In 2009, Cai Wensheng, the "King of Webmasters", told Entrepreneur magazine: "The era of individual webmasters ended when I held my first webmaster conference. This does not mean that there will be no webmasters in China in the future. Instead, it is impossible for an individual to build a website from scratch and become famous nationwide with tens of millions of users." This judgment is undoubtedly cruel, but looking back it is fact. In 2005, the first China Personal Website Webmaster Conference held in Xiamen gathered more than 100 elite webmasters in the Chinese Internet industry at that time, almost all of whom were ranked within Alexa's global ranking of 2,000. As the most grassroots group of people on the Internet at that time, the commercial value they created cannot be ignored. The traffic created by individual webmasters headed by Cai Wensheng around 2004 and 2005 was almost equivalent to 1/3 of the entire traffic at that time. At that time, many famous webmasters were born, such as Cai Wensheng, the current CEO investor of Tian4399, Li Xingping of hao123, Pang Shengdong of 51.com, Yao Jinbo of 58.com, and Dai Zhikang of Kangsheng Chuangxiang. Grassroots webmasters have undoubtedly become the foundation of the Internet, the source of innovation, and the foundation of traffic. They have become a scarce resource that Internet giants such as Baidu, Google, and Tencent compete for. Become a group seen by the industry.
Looking back, China's Internet development has now gone through more than fifteen years. Those webmasters from those days are basically still there. Some of them received angel investment, developed and even became angel investors themselves. Like Cai Wensheng today, he has multiple identities including domain name investment, angel investment, Weibo marketing, and 4399 CEO. of the internet’s biggest figures. Some websites have been acquired, and the corporate webmasters have either been pushed out of the spotlight or hidden behind the scenes. For example, after hao123 was acquired by Baidu, Li Xingping rarely appeared in public. Some websites have grown so much that they are even planning to go public. For example, there is news that 58.com will go to Nasdaq for an IPO and has submitted listing documents. The Internet has also given birth to many new webmaster forces. Dai Zhikang, founder of Kangsheng Chuangxiang, Wang Tuwang of webmasters, laggard Dong Qinfeng, Yao Jianjun of webmaster home, Qian Yu of Changzhou Hualongxiang, these are undoubtedly among the personal webmasters. The outstanding ones will undertake the arduous task of raising the banner of webmasters and revitalizing the webmaster community.
Last year's "Entrepreneur" magazine published an article about the death of individual grassroots webmasters. The mobile Internet has unlimited prospects. It analyzes the development process of grassroots webmasters on the Internet over the years and the situation they will face in the future. It made a bold prediction on the crisis faced by individual webmasters in the current Internet entrepreneurial environment, and analyzed the inherent defects of grassroots webmasters: narrow vision and short-sightedness; accustomed to working alone without a team; low technical content and no innovative model ;Irregular operation and impetuous mentality. Today, as the monopoly of the Internet industry intensifies and the Internet continues to seek changes under the overall openness, it is no longer so easy for individual webmasters to do so. Perhaps some of the individual webmasters back then seized the opportunity and achieved success, but now that the Internet has begun to become saturated and mature, it is no longer feasible for those who wanted to succeed simply through speculation in the past. Even if you have that strength, in this entrepreneurial era where thousands of troops are crossing the single-plank bridge, in addition to transforming and upgrading to improve their own strength, personal webmasters also need a little bit of luck. At last year’s Internet Webmasters Conference, senior Internet observer Xie Wen once said, “Many of the webmasters attending the conference are not entrepreneurs at all. I feel that they have no place in the real world, but they spend all day dreaming on the Internet. , isn’t it strange to start a business like a carnival? Starting a business should be very lonely and requires a lot of sacrifice. Why don’t you just say why I don’t make money now? Why do you make money? There are countless people in Silicon Valley who have not made any money at all. Although he has made money, he is still a very good entrepreneur. This awareness is too different." Xie Wen's sharp words poured cold water on Zhanzhan mercilessly, but it can also be seen from his point of view. It turns out that starting a business on the Internet is difficult. Individual webmasters want to monetize through traffic. This is a poison. If not done well, it will kill themselves.
Cai Wensheng once said that after 2005, personal websites became increasingly difficult to operate. Although tens of thousands of personal websites have been built, only 5% may eventually become commercial websites, and only 1% may get venture capital. If they become stronger and bigger, the others will be drowned. . Dong Qinfeng, a laggard, once said at the Baidu Summit that 47.5% of webmasters do not make money, and the polarization is serious. Today's policies no longer allow webmasters to monetize traffic as they did in the past. The SMS alliance back then has declined rapidly with China Mobile's adjustments that year, and the advertising alliance, due to various factors in the online advertising market and the irregularities in its own industry, is not as "friendly" to webmasters as it used to be. If you want to make money by selling traffic, that era is long gone. Maybe some webmasters will say, I just want to make some pocket money by selling traffic, and there is no need to make it big. However, nowadays, the regulation of the Internet has been strengthened. Real-name registration of domain names, registration of website photos, and international domain names have also begun to implement real-name regulation, which has lengthened the website construction cycle and increased the cost. The regulation of Internet copyrights has also made traffic-generating content such as music and movies become less popular. You can't do it. Maybe the purpose of the webmaster is just to make a little money through traffic, but if you are not careful, the website may be shut down. If you are not careful, you may face jail time. The Chuzhou “Knight Music Network Case” is an example.
Some people say that grassroots webmasters are also strong and resilient and will not give up easily. Indeed, after these two years of brutal Internet regulation, individual webmasters have suffered heavy losses. But individual webmasters are not dead, and many webmasters have supported themselves strongly. Although the number of websites has dropped significantly, the number of individual webmasters has not dropped dramatically. This also shows that in the increasingly formal Internet entrepreneurial environment, although it is harsh, webmasters have begun to notice the importance of transformation and upgrading. E-commerce, industry websites, and mobile Internet have become the three major directions for the transformation of individual webmasters. "Entrepreneur" said that the webmaster is dead, but the webmaster is not dead. To do news is to do early warning. Now we are facing great challenges. Because of openness, mobile Internet, and the emergence of Apple, our traditional webmaster model in the past may no longer work. ——Niu Wenwen, President of "Entrepreneur" magazine. The state has begun to rectify personal websites, because the uncontrollability of personal websites has caused many instability factors on the Internet. But corporate websites will definitely be the focus of support. The country needs enterprises and enterprise websites, and enterprises also need websites. Perhaps in the future, personal webmasters will continue to transform and upgrade. Some webmasters will become bigger and operate as a company. Personal websites will become Internet companies and play a more important role. Some individual webmasters may not be so successful, but they will successfully integrate into some large website companies and play an important role. Grassroots webmasters are not dead, but the policy no longer allows them to fight alone. (Article/Yangyang please indicate the source of webmaster network admin5.com when reprinting)