Some people say that most of China’s elites are gathered in the Internet entrepreneurial team. This is generally true. The Internet entrepreneurship boom can be said to be rolling in waves. I believe that if the stories of these entrepreneurs were collected into a book, it would be very popular. No matter what, I salute these wise and brave entrepreneurs.
What do you need most to start an Internet business? If you ask these entrepreneurs, I believe most people will answer in one word: "Money!" Indeed, Internet entrepreneurship is absolutely impossible without money. It can even be said that the success of Internet entrepreneurship depends largely on a large amount of money. money.
However, the venture capital investors gave this data: the success rate of Internet investment is only about 10%, which means that out of ten investments they made, nine failed. Nine of the invested companies had money, but they still failed. It can be seen that what Internet entrepreneurship needs most is not money.
First of all, it must be the ability to see money, which is the pattern. Then comes the ability to use money, and then comes the ability to make money.
1. NetEase: I have everything (www.163.com)
NetEase today has firmly occupied a top spot among several major comprehensive portals in China. No matter from any aspect, Ding Lei and his NetEase have achieved great success. The comprehensive portal sounds like a huge concept today, but it is a scary concept for Internet entrepreneurs because it is already out of reach.
The meaning of comprehensive portal is "I have everything". Looking at it now, this is indeed not an idea. But in the era when Mr. Ding Lei started his business, the Internet was still in its grassroots stage. No matter what is new to netizens, a large, plentiful, fast and comprehensive information website is undoubtedly the favorite of the majority of netizens. Therefore, NetEase can capture a large number of users in a short period of time, which is also the basis for its future success.
When analyzing website stickiness, someone said that NetEase is a typical technical stickiness when talking about technical stickiness. The characteristic of this type of stickiness is that it is all achieved by technology. Whoever has more content, is timely and fast can attract a large number of users. . If a website with stronger technology appears that provides faster, more accurate and more information, compare it immediately. This makes sense, and the Huajun Xunlei case is a typical example. But when it comes to NetEase, I don’t think so.
We cannot ignore the emotional issues of netizens. Chinese netizens have almost grown up with NetEase and have experienced the ups and downs of joy and sorrow together. It was an indescribable emotion and attachment. Some time ago I heard two friends arguing. Xiao Li is a loyal user of NetEase, and Xiao Wang is a fan of another website. Xiao Wang always said that NetEase was not good and advised Xiao Li to check out his favorite website. Xiao Li was very unhappy, but his eloquence was not good. Finally, Xiao Li got angry and said, "I just like NetEase!" Xiao Wang was stunned.
Suggestion: Stop thinking about building a comprehensive portal and rebuild NetEase, which is a bit difficult.
2. Baidu: Cultivate users’ Internet habits (www.baidu.com)
Have you "searched" today? Have you "Baidued" today?
"Sou Shang" is becoming an increasingly popular term, and "Baidu" is also used as a verb. If you encounter a problem, what is your first step? If you have access to the Internet but first look up the dictionary or ask others, it means that your business search has not yet been formed. It can’t be said that your search quotient is low, because low search quotient means that you know that the first thing to do is to search but you don’t know how to search. Of course, if you ask others, they may answer you like this: "Don't you know it by searching on Baidu?"
It can be seen how much influence Baidu has on our lives.
Search, for merchants, is to present their products to customers in need as quickly and directly as possible. For us, it provides us with the fastest and most direct channel to obtain information and answers. It pools the resources of the entire society and the entire network for everyone to use.
This is its advantage, but the reason for its success is that it cultivates an Internet usage habit among netizens - search. To be precise, it has cultivated the habit of using Baidu to search among the majority of netizens. When Baidu search becomes a necessity and a habit for Internet users when surfing the Internet, it will be difficult for Baidu to succeed.
Why can't other search engines beat Baidu? Is it because of poor technology? Probably not. Yahoo, Google, iAsk, Sogou and other search engines are all good, and they even have their own unique advantages. I think the reason is that the search habits of netizens were not cultivated by them, or that netizens did not develop the habit of using them to search. For example, Mr. Chen Pei and Zhongsou led by him are said to be ahead of Baidu in technology, and have spent hundreds of millions in venture capital, but why can’t they get it off the ground after trying it? Because everyone is not used to using it.
Previously, a magazine friend of mine was very interested in Zhongsou. He made a lot of reports on them and predicted that China’s search market would be dominated by Zhongsou in the future. This made me try to use Zhongsou and its 1G. To be honest, I don't like it, and I don't see it being much better than Baidu. Zhongsou IG is okay, but it’s too cumbersome to use. The purpose of using search is to get answers quickly. If the operation is too complicated, it defeats the purpose. To put it bluntly, I am used to using Baidu, and the value provided by Zhongsou is far less than the migration cost of giving up using Baidu.
A few days ago, my friend and I went to eat hot pot, and the store was doing an event where we won prizes by guessing riddles. The friends scratched their heads and thought hard about the questions given by the waitress. I came back with a bunch of questions, and immediately called a colleague and asked him to search for the answers on Baidu. A few minutes later, my colleague told me all the answers. As a result, I won dozens of prizes by myself. Although it was not worth much, I was still very happy.
Suggestion: Work hard to develop a product and cultivate users' habits of using this product. Success is just around the corner.
3. Alibaba: Leading the “poor” to make revolution (www.alibaba.com.cn)
This poor person is not actually poor, but refers to the vast number of small and medium-sized enterprises.
When Jack Ma devoted himself to e-commerce in 1999, the e-commerce done by the global Internet basically served the top 15% of large enterprises in the world. But Jack Ma grew up in Zhejiang, where private small and medium-sized enterprises are developed. He came from the lowest level of the market and is well aware of the plight of small and medium-sized enterprises. He made a resolute decision - "Abandon the whales and catch the shrimps, give up the 15% of large enterprises, and only do 85% of the business of small and medium-sized enterprises."
"If companies are also divided into rich and poor, then the Internet will be a world for the poor. Because large companies have their own special information channels and huge advertising fees, while small companies have nothing. They are the ones who need the Internet the most. And I am We must lead the poor to make revolution.”
It is this idea that has enabled Jack Ma to achieve today's success. Mr. Jack Ma is indeed a shrewd businessman. When others were still thinking about letting netizens read information, he thought of how to let everyone make money through the Internet. Even if such an idea fails, we will support it. Of course, to be precise, we support Mr. Jack Ma’s idea of making us rich through the Internet. This also directly affects the key points of the majority of small and medium-sized enterprises and their psychology. I don’t think all companies can make money on Alibaba, but how can small and medium-sized enterprises with profit as their lifeblood and sales channels as their main difficulty give up such a possible opportunity? Even if it doesn’t work, they have to give it a try. When everyone comes up to give it a try, the market is formed.
"The pattern of China's e-commerce industry will undergo tremendous changes. A new Internet application group is forming the mainstream. The Internet will move from the era of 'netizens' and 'netizens' to the era of 'online merchants.'" I agree with Mr. Jack Ma's words. I often think: Wouldn’t it be a waste if the Internet was only used for information and entertainment. In fact, not only small and medium-sized enterprises, but also some individual households are gradually entering e-commerce. Some office workers with Internet access have also begun to use e-commerce to do part-time business, and there have even been a large number of people who make a living by opening online stores and doing e-commerce.
Many websites have begun to turn to e-commerce. Whether they can succeed or surpass Alibaba is unknown. But the author believes that what is really difficult to surpass Alibaba is Mr. Jack Ma’s business spirit and his cutting-edge insights and ideas in the field of e-commerce.
Suggestion: E-commerce has great potential, but you should first become a disciple of Mr. Jack Ma and learn from him for three to five years before taking action.
4. QQ: Penguin’s ferocious “chat” dominates the world (www.qq.com)
There is really no need to say more about QQ, because we are all too familiar with it. The first thing everyone does when they turn on their computer every morning is to open QQ. QQ is also the one that spends the longest time online every day.
It is precisely because of this that QQ has achieved today's success.
Fortunately, Ma Huateng did not sell it for 600,000 yuan. We cannot assume about history. But one thing is certain, if Ma Huateng had sold QQ, he would definitely cry today.
Of course Ma Huateng is not stupid. As soon as QQ went online, the overwhelming enthusiasm shown by netizens gave him the biggest hint. Because netizens are no longer satisfied with just reading information on the Internet, they need to interact and communicate. Online chatting was too attractive to Internet users at that time, so QQ's user base increased dramatically in a short period of time. So much so that now we can’t live without QQ.
QQ is actually very similar to Baidu. It also cultivates the usage habits of netizens, not the habit of chatting, because everyone needs to communicate and like to chat, but the habit of using QQ to chat. This is also the reason why other chat software has been killed by QQ, and why MSN cannot beat QQ in China.
No wonder a friend of mine said: Even if any other website fails, QQ will not fail. Because it’s okay if you don’t read the news. You can read newspapers and watch TV, but it’s not okay if you don’t chat on QQ. Because all good friends are in QQ, people are social beings, how can they not communicate with their friends? Because of the huge online user base, QQ can now be said to be able to do anything you want. Building a portal can be done in a matter of seconds. Do pats and rush to the front in the blink of an eye.
Suggestion: If you are not bored, don’t do Chat.com. If you have a good chat software that you want me to use, that’s fine. Please bring all my QQ friends over first, otherwise there’s no need to talk.
5. Soufun: seize the hot spots and take advantage of the opportunity to climb (www.soufun.com)
Dare I ask what else is more worthy of people's attention than "house" these days? Clothing, food, housing and transportation are four things. After years of reform and opening up, people have solved the problems of clothing and food. The next step is housing. Problem. So China's real estate is really noisy. You sing and I come on stage. It's so lively.
The opportunity came, and Soufun.com came into being. So those who had bought a house, those who were buying a house, and those who were planning to buy a house, all went to Soufun to check out the latest information and express their opinions. Soufun became popular.
Of course it's not that simple. The popularity of real estate is the basic condition, and the vision and unique business thinking of Mo Tianquan, the founder of Soufun, are necessary conditions. Now whenever they think of buying or renting a house, 80% of them will think of going online, and 50% to 60% of them will go straight to Soufun.com. Real estate and related industries account for 20% of the entire GDP. I hope that Soufun.com can get 1% of this 20% in the future - this is the prospect that Mo Tianquan outlined when he founded Soufun in 1999.
His status as an overseas returnee, his experience of two failures, his experience in the real estate industry, and his courage to not take a penny salary for three years are all worth thinking about. Otherwise, Mo Tianquan wouldn't be able to get venture capital from IDG with just one page of paper without a plan. This is probably also the reason why Soufun is the dominant player today.
Despite the state's regulation of real estate, some experts predict that housing prices will decline in the next few years. None of this will affect the expansion of SouFun, because there is one thing that cannot be controlled, and that is people's concern and desire for housing. If there are users, Soufang is not afraid.
Suggestion: Real estate website can be used. Although it has a big head, the real estate is too hot, and the user base and attention are very large. Others eat meat, and you can drink soup.
6. Blog network: self-space resource interaction (www.bokee.com)
Blogs are also a hot topic in the past two years. I saw Lao Xu’s blog a few days ago, and it had more than 70 million hits, which is not only surprising. Although I don't understand what the trivial things Xu Jinglei remembered are worthy of such enthusiastic attention.
Another person who became popular with the blog is Fang Xingdong, although his current situation is a bit embarrassing. But after all, it was he who opened a new era of the Internet, satisfied the desire of the majority of netizens to show themselves, and promoted the Internet from netizens to the era of netizens. Let every netizen become the creator and user of Internet information. The word "interaction" has been burned with a positive brand.
So everyone started blogging, and China Blog Network and Sina Blog were doing well. The problem is that none of them make money, and the profit model has become a blog, which is also an urgent problem in web2.0 that needs to be solved. Judging from the trend in the second half of 2006, the confidence of venture capital investors seems to have been frustrated.
But the Internet belongs to the majority of netizens. No wonder netizens were named Person of the Year by Time Magazine some time ago, and this move was so popular among the people. With such enthusiastic support from netizens, even if I don’t make money for the time being, I won’t die for a while. Perhaps after some time of exploration, people can find a profitable business model.
Nowadays, many entrepreneurs are also blogging, but the results are not very satisfactory. First of all, the profit model is not clear. Secondly, it is a latecomer after all, and the user base is attracted to a few large blog sites, allowing them to move to new sites. The migration cost is too high. Moving to a new blog website means that first of all, so many articles on the blog need to be transferred. Secondly, it means that it takes a lot of effort to establish a new circle of friends in a new environment, which is really troublesome.
China has counted 60 million blog users, so why can’t they find a way to make money? The role of blogs is a bit awkward. As a media, you have to rely on advertising to make money, but the total market value of China’s Internet advertising is not very large now. , by several major portals, there is not much left. The blog network has so far failed to come up with an advertising model that satisfies advertisers and is effective. If we switch to a purely transactional e-commerce model, the blog network will be a mess, and it will become a joke if it fails.
In August 2006, famous companies such as TCL Group, Amazon, and Joyo decided to invest 30 million in commercial promotion fees on the blog network. On this basis, BlogNet officially launched the Blog Gold System, giving individual bloggers the opportunity to share these advertising revenues. It is said that the maximum cash withdrawal from a personal blog is 800 yuan. Whether this is a turning point for blogging to become profitable, we need to wait and see.
Suggestion: You can definitely start a blog, but first find a good way to make money. The way to cause violence is very simple, just find some celebrities, regardless of their reputation or reputation, and start a fight. This is what Youku and Sina Blogs do, and this method has been tried and tested time and time again.
7. Financial sector: Professional and dedicated lock-in of customers (www.jrj.com.cn)
There are many websites now. It is a good idea to choose a field and specialize in it. This is the case in the financial industry, Huicong, Chinese Talents, etc., and they are doing well and making a lot of money. The financial world is a model.
The professional financial route did not have a clear positioning in the financial industry before Ning Jun took over, and there was no obvious difference from other financial websites. After Ning Jun entered, he positioned the financial sector as an influential provider of financial information. By locking customers into individual investors, there are two main sources of income in the financial industry. One is the charging page, and the other is paid software downloads. From the perspective of insiders, the financial industry is not only specialized, but also comprehensive. The two are better integrated, so the information is richer and more comprehensive, suitable for inquiry. For individual investors, the most important thing is to obtain comprehensive and accurate information to make auxiliary investment decisions, and it must be classified and compared for easy inquiry. Although being an information service provider requires a certain amount of knowledge, it also requires diligence and more trivial work. These things are relatively simple to say, but very troublesome to do. Therefore, although there are many stock websites on the market, not many are good ones. Most of them are because the classification is not detailed enough and the depth is not enough.
In China, the two most popular financial websites among financial professionals and investors are Hexun.com and Financial World. The two are respectively the representatives of "pan" and "special" in financial websites. If you enter Hexun, a large amount of financial information will come to you, which seems to cover everything. In addition to professional financial information such as securities, industrial economics, and foreign exchange, there is even tourism and real estate information. "Hexun is now more like a white-collar community, and their source of income mainly relies on advertising and text messages," Ning Jun said. But when you open a financial website, almost all you can see on the homepage are stocks. You can basically find all the information related to stocks on it. "All we can do is subdivide, process, subdivide, and reprocess this information."
Of course this has its advantages and disadvantages. Hexun looks complicated, but this will facilitate the expansion of their other businesses in the future. Although the financial sector is professional, it may not be a good thing in the long run. When the majority of netizens equate the financial sector with stocks in their minds, it will be more difficult for the financial sector to develop other businesses. Everyone must remember a classic advertising slogan: Xinfei's advertising is not as good as Xinfei's refrigerator. This advertising slogan made Xinfei make a lot of money in the refrigerator business, but it also caused Xinfei to suffer a lot. Because when it comes to Xinfei, the first thing that comes to people’s minds is the refrigerator. When Xinfei launched other home appliance business, people asked instead: "Don't Xinfei make refrigerators? I haven't heard that they make TVs well." So Xinfei still can't do other home appliance business today.
Suggestion: Find a field that you are good at, specialize in it, and become stronger. As long as you capture the users in this field, you will succeed.
8. 3G Portal: Wait patiently to grab users (www.3g.net.cn)
This is a website that cannot be underestimated, although many people still don’t know about it. Because it opens another door to wealth - wireless Internet and mobile Internet access.
After IDG invested US$5 million in 2005, 3G Portal successfully raised hundreds of millions of dollars in 2006. Although China's 3G has not yet formed a climate, the 3G portal has become a portal.
The website's user growth rate once made the two bosses so excited that they couldn't sleep. This mobile WAP network, which was only established in 2004, had accumulated 1 million users in three months, and by the beginning of 2006, it had reached 10 million. Even now, its mobile advertising revenue is considerable.
Anyone with a little knowledge of the Internet now knows that wireless Internet will be the next gold mine in the Internet. If everyone didn't understand it two years ago. The only difference is that by the time we understand it, someone is already holding it in their hands.
The author was fortunate enough to get acquainted with Mr. Zhang Xiangdong, the second boss of 3G Portal. He said that they did not have to go through any trouble in financing, and venture capital came to them on their own initiative. This may seem a bit exaggerated, but considering Zhang Xiangdong's personality, I believe he is not lying. The first boss Deng Yuqiang and the second boss Zhang Xiangdong lived in the same dormitory at Peking University and were drinking buddies. Later, Deng Yuqiang founded Jiubang Digital, which was quite profitable. In 2003, Deng Yuqiang saw the business opportunities in wireless Internet, and founded the 3G portal in early 2004. As a result, all the money he earned before was burned. For a period of time, the two of them only worried about one word "money" every day.
Zhang Xiangdong also knows that China's 3G will not mature so quickly, but he also knows that without the accumulation of early users, there will be no turnaround in the future. The accumulation of users can only rely on burning money. However, venture capitalists see the hope of 3G portal.
In fact, China's 3G has just begun, and the market prospects are very broad. It is not too late to start a wireless Internet business now. As long as you have good ideas and a certain amount of funds, there is still a lot to be done. At least compared to the traditional Internet, its competitive pressure is still smaller.
Suggestion: hurry up and grab users.
9. Douban: I guess what you like (www.douban.com)
This website is not yet ready to summarize its successful experiences. However, the author is very optimistic about it, at least the favor of venture capital is a proof.
At first, Douban only had book reviews, movie reviews, and music reviews, and there were only two recommendation methods. One was for each user to find people with similar interests through some of their favorite books, and then get recommendations based on the list of these like-minded readers; the other was for the machine to recommend based on the user's preferences. database information for recommendations. Later, with the creativity of users, freely assembled groups, city sections, second-hand exchanges, etc. appeared.
The most important thing is that it tries to achieve database stickiness, that is, it analyzes what users need and like based on their database information, and then recommends relevant things to you. Change the way of pushing information from passive to active. When you perform certain operations on the Internet unconsciously or with a little awareness, it analyzes your needs, preferences and habits. For example, I searched for Andy Lau's "Forgetfulness Water" today, and tomorrow I searched for "Tiantianmi". It analyzed that I like the classic brother, so it presented me with some classic old songs. How could I not be happy?
Pure technical viscosity can no longer guarantee the operational security of a website. Even Baidu now derives Baidu Space. Baidu knows how to wait for its descendants to improve community viscosity. Alibaba also vigorously promotes merchant forums and Alibaba Bangbang, with the purpose of increasing community stickiness, increasing user transfer costs, and strengthening user loyalty to the website. At present, there are no successful cases of database stickiness, and it is unknown whether Douban’s attempt will lead to the next Internet usage habit. But if Douban can really do this, success will definitely belong to it.
Suggestion: No matter what website you make, if possible, add a database stickiness solution, which will make your future users more loyal and less likely to run away.