All done! The operating secrets of Taiwan’s first million-subscription project are revealed

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This article author Chen Tinghong is a businessman who is humble enough to pay for content. Currently, he is the project director of PressPlay. He once served as the product director and editor of Youwu Report. Thank you for authorizing the “Content Hacker” website to reprint it. Thank you hereby.

[Why we reprint this article] Being able to obtain stable income through content monetization is one of the important goals pursued by many content creators. Chen Tinghong analyzed Taiwan’s first content project with a monthly subscription amount exceeding one million “[Lao Wang Loves Joking](https://pressplay.cc/project/about/%E3%80%90%E8%80%81% E7%8E%8B%E6%84%9B%E8%AA%AA%E7%AC%91%E3%80%91-+%E7%82%BA%E6%82%A8%E6%B4%9E%E6%82%89%E5%85% A8%E7%90%83%E8%B2%A1%E7%B6%93%E8%88%87%E6%8E%8C%E6%8F%A1%E5%8F%B0%E8%82%A1%E4%B8%BB%E6%B5 %81%EF%BC%81/E7DD815ED1397807432214C22B11CD67)“‘s business methods and data are shared with all friends who are concerned about whether they can obtain content payment income through a subscription system. It is quite worthy of reference.

Taiwan’s first Subscription project with a monthly amount exceeding one million yuan “[Lao Wang Loves Joking](https://pressplay.cc/project/about/%E8%80%81%E7%8E%8B%E6%84%9B%E8%AA%AA%E7%AC %91%2B%E7%82%BA%E6%82%A8%E6%B4%9E%E6%82%89%E5%85%A8%E7%90%83%E8%B2%A1%E7%B6%93%E8%88%87%E6%8E%8C%E6% 8F%A1%E5%8F%B0%E8%82%A1%E4%B8%BB%E6%B5%81%EF%BC%81/E7DD815ED1397807432214C22B11CD67)”, which was released on May 21, 2017. In the first month, the subscription amount reached 880,000 yuan, and by the second month it exceeded one million yuan. This article will analyze for you why the “Lao Wang Loves Joking” project can maintain a monthly subscription amount of one million for a whole year. The author will analyze the operational data of this project to let everyone understand how Lao Wang achieved this seemingly impossible goal.

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Lao Wang loves to joke about the chain technique

From the author’s perspective, the Lao Wang Loves Joking project has two features, one is “one million subscriptions” and the other is “maintenance for one year”.

Millions of subscriptions

The subscription amount of this project can exceed NT$1 million. There are two main factors, namely content theme and personality trust.

1. Content theme

Most people want to own more property, so the topic Investment corresponds to a very wide range of user identities and strong demand. The market scale corresponding to popular topics is large, so there are opportunities to make high-value projects.

Different content topics will correspond to different sizes of user groups. For example, there may be fewer people who want to write good copywriting or learn to maintain their assets well than those who invest. Therefore, the operating performance of subscription plans must be compared based on the same content theme, and cannot be compared randomly like Zhang Fei is killing Yue Fei.

2. Personal trust

[Trust] in personality (https://www.contenthacker.today/2018/01/straight-line-selling.html) is a key factor for users to purchase content. For 8 years before starting the project, Lao Wang interacted with fans on the fan page on Juheng.com every day, shared his stock market observations for free, and frequently responded to fans’ messages, which earned him a lot of popularity.

Therefore, in terms of personal trust, if a new investor wants to subscribe to the investment content plan, Lao Wang has already won 8 years ahead of other teachers - this is a trust relationship that is difficult to quickly replicate. Please note that the author uses “difficult” instead of “impossible” because there may be experts who can accumulate trust in a short period of time.

last for one year

Subscription model is a marathon, not a sprint. The focus is on how to keep each subscriber paying. First, let us observe the changes in the total number of subscribers of the Laowang project.

One month after Lao Wang’s project was launched, the number of people exceeded 3,000. The total number of project subscribers has remained stable over the past year and has not changed significantly. The number of subscribers is stable, which means that the customer churn rate is very low; and the churn rate is the most important data in the subscription model.

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Changes in the number of subscribers to Laowang Project

Next, let’s analyze Laowang’s churn rate on different price plans and understand the composition of Laowang’s million-dollar subscription amount. Laowang has a total of 5 subscription plans with different prices:

1. Financial afternoon report: 99 yuan

• Daily international finance and Taiwan stock analysis articles

2. Complete supplement: 199 yuan

*Write a special analysis on fundamentals, technical aspects or chips every month

• Screen and share ten stocks every week

3. Exclusive club: 399 yuan

• Can join Facebook private group discussions

• Daily screening of stocks purchased by legal persons and back-tested moving averages

• You can send private messages to inquire without fear of relatives and friends knowing

4. Lecture exclusive: 1,299 yuan (limited to 100 people)

• One teaching lecture per year, guaranteed quota for free participation

• Give away a selected financial book at the end of the year

• One autographed lucky red envelope at the end of the year

5. Private family: 3,999 yuan (limited to 20 people)

• Join the exclusive Line group to have first-hand information

• Monthly experience sharing or reading club

• Occasional dinner parties ​​ The following is the change in monthly customer churn rate of Laowang’s five different price plans in the past four months:

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In the past four months, the monthly churn rate of Laowang’s plan

Judging from the author’s past operating experience, if the monthly churn rate is below 10%, it can be regarded as a project in good condition. Among them, “Lecture Exclusive” (red line) and “Private Family” (purple line) are limited plans with fewer places, so the cancellation of one or two subscriptions will greatly affect the churn rate. For example, if the subscription is limited to 20 subscribers, as long as one subscriber cancels, the churn rate for that month will be 5%. In the churn rate change chart, it can also be observed that the red line and purple changes have a larger amplitude, and the churn rate has increased by 5% in a single month. The attrition rate of low-priced “Financial Noon News” and “Top 100 Comprehensive Supplements” plans has been rising.

The churn rate of the 399 yuan “Exclusive Club” plan, which accounts for the highest proportion of Laowang’s subscription amount (about 70%), is very stable and has not changed much. Laowang’s million-dollar subscription can be maintained for one year, largely because the number of people in the 399 yuan plan is very stable.

Overall, Laowang’s subscription plan design strategy is:

• The entry-level 99 yuan and 199 yuan plans: focusing on “investment content”, the marginal cost is very low, because even if an article is viewed by 100,000 people, it will not incur high costs.

• 399 yuan plan: The main focus is “interaction”, including public interactions and private messages within the community. This can build a high-strength trust relationship with fans.

• 1,299 yuan and 3,999 yuan plans: The feature is “directly face to face with Lao Wang.” Physical gatherings of fans are expensive to operate, so the number of subscribers must be limited. The target audience for this type of program is Lao Wang’s loyal fans.

Lao Wang: A marathon runner who gets faster and faster

Lao Wang’s subscription project has a special phenomenon: the number of subscribers remains stable, but the subscription amount has steadily increased. The following is a chart of changes in the subscription amount of the Laowang project. Since June 2017, the monthly subscription amount has continued to grow and has exceeded 1.2 million yuan so far.

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What is curious is why the number of subscribers remains stable but the amount of subscriptions increases?

Judging from the number of subscribers of the five price plans, the low-price plans “Financial Noon News” and “Shiquandabu” have been declining, but the 399 yuan “Exclusive Society” has been on the rise, with the number of subscribers nearly doubling within a year.

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Changes in the number of subscribers for Laowang’s different price plans

Judging from the statistics of the reasons for canceling subscriptions in the Lao Wang Project, more than half of the reasons were to change to a higher-priced plan. This means that the upsell of the Laowang project is very successful and the subscription amount continues to grow.

Lao Wang is not the first, but he is the only one

A year later, there were two more million-dollar projects on the PressPlay website, and Lao Wang also gave up his position as the number one subscription player.

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Although Laowang is no longer the project with the highest subscription amount, its indicator significance is irreplaceable.

Looking back when it was launched in May 2017, no one in the market could have predicted that financial content combined with a subscription model would be able to achieve monthly revenue exceeding one million. After Lao Wang made his name, other financial experts began to invest in the subscription model, forming a new trend.

In the darkness, it is very difficult to determine the direction; it is relatively easy to copy other people’s successful models because the scope to explore has been narrowed. Lao Wang dared to identify opportunities and start executing them when there was no precedent in the market. This was his vision and courage.

By the way, I forgot to mention that this is an article to congratulate Lao Wang on the first anniversary of the project. At the same time, I wish Laowang a happy wedding!

★ Photo Credit: PressPlay official website, Chen Tinghong

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Further reading

• Earning 3 million dollars a year, let’s see how Ben Thompson builds his writing empire
• What is the “subscription economy”? Create the strongest business model and shift from price competition to experience improvement

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