How Internet Celebrities Make Money

Forbes published a list of Highest-Paid YouTube Stars 2016, PewDiePie, a Sweden gamer, remains No.1 with $15 million pretax income. He uploads snippets of himself playing video games for 50 million subscribers.

Also, Rosanna Pansino who provides baking videos on YouTube made $6 million in 2016 compared to $4.5 million in 2015.

1. Felix Kjellberg (PewDiePie) – $15 million USD
2. Roman Atwood – $8 million USD
3. Lilly Singh (Superwoman) – $7.5 million USD
4. Anthony Padilla (Smosh) – $7 million USD
5. Tyler Oakley – $6 million USD
6. Rosanna Pansino – $6 million USD
7. Mark Fischbach (Markiplier) – $5.5 million USD
8. German Garmendia – $5.5 million USD
9. Colleen Ballinger (Miranda Sings) – $5 million USD
10. Rhett & Link – $5 million USD

List from http://hypebeast.com/2016/12/2016-highest-paid-youtube-stars

Let’s watch a video clip posted by PewDiePie.

 

Will you be jealous of that? A guy is just playing a video game and he can earn $15 million per year? Actually, you don’t need to. According to this list, we can say that everyone can be the Internet celebrity as long as one has a skill and knows about how to run the marketing oneself.

How to be a Celebrity on the Internet

First, you need a skill such as fitness, playing a game, cooking, baking, a sense of fashion, traveling or even a big stomach to eat (whatever it is). A Japanese girl, Kinoshita Yuka, has a big stomach and she opened a channel to broadcast eating. Now she has 2,447,211 subscribers on YouTube.

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Second, you need to know how to perform the marketing yourself. Influencer Marketing needs to cross several fields such as PR, social media strategy, content creating and more. In this way, influencers (Bloggers) should know about the technique of design, video editing, and a high level of personal aesthetics so that attract followers through charming content and photos.

How Internet Celebrities Make Money

The advertisement is the most direct method to make money through accumulating a big follower base. For example, Scott Disick, the influencer on Instagram, requires $15K-20K for one sponsored post due to he has 18.63 million followers. And some of the photos he posted as an Ad just looks like a casual street snap.

Also, Kinoshita Yuka, I mentioned before, will be sponsored by food materials manufacturers and use these food materials in the video.

Photo from http://lolframes.com/tag/yuka-kinoshita/

Moreover, fashion bloggers select different costumes which are inexpensive and not from well-known brands and take colorful and well-composited photos to give followers a hope that common people can also become gorgeous due to these celebrities are common and not well-trained by superstar training companies compared to those entertainers, either. As a result, some of these fashion influencers establish their own apparel brands and sell them through their social media accounts.

The King of the Content: 3 Factors Make Victoria’s Secret Great

Victoria’s Secret (the largest American retailer of women’s bras and lingerie) holds an annual fashion show, Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. Actually, it is not just a fashion show for now but an annual visual feast.

Image from http://hitwallpaper.com/2013/11/victorias-secret-logo-wallpaper-hd/

The first Victoria’s Secret fashion show started in 1995 and now I can say Victoria’s Secret is the king (or I should say queen) of the content. Before the fashion show began, the updates of all social media platforms like Facebook had been filled with photos, GIFs and videos of models (angels) and forecasting articles of Victoria’s Secret.

But the social media promotion before the fashion show is not the crucial marketing strategy. I will introduce 3 ways make Victoria’s Secret great.

Let’s watch part of the show first:

Angels

Angels are always the most attractive part of the whole fashion show annually. Every year, Victoria’s Secret will select and train angels as its official models. And most of these angels become supermodels after they stood on the stage of the fashion show such as Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Lily Aldridge.

Photo from http://people.com/style/victorias-secret-fashion-show-adriana-lima/

Each angel has an angel face and is in a good shape. They do workout and control diet for a long time and make themselves a role model to common women. In this way, when female customers are watching the show, they will virtually put themselves into the show and try to play the role as one of the angels so that link the products to the charming shape. Moreover, male audiences hope their girlfriends or wives can be angels after they put on lingeries.

Forbes puts together a list of the highest-paid models and, as the return of these efforts, “estimates that 5 of the 47 models, including Gigi Hadid, in the show take home a combined $28.5 million pretax from all the gigs. Adriana Lima is estimated to earn $9 million this year. Martha Hunt is estimated to earn $2 million, Kendall Jenner at $4 million, and Hadid at $2.5 million.”

Wings

Wings are not only the consideration of aesthetics but also a way to centralize the eyesight of audiences to the lingerie. Also, putting on the wings is a symbol to indicate the status of angels because, for example, only 8 of 47 angels had the authority to put on wings at Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2014.

Photo from http://www.centrechina.com/ganhuo/56189.html

Musicians

The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show cannot seriously be categorized as a fashion show, but an entertainment event. In this way, it is not doubtable that the company always follows the hot tendency and invites popular musicians to perform during the runway show every year. Last year, they invited Rihanna, and this year, they invited Lady Gaga. The marketing/PR team of Victoria’s Secret clearly understands how to attract attention from the target market.

Photo from http://www.icloudupdate.com/2016/10/rihanna-debuts-new-hairstyle-long-faux-dreads/

Rocket Internet: a Company Factory

Venture Beat, a Tech Blog company, published a list of unicorn startups in worldwide. There are 6 in Germany which are “Hello Fresh”, “Zalando”, “Home24”, “Auto1”, “Delivery Hero” and “Rocket Internet”.

Image from http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/18/there-are-now-229-unicorn-startups-with-175b-in-funding-and-1-3b-valuation/

However, according to the official website of Rocket Internet, surprisingly, most German unicorn companies I mentioned before are invested and built by Rocket Internet such as Hello Fresh, Delivery Hero and Home 24.

Sam Parr, one of the columnists of theHustle.co said, “Rocket Internet is one of the most hated yet successful tech companies in the world” because the strategy of Rocket Internet for building companies is to copy successful business models from Silicon Valley. And the slogan displayed on the homepage of the official website of Rocket Internet is “To Become the World’s Largest Internet Platform Outside the United States and China”. In this way, Rocket Internet actually is a startup factory company which builds and invests other startups.

Image from https://www.rocket-internet.com/

How Rocket Internet Established

The founder of Rocket Internet, Oliver Samwer, holds a degree from WHU. “Upon graduation, Oliver, and his two brothers founded Alando.de in 1999. After the sale of Alando.de to eBay Inc., he was Managing Director of eBay, responsible for Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. In 2000, Oliver and his two brothers founded Jamba! AG, which was acquired by Verisign Inc. in 2004”, I believe that the experience of establishing Alando gave Oliver a formula which can clone and develop startups quickly.

Then, in 2007, he founded a startup factory, Rocket Internet, to help startups grow at a high speed such as three years compare to ten years normally.

Let’s watch a Rocket Internet film.

Focus on Internet Business

According to the film, the main business that companies invested by Rocket Internet’s focus is the online business such as online finance, e-commerce, and online marketplaces. “5.4 billion consumers outside the United States and China = 75% of global population = 74% mobile users in the world.”

Usually, in the period of coping, Rocket Internet will provide a wider service range than the original product and spend a huge amount of money on Google Ads as long as the project still has capital left in order to attract consumers.

The running and managing way of Rocket Internet is totally like an assembly line. The only thing they are pursuing is efficiency which can grow a project in a short period and then sell it to the original company to make money.

How Big Data Changes Human’s Social Life

Big data, a popular word at present, is existing in everywhere nowadays. To some people, big data just means nothing, but to others, it means future and everything. Someone describe Big Data as the fossil fuel of the future world and someone even describe it as the tool to be the god.

Image from http://crossing-technologies.com/big-data-analytics/

So in this world filled with information and data, what can big data exactly do to change human’s life in the future?

Let’s watch a video published by “fliptptv” at first.

 

Actually, after collecting sufficient information and data, the big data can help researchers anticipate what will happen.

Launching Ads Precisely

Maybe you have noticed that after you search The Google ad is the most direct example of describing the influence that big data affects on. Google will collect the history that web users browsed and what they posted on the social media platforms and push the advertising they may be interested in. For example, I just searched a running shoe on Finish Line but I did not buy it because of the high price and close the web page. Several minutes later, when I am on Google, it recommended me a lower price of that model of running shoes offered on Footlocker. Thus, the big data facilitate the deal.

Image from http://marketingland.com/google-adsense-moves-new-home-page-testing-forces-publishers-use-new-layout-95839

Monitoring Users’ Physical Health

People browse web pages and use their credit card to purchase online and in physical stores. Also, devices record our information, for example, Fitbit and Apple Watch records the personal health data. The cell Phone records our location data. All these data such as what you eat, how many miles you walked, how much time you exercised can be collected and analyzed by the big data technology and be organized to a report to clarify YOUR personal situation about the current physical health and the anticipated illness might have in the future so that it can help us remind and correct the habit of dietary, workout and lifestyle.

Improving the Health Care System

Moreover, John Naughton addressed, “according to tracking and analyzing the search numbers and frequency of words such as ‘cough’, ‘fever’ and ‘cold’, Google can help government department anticipate the flu”.

Knowing About the Traffic Situation

Through GPS set in the cell phones, the big data can analyze the traffic situation so that help people avoid coming across the traffic jam coincidently. Actually, this technology has been applied in Mobile Apps. And I believe that this function can be developed deeply in the near future.

Image from http://www.clipartkid.com/privacy-policy-go-slow-fCG492-clipart/

The Risk of Leakage of Individual Privacy

However, the leakage of privacy information is a big problem to the development of the big data. The information the big data needs is diverse which includes all kinds of personal background such as income, age, occupation, locations, transaction history and some fields that common people can imagine. In this way, governments, IT companies and human rights organizations still need to do a lot and to negotiate with each other to find a balance point between developing the big data and protecting the privacy information.

 

Four Ways to Gain Followers on Instagram

According to the data from Statista.com, the number of monthly active Instagram users is 500 million by Jun.16 2015. And according to Alexa.com, the traffic rank of Instagram is 16 in worldwide. Instagram has been one of the most popular social media in the world. In this way, many brands and companies have looked Instagram as a platform for launching advertising, even some people also create an Instagram account and try to launch ads from sponsors after they have enough followers.

Image from http://www.jwt.com/blog/opinion/instagram-stories-vs-snapchat-stories/

Before making marketing strategy, a social media account needs to increase the number of followers. Let me conclude some ways of attracting traffic on Instagram today.

“T.A.G Tube” shared a video on YouTube to describe several ways of gaining follower on Instagram.

 

Then, I will introduce 4 ways I suggest to gain followers on Instagram.

 1. Fancy Photos

As a photo-sharing social media, sharing beautiful photos can intensively stimulate users’ aesthetics and bring emotional resonance to users. For example, a colorful photo about food can make human swallow unconsciously.

Picture from https://www.instagram.com/p/BMONRSSDHUi/?taken-by=fancyfoodpics

2. Post Content of a Field What You Professional in

This suggestion is for personal accounts. As long as you have a field professional in, then you can share photos and videos. Any kind of fields you can recall can be a gimmick to attract followers as long as you are really good at it. Let me give you some examples.

a. Fitness

Instagram ID: jenselter

b. Weapons and Shooting

Instagram ID: Leaspeed6

c. Dancing

Instagram ID: ballroomdance_girl

Picture from https://www.instagram.com/p/BMrL7RChHGt/?taken-by=ballroomdance_girl

d. Even Showing off Money

Instagram ID: danbilzerian

3. Using Hashtags of Hot Topics

Using the most popular hashtags which can relate to the content you are going to post can quickly push your content to users who are searching these hashtags. But too many hashtags in one post will affect a negative influence on aesthetics.

4. Posting at the Right Time

According to the data from Sabel Harris, the most effective time to post a video on Instagram is from 9pm-8am EST. And Sunday is the best day to post new content on Instagram so that the account can receive more Likes, comments, and interactions.

Chart from https://blog.bufferapp.com/instagram-stats-instagram-tips

Chart from https://blog.bufferapp.com/instagram-stats-instagram-tips

 

Candy Market in the United States: Sales Volume of Candy will reach $2.5 Billion in 2016

In the age of “Everything Can be the Gimmick”, fewer people care about the meaning of Halloween but care about how many discount department stores offer. The status of Halloween is a little embarrassing because it is too close to the big day of a year, Christmas Day. As a result, department stores will not offer good deals or discounts due to accumulating enough purchasing power for Christmas.Image from http://www.digsdigs.com/100-halloween-pumpkin-carving-ideas/

Target launched a video commercial on YouTube last year which allows users have an interaction with the video. Consumers can click the good displayed in the screen and purchase.

However, one industry chases this opportunity for increasing the sales volume during Halloween. According to the data result anticipated by NRF.com, “consumers plan to spend $2.5 billion on candy.”

Chart from https://nrf.com/media/press-releases/halloween-spending-reach-84-billion-highest-survey-history

National Confectioners Association held a survey to investigate consumer behaviors (maybe just tidbits) in the United States.  

“The nation’s porch lights are on: 

• 76 percent of households plan to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters this year.
• 82 percent of people over the age of 45 plan to be home to greet trick-or-treaters.

72 percent of parents confess that they take candy from their child’s Halloween haul (or other seasonal candy collections): 

• 25 percent of parents wait until their kids go to bed or school before sneaking some sweets.
• 47 percent have a house rule that everyone must share.
• A surprising 22 percent of parents claim not to sneak or insist on sharing Halloween candy (or just won’t own up!).

The younger you are, the more likely you are to lose some candy to mom and dad:

• Parents are most likely to help themselves after bedtime if their children are under the age of 6.
• Teens are more likely to have parents who will let them keep the entire haul.”

The same situation as children in China when kids receive lucky money on Spring Festival. Parents will tell to their kid that they will help keep the money. But actually, it’s a white lie and lucky money will never be back.

“May I offer you a snack?

• 57 percent of Americans will have stocked candy bowls in their home or office in the days leading up to Halloween.

Welcome trick-or-treaters:

• 61 percent of the American public will decorate their front porch or door to welcome trick-or-treaters (69 percent of households with children will do so).
• 27 percent of people will dress in costume to welcome trick-or-treaters, though millennials (47 percent) are far more likely than other age groups to wear costumes.

The candy corn clash:

• When it comes to candy corn, 52 percent of people say it’s just not Halloween without it (48 percent of people say they’d just as soon skip it).

How much candy can you expect? 

• 72 percent of households will hand out two (50 percent) or three (22 percent) pieces of candy per trick-or-treater.

We want our chocolate:6

• Nearly 3/4 of Americans (72 percent) say that chocolate is their favorite Halloween treat.
• Chocolate scored top points among all age groups but was most popular among those ages 45 to 60 who preferred it over other candies by 78 percent (compared to 68 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds).
• Love it or hate it (we love it!), candy corn came in a distant second, garnering about 12 percent of the vote.
• Speaking of candy corn, about 47 percent of people believe it’s best to eat the whole piece of candy corn at once, while 43 percent of people think it’s proper to start with the narrow white end.

Shopper preference drives Halloween candy selections:

• More than six in 10 shoppers choose their own favorites when picking out Halloween candy.
• Four in 10 shoppers take into consideration their families’ preferences or let price, sales and promotions decide the purchase.
• In contrast, only two in 10 shoppers decide on Halloween candy based solely on its reputation as a seasonal classic.”

What are Differences between Wechat, LINE and WhatsApp?

There are four popular fields in Internet Industry which are information, communication, entertainment, and business. Among these four fields, communication is always the most popular one. Communication software was developed from PC platform to mobile platform. With the arriving of the age of mobile Internet, entrepreneurs have more opportunities and users base to create more chat Apps.

All around the world, Wechat (China), WhatsApp (U.S.) and LINE (Japan) are representative of chat Apps. Facially, chat Apps have the same major functions such as voice message, contacts, location based service and free text message, but business models, cultures, and product logics are definitely different.

image from http://www.economist.com/news/business/21703428-chinas-wechat-shows-way-social-medias-future-wechats-world

Let’s  watch a video clip to describe Line and Wechat:

Wechat

According to Craig Smith , Wechat has 762 million monthly active users.

Wechat has been a huge platform contains many kinds of products such as social networking, E-commerce, e-pay and O2O. Also, Wechat opens its Javascript SDK to public organizations including governments, individuals and businesses in order to develop more functions based Wechat to serve users

For now, Wechat has been a flagship product of Tencent Holdings LTD so that Tencent can regard Wechat as a valuable chip in the business game. Wechat has the user base in China which is a large enough marketing to compete with other markets. Also, Wechat has implemented its overseas expanding plan.

LINE

LINE was announced by NHN Japan in June 2011. According to Craig Smith, LINE has 218 million monthly active users by June.13 2016. LINE can develop rapidly because of the condition and development of Japanese communication service.

One of the major functions of LINE is “sticker”. There are over 250 stickers allow users to describe their emotion offered by LINE. Some kinds of these stickers which have representatives cartoon characters such as Brown Bear and Cony Bunny have been the remarkable identification of LINE to differ from other chat Apps.

Also, according to the official website, LINE has a series of family Apps such as games, photography, dictionary and tools which support both iOS and Android. In this way, LINE can grip users in several aspects.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp refuses to add any kind of gimmicks into the App and interface. Due to some origin of cultures, WhatsApp has dominated the marketing of Europe and America before Snapchat announced. According to Craig Smith, WhatsApp has 1 billion users. Facebook announced to buy into WhatsApp on Feb. 19, 2014.

Nowadays, chat Apps do not only contains these three Apps, but also contains like Kik, Viber, Snapchat, Facebook Messenger and iMessage. Chat Apps is a method and tool to pull users or customers into an ecosphere belongs to corporations and groups. In this ecosphere, chat App plays a role as a waiter/waitress to take variety dishes (products) offered by the restaurant (companies) to customers.

Two Tendencies of Digital Marketing in the Future

Professional organizations or experts do not just consider digital marketing as a method of analysis but pay attention to the research of tendency of purchasing and digitization.

Compared to tools and methods of marketing, speed, adaptability, adjacency, scale and precision are the mainstay forces of marketing creativity and digitization.

Image from http://mba.uconn.edu/academics/elective-tracks/digital-marketing-strategy/

Let me show you a video first:

Transform from Media Agency to Digital Agency

According to “IDC Future Scope: Worldwide IT Industry 2016 Predictions- Leading Digital Transformation”, “1/3 of Top 20 companies in each industry will subject to Digital Disrupt. And in China, Alibaba and Tencent have the highest possibility to be survivals.” IDC anticipates that “Internet devices will be doubled and 200,000 new Apps will be coded in the next three years.”

It is hard for people to define Content. But it is undeniable that content is much visualized and real-time. According to the research data from eMarketer(, “Periscope, Snapchat and Instagram become the highest efficient marketing channel, even higher than Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.”

Li Jian points out that Red Bull and GoPro have changed their marketing strategy toward “brands will not control the content, but create and share content with users together.”

In this way, ad agencies will not just push information to consumers through media channels as media agencies, but try to match the tastes of different customers and push commercials precisely to them through big data as digital agencies.

image from https://twitter.com/redbull

image from http://brandedwithfire.blogspot.com/2012/03/gopro-brand-audit-part-2.ht

The Gap Between Leaders and Followers Will be Widened

The year of 2016 is the second year of digitization in a global environment. Forrester addressed that “the gap between digitized leaders and followers will be widened. Leaders will gradually complete the transformation of Customer-obsessed operating Model, but followers will consistently take market shares from each other.”

image from https://michaelhyatt.com/why-the-best-leaders-are-great-followers.html

Personalized Experience is the key factor which can determine the future of a company. It does not only contain big data analysis, precision marketing and marketing automation, but also simplification of the purchasing process and increment of customer experience.

As we can see, big data has been one of the important tools which should be used to analyze requirements of customers. Big companies can use big data to improve its idea and business process of personalized experience in order to serve clients in a more efficient and effective way. However, though small businesses can realize the importance, they do not have ability and time to think about and execute. They have to still be busy with taking market shares.