new media, it must first have the traditional media elements of the function, to have the editor of the positioning function, but also have a large number of editorial team editing capacity, but also to attract the good author's function, and finally have the market and advertising sales capacity; These abilities should be realized by means of the internet instead of traditional media. Whose solution is more internet, who is the winner! Because the higher the degree of Internet, means the lower the cost, the lower the cost of the model to the vertical site to live more space.

The restructuring of the media industry, like the restructuring of the retail industry, is a successful example of the Internet of traditional retail stores. A Taobao integrates traditional storefront display, marketing and payment, dramatically reducing prices and making customers the biggest beneficiaries. Media industry will be the same, there is bound to be such a platform, it can help all vertical new media to achieve positioning, completion of editing and advertising sales, help writers to maintain copyright, the media production costs to a minimum, so that the media customers-----advertisers to become the biggest beneficiaries.

(The author of this article is the Cushion net CEO)