“Everyone, no matter how small, has their own brand.” That line from WeChat Official Accounts has stuck with me more and more.
It's 2023, short video is everywhere, and open rates for Official Accounts keep falling year after year. So a reasonable question comes up: is it too late to start now? My answer is that it's worth it — maybe even more worth it than before.
The reason is simple: among all platforms, Official Account followers have the highest value and the strongest monetization potential. My own account has fewer than 10,000 followers, and it brings in around 40,000 RMB a month on average, sometimes 100,000 in a good month with a promotion. To earn that elsewhere, you might need hundreds of thousands of followers.
Why do followers pay? Because of trust. Why do they trust you? Because you have a personal brand backing you. Where is that personal brand built? On an Official Account. So it's the best place to build a personal IP and personal brand.
Whether you're an influencer, a business owner, or a founder, a personal brand matters more and more. When someone wants to do business with you, one of the first things they may ask is: do you have a website? Do you have an Official Account? If you do, and they check it out and it looks decent, their trust in you goes up a lot, and so does the chance of closing a deal. This will be the normal way business gets done — just watch.
But the platform really isn't easy. Back in August 2019, the number of registered Official Accounts passed 20 million, and it's still growing. Starting in 2023 and trying to stand out among all those accounts is tough.
First, it's a closed platform. Readership depends directly on follower count. An account with 500,000 followers will get at least 10,000 reads on a post. An account with a few dozen followers won't reach 10,000 no matter how good the writing is. Other self-media platforms are different — they push content to non-followers too, so even with zero followers, a viral piece can get hundreds of thousands of reads. So if you want to raise readership on an Official Account, you need good content and a way to pull traffic in from outside platforms. Easier said than done.
Second, short video has made open rates on Official Accounts plunge. Making money from it has genuinely gotten harder. Reading this, some people may already feel like giving up. Hold on.
It's precisely because it's hard that it's still worth doing — the difficulty keeps 80% of people out. If you can make it work, that proves you've got real skill, and it's what earns you thousands or tens of thousands a month.
My own experience is similar. I've been running an account for about three years and still have fewer than 10,000 followers. Plenty of big names in the space have tens of thousands. They like to cross-promote each other and can gain hundreds or thousands of followers at a time. I don't really join in — part personality, since I don't enjoy the socializing, and part being too busy. It leaves my social circle narrow and my friend count limited, but it hasn't hurt my income. If anything, it may have helped.
Many people say one follower on an Official Account is worth dozens on other platforms, and that with 10,000 followers you can easily make two or three thousand a month. I used to think that sounded exaggerated, but now I completely believe it. I don't even have 10,000 followers, and I average around 40,000 a month, sometimes 100,000 during a promotion. So “two or three thousand” is actually a pretty modest estimate.
If you can find a mentor to guide you, it saves a lot of time wandering down dead ends. Without help, it might take two or three years to get an account off the ground. With help, maybe six months to a year. Even though it takes time, once it's running, the account can support you for three to five years, maybe even ten.
In the future, all business will be built on personal brands. Without one, you're starting from behind. So start now — use an Official Account to build your personal IP and personal brand. Once you have that foundation, you'll never lack projects to monetize or chances to make money.