China Business Daily (reporter Zhao Yiru) earned 100 million yuan in 8 days after it was launched, the 24-hour recharge amount exceeded 20 million yuan, and the annual recharge flow of paid micro-short dramas reached more than 18 billion yuan......At present, the micro-short drama industry is full of "myths of getting rich", and the upstream and downstream participants in the industry have also changed their fate.
However, for the producers, does the micro-short drama industry really make money?How will the enterprises that have entered the market seek long-term development?
When participating in the "2023 Sohu Finance Annual Forum", Wang Xiaoshu, the founder of Jiashu Technology and Bingtian Short Drama, shared his experience of growing with the micro-short drama industry since he started his business, and introduced his business experience to a reporter from China Business Daily.
Wang Xiaoshu, founder of Jiashu Technology and Bingtian Short Play. (*Courtesy of the company).
The micro-short drama industry changes its fate.
I am one of the first people in China to do the business of micro-short dramas. Wang Xiaoshu said that Bingtian Short Drama was established on April 1, 2020 and is a very young company.
Not long after Wang Xiaoshu's company was established, it faced a loss-making situation. However, after launching the micro-short drama business in July 2021, the company soon ushered in a turnaround.
There's a popular term on the internet called 'the gears of fate start turning'. Wang Xiaoshu said, "The gears of my destiny started to turn from doing micro-short dramas." ”
The micro-short drama industry is "taking off" at an astonishing speed, and it is not just Wang Xiaoshu's fate that has changed.
The micro-short drama turned Zhejiang Hengdian into a "vertical store".
Hengdian now has hundreds of short dramas launched every month. A micro-short drama requires more than a dozen actors, plus forty or fifty staff members, to shoot for more than ten days, which solves the employment problem of many people. Wang Xiaoshu said, "Hengdian's current actors' salaries have increased by about three or four times, and the reason is that almost everyone is filming micro-short dramas." ”
The popularity and value of micro-short drama actors are also rising.
Sun Yue is the hottest male number one actor in our industry, and now his Douyin fans have exceeded one million, and the combined box office of the micro-short dramas he performed has exceeded 100 million. Wang Xiaoshu said.
The market value of listed companies has skyrocketed by more than 10 billion yuan because of micro-short dramas.
Chinese** launched a relatively excellent micro-short drama app overseas, and it only took ten days to increase its market value from 10 billion yuan to more than 20 billion yuan. Wang Xiaoshu said.
The micro-short drama has changed my company, changed Hengdian, changed actors like Sun Yue, and even changed listed companies, it is really a wave. Wang Xiaoshu said, "In the past three years, the scale of the micro-short drama industry has reached 10 billion yuan from zero, and now there are about thousands of enterprises and tens of thousands of employees. There are hundreds of micro-short dramas being filmed every month, and each micro-short drama may have dozens to hundreds of people, and this is only the upstream shooting. The scale of downstream distribution and investment is also very large. ”
How much money can be made from micro-short dramas.
Wang Xiaoshu believes that the main reasons why micro-short dramas are so popular include: the story comes from the Internet, the industrialization of China's film and television industry, and the rise of short and new.
More than half of the IP**or story** of the micro-short drama is an online article, and the online text itself is a very mature track, which caters to the user's reading preferences. What the micro-short drama does is to find out the essence of the story of the entire online text, and finally form a complete plot story, which can be filmed for 100 minutes. Wang Xiaoshu said.
Another reason is the industrialization of China's vertical screen shooting capabilities. The industrialization of micro-short dramas comes from the fact that there are a large number of talents in China's film and television industry, with at least tens of thousands of Chinese film and television performance majors graduating every year, and a large number of actors, broadcasters, hosts, cameramen and editors in the industry, which can only be done in China. Wang Xiaoshu said, "The entire industry has made more than 5,000 short dramas this year, which is a very staggering number." ”
Short** is the fertile soil for the growth of micro-short dramas. "The time for everyone to watch ** is becoming more and more fragmented, and I myself make TikTok every day, and it is more difficult to watch something as immersed as before, and users are Xi to the fast pace." Wang Xiaoshu said.
How much money can be made from such a popular micro-short drama?
The main sales method of micro-short dramas is advertising, and for every 1 yuan of micro-short drama box office, there is about 08—0.9 yuan to the short *** as advertising fees. Distributors like us can probably get a box office share of 01—0.15 yuan, that is, about 10%-15% of the income, covering the cost of our filming, as well as server and bandwidth, R&D expenses, etc. Wang Xiaoshu said.
Many people want to make micro-short dramas, but this business may not be very profitable, because it costs three or four hundred thousand yuan to make a film, and the producer can get 5%-7% of the box office. If the cost of a ** is 300,000 yuan, ** must have a recharge of at least 5 million yuan to return the cost. Wang Xiaoshu said, "The distribution rules of the box office of short dramas are very different from those of movies, and the proportion of money that producers and producers can get in the box office is very low." ”
In August this year, the micro-short drama "Wushuang" became the "myth of getting rich" in the short drama industry with the achievement of "earning more than 100 million yuan in 8 days after it was launched". But Wang Xiaoshu said that the hit rate of short dramas is actually not high.
The hit is probably less than 10%, that is, 1 out of 10 can pay off, and 90% of the dramas are money-loss. Wang Xiaoshu said, "If you think that it is easy to get rich or make a fortune by doing micro-short dramas, then this is no different from spending two yuan to win a lottery ticket of 5 million yuan." ”
But when you shoot a lot of films, 3, 5 or 10 films, the income of a hit may cover (cover) part of the losses of those previous dramas. But in terms of the whole industry, this industry is loss-making. Wang Xiaoshu said, "Excess profits may occur in the head enterprises, most of which are only small and medium-sized companies, and their losses may be even worse." ”
Centralization and "going to sea" are the directions.
Although it will face losses, the short drama industry is still the hottest track at the moment, attracting many leading film and television companies, state-owned assets and listed companies to enter the game. At the same time, industry governance and policy supervision are also being strengthened, and multiple platforms have announced the removal of illegal micro-short dramas, and the management of micro-short dramas will be further increased.
This is a necessary stage for the upward development of the industry, it will become more and more formal, the volume will be larger and larger, and more people will join. Wang Xiaoshu said.
When it comes to the company's future development strategy, Wang Xiaoshu told a reporter from China Business Daily: "We still advocate high-quality products. Our company does a lot of female frequency short dramas, that is, female-oriented emotions, palace fights, counterattacks and other themes. As a content company, the most important thing is the content production ability, so we spend a lot of energy on content production, script writing, image quality upgrades, etc. ”
The shooting cost of a micro-short drama is hundreds of thousands of yuan, the cost of a better online movie may cost tens of millions of yuan, and the cost of a short drama at the level of the Aiyouteng platform is several million yuan, and there is a lot of room for quality upgrades, that is, how to rise from hundreds of thousands of yuan to millions of yuan, or even tens of millions of yuan. It's a process of climbing, and we'll try to make a boutique. Wang Xiaoshu said.
Wang Xiaoshu also elaborated on the future development trend of the micro-short drama industry: "One is the launch of independent short drama APP, and the other is 'going to sea'. ”
The Red Fruit Short Drama is launched by Byte Group, and its feature is that you can watch micro short dramas for free. The Hippo Theater does something similar. Wang Xiaoshu said, "With such a huge production capacity and such a broad user base, and the company setting up a special app to build user minds, it will definitely become the entrance to traffic in the end." The entry of many large factories will also make the quality of micro-short dramas higher. ”
Another trend in micro-short dramas is 'going to sea'. Micro-short dramas are very novel for many overseas users, so basically the head short drama companies, including ourselves, have begun to 'go overseas'. We translate the short drama overseas and carry out it**, and we will also start local filming around the world. Wang Xiaoshu said.