In the past three years, in the field of local portal websites, a number of pioneers will surely emerge with revenue exceeding RMB 10 million. At present, the main means for local portals to break the profit ice are:
·Mediaization: Use mediaization operations to dispel customers’ concerns about “informality”, and use media platforms and mediaization techniques to deter and serve customers. Case: 19th floor, Hualong Lane.
·E-commerce: Convert imprecise community traffic into accurate e-commerce traffic to extract and transform value. Case: We discuss wedding treasures, car treasures, and Xiamen Xiaoyu’s Huajia Mall.
·Verticalization: Choose the industries with the greatest value for vertical operations and establish independent channels in the portal.
Vertical operation methods come from vertical websites. For a long time, vertical websites have been dwarfing local portals in terms of revenue. However, there are the following bottlenecks in vertical operations: the energy of website managers, talent reserves, fund raising, etc. Therefore, no one can cover all industry fields at once. One principle we must keep in mind is: be willing to give up.
"Be willing to give up" has the following principles:
1. Work in familiar industries
Familiarity means having information, resources, and connections, which means being familiar with the food chain rules of the industry, making it easier to succeed or avoid losses. We must combine our great ideals with the reality of entrepreneurship. The portal is first and foremost a business, and we must be more commercial to be successful. Don’t separate the Internet from traditional industries. The Internet serves traditional industries and must follow the laws of the industries it serves.
2. Develop industries with space
Good business is very hard, and getting something for nothing must be a scam. Since we have to work hard, why not choose an industry with more room for development? What is space? Space is the expected future scale, expected life cycle, and expected benefits of the industry.
As for the industries currently suitable for local portals, several major industries have several attributes such as regionality, local customization, and online information acquisition and offline consumption. These industries are very different from Taobao's industries. I have helped webmasters analyze on many occasions: real estate, home furnishing, weddings, and automobiles are the "fattest" industries in this field. Qian Yu, founder of Hualong Lane, pointed out: "Big industries generate income, small industries Make content”. Although these formulas are not comprehensive yet, they undoubtedly serve as beacons for start-ups. The most likely choice for a new webmaster is to make local food and make money. Countless cases tell us that the possible revenue scale of the food industry in provincial capital cities is 2 million yuan.
3. Establish an industry with profit margins
The input-output ratio is a very important aspect of commercial projects. And many people often use seemingly reasonable theories such as small profits but quick turnover to cover up the shortcomings of their business models. The costs of commercial and content support departments, the time it takes to complete a sales process, and the lag effects of advertising are all factors that must be accurately calculated.
In the early years, many websites made this mistake in selling classified information. When the amount of information could not be compared with Baidu, they used a Baidu-like method to sell on the street. However, Baidu uses the amount of information to start bidding and charges through clicks. The price is close to the profit balance point of the industry. It is obviously difficult for these local websites to achieve this, and their business management is far inferior to Baidu's agents. Therefore, those who survived were those who were not in a hurry to commercialize. With their ownership, they improved their business links, and some websites also gained income from this business. For example, electronically paid bidding ads.
4. Build an industry that is affordable to invest in
Another difficulty in industry selection is the investment threshold. There are two issues to consider when investing:
·Input-output: Input-output is nothing more than large input and large output, large input and small output, and small input and large output. An industry like real estate cannot be solved with a small investment. If the investment threshold is not reached, all previous efforts may be wasted. You must be sure of how much you invest in the initial stage and how much you invest in the ongoing period!
·Investment cycle: In Internet investment, there are also investment cycle issues. We can think that money and time are interchangeable to a certain extent, buying time with money or exchanging time for money. Large-scale investment should shorten the output time. When the input capacity is insufficient, you must be able to endure loneliness and use time accumulation in exchange for output.
5. Enter the industry with the right time
A good industry still needs good timing. Timing includes two aspects: market opportunities and industry opportunities.
·Market opportunities: If the regional market has been occupied by a monopoly power, then the opportunities will be poor. The world is in chaos and the Warring States Period is full of strife, and maybe you are a part of it. If the world is full of dwarfs, the opportunities are great!
·Industry opportunities: Real estate macro-control is a major negative for real estate! The development of the northwest is a major positive for real estate in the west. Large investments should follow the trend and seize opportunities. With a small investment, you might as well get involved when the market is down, because you need to wait.
6. Develop an industry with talent reserves
The right time, right place and right people, talent is crucial. With funds and models, if there are no talents, everything is empty talk. Management aside, talents suitable for the industry are actually extremely rare. It doesn’t matter whether you have experience and foundation, it’s whether you are suitable or not that matters! To be in an industry, those who do content and those who do market are indispensable!
7. Build an industry with clear models
I have met many Internet martyrs who are trying to invent new models every day. The martyrs all have a great proof: Baidu, Tencent and Taobao initially had no model! However, don’t forget that Baidu, Tencent and Taobao had no model but opportunity. The era of opportunity is gone forever!
Copying a model always has a greater chance of success than creating a model! In the local portal field, the model has become so clear that cases of copying an industry in three to six months have emerged. The ceiling height of each industry has been verified by martyrs. This field has entered an era of concentration and hegemony from the Warring States Period. The best way to seize the opportunity is to go straight in and copy the successful model. Remember Mr. Tang Jun’s famous saying: My success can be copied. (Text/Mengli Qinhuai)
Editor in charge: Yang