李笑来：内容商业化不丢人，但咋整？（虎嗅内容分享会演讲「内容与连接」）

这个（指着PPT）是我今天要跟大家分享的PPT的所有内容，其中还有错别字，多维度的优于单维度的。这个PPT跟我非常像，没有任何包装，一定有缺点。我就是一个这样的人。

Source: https://www.huxiu.com/article/137342.html

Monetizing Content Is Nothing to Be Ashamed Of, but How? (Huxiu talk "Content and Connection")

> By Li Xiaolai · 2016-01-17 · [Original link](https://www.huxiu.com/article/137342.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

This (pointing at the PPT) is the entire content of the PPT I'm sharing with you today, and there are even typos in it: multi-dimensional is better than single-dimensional. This PPT is very much like me: no packaging at all, and it certainly has flaws. That's just the kind of person I am.

In 2015 I didn't do very much. At the end of 2014 I thought an economic crisis should appear in 2015, so I stopped all the investments in my hands and spent the whole year reading and thinking.

By 2015 I heard that bitcoin was going to fail, and then I came out and did a few other things. The friends around me were a little surprised, including Mr. Xu Xiaoping; Mr. Xu Xiaoping's voice is hoarse, that's just how he talks. At the end of last year I started selling a new book of mine; I started selling it before I'd even finished writing it. How much? 2555 yuan/year.

Mr. Xu Xiaoping was very surprised, and I calmly told him that actually this isn't the most expensive book in human history; there's a book that sells for 7289 US dollars. **The comments on that book are hilarious; people don't bother writing proper content, their nicknames are basically their comments, and within an afternoon of buying this book someone built 19 reactors.** There's also another book that sells for a lot: 5 DVDs for more than 540 US dollars. This book is very cool: a bunch of American scientists in New York wanted to use the most awesome modern technology to change cooking techniques, and even sliced quite a few pots with lasers; I bought this one. So I said that by comparison mine isn't as expensive as theirs. Mr. Xu reacted [Translator's note: the original writes 反映, literally "reflected"; 反应 ("reacted") is meant; translated by the intended sense] very quickly; he said yours is an annual fee, your sales are bound to be bigger than theirs. (He) excitedly wanted to join our company, and I agreed.

Today I want to share a concept with you, called IP multi-dimensionalization.

IP multi-dimensionalization is a concept I made up; there are many words in English that Chinese doesn't have, and abroad this concept has been in use for many years. Let me give an example: everyone here, compare two films and see which you think is better. The first was made in recent years, called Inception; the second is Star Wars. Which of these two films do you think is better?

All right, I don't need to ask for the answer. I'll have you think from another angle: if you were the person creating this IP, which IP would you think is more worth creating? From my personal standpoint, **I think the one with more commercial value is Star Wars, one of the top ten multi-dimensional IPs in human history by commercial value.** In my eyes, creating this kind of IP isn't the result of operations at all; rather, its attributes were already determined in the instant before it was created.

To this day **Inception is just a good film, only a good film. Star Wars is different: sequel, sequel and more sequels, and if that doesn't work, prequel, prequel and more prequels, and when the sequels run out, more prequels. It has cartoons, it has books, it has communities, it has theme parks, endlessly, and it has also lasted so many years that it has accompanied a generation as they grew up; there's more and more to be mined in it; it's almost like a treasure trove.** This morning I saw someone say it's very childish; it is childish, it was a fairy tale to begin with.

You're all content creators. My personal view is that today the spring of Chinese content creators has arrived, and this heat is definitely much wilder than everyone here imagines.

**Not all content is worth devoting yourself to; this is one of my assertions.** Once, in ancient times—1997, the ancient times of the internet—a good friend of mine made the Huajun Software Park (华军软件园); he was creating content, and in those ancient times he made money, and has kept making money right up to today. Why did he choose that content? His content updates were too simple; it's just 1.0, 1.1, and the content update is done. Everyone here can't imagine it; he's been making money all along. So choosing content is very important.

When you choose content, you have to consider these questions.

First, how much pressure to keep going do you have? I believe not everyone has Luo Zhenyu's courage. A couple of days ago I treated him to dinner and looked at him, and the more I looked the more I felt: I'm not playing with you anymore.

Second, the pressure of updating. My recent official account is Learn, Learning, Learn Again (学习学习再学习); I write several thousand characters every day, and even if you've prepared ever so much beforehand, your brain just won't get started.

Third, there's also growth pressure. Conversion pressure is what matters most. **You have to commercialize; making money is nothing to be ashamed of, and I especially don't understand those people who are coy about it. Over the past month I've received a lot of money in an Alipay group; every morning I get up and look at how much I've received, and I'm especially happy. I said to my wife, there's really nothing happier than receiving money. I said let some intellectuals get rich first; what I'm going to do in the coming year is exactly this. Xu Xiaoping and I will, in 2016, find at least a thousand content creators we think are worth growing together with: let some intellectuals get rich first, let some intellectuals get truly rich; what a great ideal.**

When creating content there are a few points to note. When you want to create content and mine its commercial value, **this business of success doesn't demand high IQ at all; for some brilliantly talented people there's nothing to be done.**

And there are some people like me; we have our methodology: if you create content, you should create formatted content.

**Formatted is better than unformatted, crowd-created is better than solely created; I'm just putting forward a framework.**

**Decentralized is better than centralized.** Being a centralized great god is very tiring; if something happens you're finished. You should go decentralized. What does decentralized mean? The religious metaphor just now is also a very good metaphor: Christianity is decentralized; every priest is a messenger of God, not God. You're there, he comes over and tells you, I'm a messenger, let me pass it on to you, and then a bunch of people rush out and build churches: decentralized.

**Distributed is better than decentralized.** For reasons of time I won't expand on it; in the future I'll invite many people to share with us. What is distributed decentralization? In the past an author wrote a book and sent it out, and when readers finished reading it, that was the end. In the blog era we wrote and published as we went; you are a center, and the direction was originally this way, but now it has become two-way: he'll come and leave a comment, he'll give feedback, and sometimes his feedback is unexpected, and you'll go back and revise your content; that's two-way. Later, gradually everyone became decentralized; an author who sweeps the whole world doesn't exist, and all kinds of small centers began to appear.

The third step is distributed: this is the author, and he is connected with readers; the key is that readers are connected with one another too, and in the end this network is like a fishing net; this kind of network is distributed.

So WeChat has enormous influence in China today, and I'm especially fond of it and bullish on it. At the end of 2014 I told friends that within 6 months, 12 months, this situation would certainly appear: people would say **starting a business on WeChat is on the same level as what we call starting an internet business, or even stronger. By the first half of 2015 some people put out remarks like this: set up an official account and you've gone out to start a business, dumbfucks [Translator's note: 傻逼 (shabi), a vulgar insult]. I knew my judgment was right.** By 2016 a large number of people will succeed in starting businesses on WeChat, and do very well.

But this isn't our ultimate stage of development. **WeChat's biggest problem now is that its network structure is backward: here you can only become a sun. As an author I want to contact readers who left comments in the back end, and I can't reach them; at most I can leave one line, and I can't even add them on WeChat. So I think this network structure is, for this stage, against the tide of history.**

**Finally, multi-dimensional is better than single-dimensional.** I designed many dimensions, and what comes after isn't a question of operations but of the design at the start. From the very beginning I knew I was going to write a book that everyone writes together, and the book's main idea is one sentence. **Each of our brains is an operating system; we must upgrade it ourselves, because the factory that made it doesn't care. Self-upgrading requires upgrading two things: one is called concepts, the other is called methodology.**

Today I'm sharing IP multi-dimensionalization with you; I lock in the methodology of IP multi-dimensionalization, and from this moment you're different from the moment before; there's something new in your head, and it's different from before.

I've written many model essays, for example what a friend is, what confidence is. When I've written seventy or eighty thousand characters I'll stop. You write; if you don't make progress you get no points, and if you don't help others make progress you get even fewer points, so you write every day, and its content keeps increasing. First of all it's no longer single-dimensional, and I think I'll certainly build a community, not an official account that's done in 30 sentences. I must get these readers connected with each other. What kind of connection? Very simple: existence is connection. You don't necessarily have to make everyone interact, you don't necessarily have to organize offline events; there's no need at all.

What's the actual situation? All those people who pursue progress, all those people who work hard every day, are bound to be isolated by the people around them, bound to be lonely. So among my readers a saying often circulates: believe me, you're not alone. What I mean is that there are many people who feel lonely like you; they're just scattered too far apart in the crowd. So I did one thing: **I opened a brain gym. We should work out our bodies, and of course we should also work out our brains; when working out the body, it's nice to work out together, and when working out the brain, working out together is nice too.**

There are many more dimensions after this, which I won't expand on here. If you're interested, this is my WeChat ID. My official account has a very vulgar, very plain but very down-to-earth name; it's called: **Learn, Learning, Learn Again (学习学习再学习). The first 学习 is a verb, the second 学习 is a noun, the third 学习 is a verb: on the matter of learning, it's best to learn a bit about it first. Once after I explained it this way, a reader came and left a comment saying, so that's what it means, I also thought [Translator's note: the original writes 意味, literally "meant"; 以为 ("thought") is meant; translated by the intended sense] it was saying important things three times**. Thank you.