The profit way of tool products

Ink weather, Sogou Input method, go desktop and other products have been in different directions to try. This is because when users accumulate to a certain extent, profitability becomes an open topic, and many people are questioning the business model of the tool product.

and rely on advertising and value-added services, also as a tool products in the Youdao dictionary announced last year's annual revenue of more than 20 million, the total number of users exceeded 300 million. These active users more than 10 million, month active users more than 50 million.

300 million in the industry is definitely not a decimal, micro-letter just announced that users to achieve this number, and more products are still squeezing the head to enter the "billion Club." In an area that is not in the spotlight, there is a product with a user reaching 300 million

Tool application How to do the user over billion

In the 2007, the "Use of Internet technology to solve traditional problems" model has been in the communication (QQ), information (all kinds of news), social (Renren) and other areas of the rise, and gradually penetrate into all aspects of life, changed the use of people habits.

However, the market at that time the dictionary software is still in the payment of the boxed software phase. Not only is the price high, also cannot the new word, the specialized noun carries on the accurate translation, this with at that time the Internet rapid development extremely does not match.

Look back at the history, at that time, "network interpretation" This function appeared in the Youdao dictionary above, and today, "network interpretation" This "crowdsourcing" translation function has become the basic dictionary application. Through "web extraction", in billions of web pages to extract the translation content, so as to cover the popular words and sentences, can solve the internet age of new words, update fast, the issue of the frequency of proper nouns.

In the 2009, with the popularity of smartphones, the optimization of client experience has allowed Internet users to grow at the mobile end of the day, and fragmentation time has been gradually monopolized by mobile devices. Smartphone desktop has become a new battleground for internet companies, and more and more things can be done on the phone anytime, anywhere.

At that time the Youdao dictionary in January 2009 launched a mobile version, while covering Symbian, Android, iOS and other mainstream platform at the time. In addition, the camera search words, off-line thesaurus, etc., are the Youdao has opened the market features.

At present, the user activity of the tool product is low, the user's stickiness difference almost become the consensus of the people, unavoidable the ground to the transformation problem. Many tool products choose to platform, through the cloud computing, vertical social, life service integration and other ways to seek development. However, the platform is not the only direction.

Profit Model for tool application

According to Youdao Dictionary said, in the client added "daily sentence", "bilingual reading" and other columns, the resulting content to retain customers, improve user stay time, daily thousands of users to share these content to Sina Weibo.

Thus, to provide users with targeted high-quality content, may become a tool-type products, another way out.

1. Accurate advertising

At present, the new marketing methods are emerging in the market, consumers ' attention is more and more fragmented, but in any case, there is a marketing criterion is still unchanged, that is to seize the elite people in society.

These people have several common tags: networking, internationalization and rejuvenation.

According to Youdao dictionary data provided by the 16-45-Year-old netizens, the elite crowd coverage of up to 58% (Nielsen Network of the 2012 Dictionary Media Advertising Value Assessment report). These users are quite young, educated, willing to consume and highly receptive to advertising.

High-quality user groups, crowd orientation, geographical orientation and other strategies for precision marketing laid the foundation, of course, good advertising effect will attract big-name customers. It is understood that BMW, Citic Bank, Dongfeng Peugeot and other brands in the Youdao dictionary put ads.

2, targeted value-added services

Youdao Translator is an off-line translation application on the iOS platform, which mainly solves the daily translation needs of the mobile end users. Compared to the traditional internet, the commercialization of mobile internet has just begun, and Youdao translation officials if the introduction of a paid version, tailored to specific groups of different functions, the future also has a huge appreciation space.

While many people have taken the Internet Free service for granted, internet companies are looking for ways to monetization free products in a variety of way. And for some in a strong demand for users, the provision of paid value-added services is currently the choice of many products.

According to the survey, the use of revenue TOP100 in iphone applications is 93% (BI FDI) with the benefit of value-added services.

3. Online Education Profit Way

The current online education field, its gross margin of up to 40%, this data shows an absolute profiteering market.

In the US, online education is hot: a few days ago, online learning service provider Lynda.com 103 million dollars, and Apple has announced that its independent online course downloads more than 1 billion downloads of itunes U.

According to the way statistics, the Chinese English training market scale of more than 50 billion, its online English learning website "Youdao School" to provide users with text, video, voice and other English courses, which the daily active users reached 400,000.

At the same time, EF Education, VIPABC and other English education enterprises are also Youdao dictionary advertisers, if the use of advertisers and tool users in the application of tools, and thus enter the vertical market, tool applications will be very promising to get a piece of the pie.