to know is easy , but to do is difficult.

Editor’s note: This is from WeChat public’s official account of whale business, author: Li Beichen.

In China, there is such a business. They have fought for 11 years and have not made money. They lose billions of yuan every year. They are often scolded by users as “making black money”.

Yes, I’m talking about long videos. When they are not profitable, they always annoy users and are scolded for hot search. Before, it was because of the advance on demand and recently because of the price rise of members.

Well, Tencent video membership fees have risen again. It doesn’t matter how much it has gone up. In short, it has gone up, and Tencent video is not the only one that has gone up in price. Iqiyi, mango TV and Migu video have also increased their member prices in the months from the end of last year to the beginning of the year.

The consensus has been obvious. The mentality of the long video platform has changed. Once they were dignified, pursuing high-speed growth and rapid expansion. Now they shrink their wild prospects, only seek to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and abide by the frontier.

Now they are too lazy to think about anything else. They just want to take off the sword of Damocles called “loss” above their heads.

When they looked up, they saw the bright and dark white moonlight, which was still the light flying from the other side of the ocean.

First of all, you have to understand them when the membership fee increases. You know, what long video members are fighting now is not increment, or even stock, but try not to “reduce” as much as possible.

According to Tencent’s financial report, as of the fourth quarter of 2021, the number of paid members of Tencent video was 124 million, a decrease of 5 million compared with the third quarter, and the growth rate changed from positive to negative.

Not only Tencent video, the number of iqiyi members is also falling. At the end of last year, it had only 97 million members, down 5.6% year-on-year and 7.4% month on month, falling below the 100 million mark.

Seeing the decrease in the number of members and the need to reduce costs and increase efficiency, what should we do? Only by setting off a “rising voice”.

Let’s put it this way. The attitude of the platform towards its members is to “dig” bit by bit. They know best what is “who knows that every grain of Chinese food is hard” and what is “every inch of joy.”

More importantly, there is an inch of income and an inch of real gold and silver. Take Tencent video as an example. According to rough statistics, the 124 million paying members of Tencent video can bring an increase of 620 million yuan a month and earn 7.44 billion yuan more a year without considering the loss of members.

Of course, some people say that the general price increase of long video platform is due to the low price of members at first. With the continuous high cost of content and the continuous replacement of audio-visual technology in recent years, the platform operation is under pressure, and the price increase is just the most common market logic.

But have you found that, unlike most products, users will rebound when the membership fee of long video increases.

Why? In the final analysis, the growing spiritual and cultural needs of the people are not equal to the frequent occurrence of bad dramas.

This comes to the white moonlight of China’s long-term video platform - Naifei (although the moonlight is slightly dim after Naifei’s latest financial report is released recently).

The elder Naifei knows how to raise prices. Up to now, Naifei’s member prices have been raised at least 6-7 times. Except for the first two curses, the rest have not caused too much waves.

Naifei has the courtesy of “raising prices without being scolded” because it has the ability to continuously create popular content.

In fact, when Naifei first raised its price that year, it also experienced the tragedy of a sharp decline of 80% in the share price, but Naifei has steadily held the discretion of raising the price since about 2017. At that time, “Strange Tales” produced by Naifei became a hot play. They took advantage of the trend to put the price increase before the second season broadcast. As a result, people almost accepted the price increase. In that quarter, 8.3 million new users were added, exceeding the expected 6.3 million, and the share price also rose by more than 5%.

What makes Tencent and iqiyi envy is that Netflix, which has the ability to continuously create popular content, can keep pace with the number of members. Compared with the “powder dropping” of Tencent and iqiyi, Netflix has achieved a net increase in the number of paying users for eight consecutive quarters from Q1 2020 to Q4 2021, with a total increase of about 54.75 million users.

In short, Naifei has proved that long video is not unprofitable, but it must form a positive feedback of “price rise - continuous creation of popular content - price rise”.

But easier said than done.

In my opinion, Netflix mode is difficult to replicate. The core reason is that it is too difficult to continuously create popular content - please note that the keyword is “continuous”. It is normal to produce popular models occasionally, but “abnormal” to produce popular models continuously.

You know, many of the dramas launched by Netflix are multi-season. House of cards has been broadcast for six seasons in six years, and the quality of each season is stable. At present, no one on China’s long video platform can do this. What they can do at this stage is only “intermittently” - even “by luck”.

What’s the difference?

The difference is: Naifei’s users are paying for Naifei’s platform; In China, although the popularity brought by intermittent burst IP dramas is also high, users are paying for dramas and actors, not for the platform.

For example, in 2020, iqiyi brought 104.9 million and 104.8 million member subscriptions in the second and third quarters respectively by virtue of the hot drama “secret corner” and “the truth of silence”. Iqiyi couldn’t wait to raise the price in November, but it failed to make a better pop money than the first two in this quarter, and the number of members decreased by 3.1 million in the fourth quarter.

The reality is so cruel. If you can’t continuously output high-quality content, the platform will lack stickiness to users and users will lack loyalty to the platform.

By the way, this unreliable relationship will highlight a risk after the price increase of long video members: giving up the user time to the short video platform.

You may know the concept of “gross national time”. Naifei’s CEO once said that all things that seize users’ time are Naifei’s enemies.

Well, the cake is so big. If others eat more, you will eat less.

In China, the biggest enemy of long video is short video. In the era of short video, long video platforms should share a common hatred and lock users’ attention with high-quality long dramas, but the current situation is that there are few high-quality long dramas