The weekly meeting of sws Creative Society discussed Vancl Eslite's alliance website model again. I don't remember how many times this happened. Although it was not very in-depth each time, the model itself did give us a lot of inspiration. There are so many domestic design websites, even the well-known websites, that there are a lot of them. Although these websites are trying to create their own characteristics, most of them are actually highly similar. The main contents are mostly design resources, work exchanges, design information and task intermediaries. From a profit perspective, many websites have not found a profit model with commercial value, but only rely on the owner's input, donations and poor advertising costs.
Although the model of providing resources for free has attracted a large number of people, and some sites even have hundreds of thousands of registered members, without a reliable source of profit, this model will ultimately be difficult to sustain. To solve the problem of survival when designing a website, we must completely abandon the past idea of relying on advertising to make money. Advertising is the first way that many webmasters think of to make money, but the sad reality is that the pricing power of advertising on design websites is very weak. The biggest problem is that the advertising space is not valuable and the advertising space is not fully filled. Why?
A. The audience of design websites is always small. The target group is design enthusiasts or practitioners, but the base is still small. For advertisers, the commercial value is not high.
B. It is difficult for design websites to achieve a high degree of concentration, leading to the emergence of large monopolistic websites. This is because most design websites are resource-integrated, and the proportion of original resources is not large. To put it bluntly, everyone copies them here and there. The lack of original resources has a lot to do with the low quality of domestic practitioners, but no matter what, every site can copy something different from others, plus some of its own original stuff, so no one can take advantage of it. No matter who you lose, there will be a market for everyone.
C. Design websites target fewer businesses and have less advertising. At present, there are very few businesses that advertise on design websites on a large scale, and there are not many products that can match them. Therefore, it is difficult to raise the asking price of advertising.
In fact, not only design websites, but also all websites face such problems in making money from advertising. Even popular websites like Xiaonei, 51, and Kaixin.com have low advertising revenue. Facebook, which is known as the world's leader in traffic , so far, it has not relied on advertising to get out of losses. For this reason, "Forbes" published an article this year questioning the model of making money from banner ads.
However, we have seen that some websites have indeed made money by relying on model innovation. The most representative website among them is Soufun.com. SouFun does not just rely on advertising to make money, but deeply embeds the website into the value chain and becomes a link in the value chain, thereby making profits. We can simply take a look at how SouFun does it:
A. Localization. Each city’s SouFun.com mainly targets real estate properties and home buyers in that city, thus effectively targeting commercial customers.
B. Not only publish advertisements, but also establish online real estate exhibition halls, online real estate forums, groups, online sales offices, etc. to build ourselves into an online marketing operator for real estate, strengthen integrated promotion, and provide all-round promotion services. Get promotion benefits.
C. Make use of your publicity to participate in real estate promotions and share sales profits by organizing house viewing groups, home purchase express trains, home purchase clubs, home purchase discount cards, etc.
D. Marketing to developers, holding forums, salons, seminars, etc., to jointly make markets with associations, governments, and developers, and obtain profits.
E. Carry out second-hand housing transaction services and obtain commissions.
It can be seen that advertising revenue is only a part of Soufun's revenue, and the proportion may be very small. Even from advertising, Soufun combines supporting services with advertising. This is different from the current practice of many websites that only charge advertising fees and never care about the lives of customers. There is a clear difference. The example of SouFun tells us that only by abandoning the concept of advertising and bundling its own advantages with customer needs can design websites make reliable profits. So, what are the advantages of design websites?
A. Have a large amount of design resources;
B. Have a large number of designers or enthusiasts;
What we have to do is to fully tap the potential value of these resources.
For example, design resources. Not long ago, I saw a friend who designs websites immersed in making electronic magazines. In fact, this is also a good direction. By sorting out and integrating design resources into a volume, you will eventually gain a group of reliable readers. By charging appropriate fees and publishing advertisements, you can obtain certain profits. Of course, in the free-for-all online world, any fee-based behavior is a gamble. In fact, there are many ways to use design resources, such as collective publishing, which of course must be very targeted and practical, and paid use of resources, which are all methods. Resources are dead, but people are alive. In fact, the people on the website are the website’s greatest wealth, and the huge team of designers is the most valuable resource to tap. How to dig? There are several directions worth trying as follows.
A. Provide paid services to designers. Such as training, activities, salons;
If a national website wants to organize offline activities, it must be localized. It is best to organize activities on a city-by-city basis, with the headquarters providing guidance or material support. To organize such activities, it is necessary to cultivate reliable agents in various places who can effectively expand business and establish a good revenue distribution mechanism. At present, China's design industry is growing rapidly, and as a platform, it contains great business opportunities for rapid expansion.
B. Provide goods to designers. For example, design equipment, design, creative products, etc.;
This requires going beyond the simple positioning of advertisers. Design websites should position themselves as sales agents or even sales managers for merchants in this field, fully tap the consumption potential of their members, and unite merchants through various means such as advertising, activities, topics, discounts, and promotions. Maximizing sales is the model of Vancl Eslite mentioned at the beginning of this article. Vancl Eslite's alliance websites all rely on sales commissions to obtain income. Through this profit mechanism, on the one hand, it reduces Vancl's ineffective advertising, and on the other hand, it fully taps the marketing capabilities of the alliance websites, and the income is not capped. Currently, it includes Xinhuanet Many major domestic websites, including.com, have accepted the Fanke model. Only with such initiative can websites and businesses maximize their own advantages and maximize their profits. sws Creative Agency is also currently planning to develop a number of cooperative websites through this model to achieve the goal of common profits by selling creative products.
Many webmasters worry that their websites are too commercial and will reduce user loyalty. This worry is unnecessary. The essence of the website that attracts users does not change. The new commercial functions are just one more option for users. . Having said that, only with sustained profitability can we provide users with more powerful services. Websites without a profitable foundation will eventually be eliminated.
C. Provide opportunities to designers. For example, crowdsourcing design tasks. The Internet has made crowdsourcing possible, and the Internet era has also made consumers no longer passively accept designed products, but want to participate earlier (SWS Creative Agency is a typical example of design crowdsourcing). Design websites undoubtedly have such advantages. On the one hand, they can provide powerful design services, and on the other hand, they can play a magnifying role in promoting products or brands in the early stages of design. For example, if a car manufacturer wants to plan a new model, then design websites can participate, mobilizing designers to fully participate in concept design, and supplementing it with design promotion activities for the main target markets, such as concept design conferences, concept design conferences, etc. Competitions, design exchange meetings, communication between designers and consumers, etc. These are difficult for traditional car manufacturers to achieve, but they are what they need.
Having said so much, to sum up, it is time to completely abandon advertising to make money. It is expected to integrate itself into the customer's value chain, fully integrate upstream and downstream resources, and establish its own profit model for design websites. . This article is just an introduction, everyone is welcome to discuss and criticize.