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The once popular knowledge payment track is being "abandoned" by major companies.

Recently, Douyin Xuelang APP under ByteDance suddenly announced that it would stop service from July 31; Tencent Classroom issued a notice that it would stop access to all online courses in August and stop all platform services after October 1. Alibaba also announced that it would cancel Taobao University and change it to Taobao Education, and would no longer develop new courses...

These actions seem to send a signal: the bubble of the knowledge payment era is bursting. However, according to the "2023 China Knowledge Payment Industry Status and Development Prospects Report" by iiMedia Research, the scale of China's knowledge payment market will continue to grow in 2025, reaching 280.88 billion yuan.

Why are Internet giants retreating from the market when the market prospects are so promising? Why is paid knowledge suddenly not popular anymore?

The sudden "great retreat"

Two days ago, Fu Xinyao, a junior student at a university in Zhejiang, planned to pick up her unfinished video editing course. When she opened the knowledge payment APP Xuelang, an "upgrade" notification popped up on the homepage: starting from July 31, the platform will be changed to Douyin Classroom, and users must switch to the Douyin APP to continue learning.

Fu Xinyao studied this course, which costs 149 yuan and mainly introduces the knowledge related to video editing thinking theory and commercial project practice. "I met the lecturer on Douyin. Each class can last for an hour and a half, and the content is quite worthwhile." Fu Xinyao felt a little regretful, and she hoped that the course could find a new platform to continue to be updated.

Xuelang is not the first platform to take the initiative to leave the knowledge payment industry. Previously, Tencent Classroom and Taobao University, which are backed by large companies, also announced that they would no longer develop new courses. The track that was once hot and created many myths of wealth creation is becoming increasingly deserted.

Knowledge payment, as the name suggests, is to organize and package knowledge resources and sell them to those in need through the Internet. Luo Zhenyu, the founder of Luoji Siwei, once compared the whole process to packaging knowledge into "capsules" and feeding them to users. In the past few years, it has become one of the most popular ways for young people to learn in their spare time. According to relevant research reports, in 2022, the number of knowledge payment users in China will reach 527 million.

The huge market potential has attracted many Internet celebrities and capital with a keen sense of smell. With their first-mover advantage, they have set off one business miracle after another. In 2016, Wu Xiaobo's paid audio product "Hearing Wu Xiaobo Every Day" sold 100,000 copies at a price of 180 yuan a year in just over 5 months; during the "Double 11" period in 2021, Fan Deng Reading sold more than 300 million yuan in membership fees. During the same period, major Internet platforms also joined the battlefield, such as Zhihu launched "Zhihu" and "Zhihu Live", and Himalaya FM launched the "123" Knowledge Carnival...

Internet giants are much more generous. They have started new businesses. ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba have established Xuelang, Tencent Classroom, and Taobao Education Professional Platforms, forming a "three-legged tripod" situation. These mushrooming knowledge payment products and services provide users with a variety of learning options and promote the prosperity of the market.

All three platforms have high hopes and have invested huge resources. For example, Taobao launched the "100 Million New Students Plan" in 2020, promising to help more than 1,000 education and knowledge payment institutions acquire more than 100,000 new students within three years; Xuelang announced that it would join forces with Douyin, Toutiao, and Xigua Video to invest tens of billions of traffic to support platform education creators.

The trend came and went quickly. No one expected that as more and more players entered the paid knowledge track, users became more and more calm. The hot market was suddenly poured with a bucket of cold water.

"The most obvious change is that traffic is decreasing." Pu Guang (pseudonym) is the former operations manager of a knowledge payment platform. After leaving the company last year, he founded a knowledge payment training course. He told reporters that since the beginning of the year, many students have reported that the entrance traffic of a short video platform has decreased by about 20%, and there are many cases where the data has been halved.

Merchants are having a hard time, and platforms are not much better off. According to the iResearch Consulting Report, in recent years, the payment rate, repurchase rate, penetration rate and other indicators of vertical platforms such as Get and Himalaya have declined one after another, and they have encountered growth bottlenecks. According to iResearch industry data, the repurchase rate of mid- and upper-stream knowledge paid products is only 30%.

Nowadays, ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent have announced the closure or withdrawal of knowledge payment-related apps, which also indicates that the future of the knowledge payment track may not be optimistic.

Traffic is the key to success and failure

Traffic, traffic, and more traffic. This is an unavoidable word when doing business on the Internet platform, and knowledge payment is no exception.

"This is an industry with very low marginal costs and huge profits. To expand the business, you can only continue to attract traffic, but some people have gone astray on this path." When talking about the reasons why knowledge payment is unpopular, Pu Guang gave his own analysis.

This probably explains why "Internet lecturers" try so hard to cater to and please paying users. For the sake of traffic, the normal marketing methods have gradually gone astray.

Open short video apps such as TikTok and Kuaishou, and you will often see titles such as "10 Lessons to Get Started with Programming", "Master Writing Skills in 5 Minutes", and "Learn Financial Management in 7 Lessons". Click to watch, the speakers are in high spirits, spitting, especially "If you miss this opportunity, you will never have it again" and "Others are learning, you will fall behind if you don't learn", which captures the anxiety of many people who are eager to improve.

After placing an order with great enthusiasm, users suddenly realized that most paid courses cannot really solve practical problems. The reporter entered the keyword "knowledge payment" on the Black Cat Complaint Zhejiang Station and displayed 1,770 complaint records. "Poor knowledge content delivered", "Content does not match the promotion", and "Inducement to pay" became the main reasons for most consumer complaints.

Pu Guang believes that this is a vicious cycle: "The wild growth of the industry has led to content homogeneity, which users do not like and low repurchase rates of products and services. In order to stimulate users to pay, the 'instructors' began to stimulate users by selling anxiety. After users purchase, they find that the actual value is not great, which reduces their willingness to pay again."

"Knowledge is not as valuable as imagined." Pan Helin, an economist and member of the Information and Communication Economics Expert Committee of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, told Chao News that most of the knowledge on content platforms is scattered and lacks systematization. Self-media also have varying abilities in presenting knowledge, and consumers are unable to get the expected paid knowledge services, so they gradually lose their enthusiasm for paying. "A realistic problem is that paid knowledge is sometimes not as 'powerful' as free knowledge. Paid knowledge can easily become a joke or a success story."

The chaos in the industry has attracted regulatory attention. In 2022, the newly implemented "Internet Information Service Algorithm Recommendation Management Regulations" requires that platforms should be more inclined to high-quality content in recommendation algorithms. In July this year, Douyin issued new regulations to strictly control the content of general knowledge categories, strengthen the review of role qualifications, and recycle the promotion capabilities of existing educational mini-program experts.

"The platform is very sensitive. First, the market is over; second, sellers are facing more and more complaints. As a platform, the risk of legal liability is also increasing." Pu Guang mentioned a public report to reporters. In March this year, the Shanghai police smashed a criminal gang that defrauded money under the guise of "learning editing without any threshold and making money on the short video platform", and froze more than 10 million yuan of funds involved in the case. "Similar cases have sounded the alarm for many platforms. From the current perspective, timely withdrawal is also the result of weighing the pros and cons."

Where is the future of paid knowledge?

The boom has passed, the dividends have waned, and the remaining question is realistic enough: Has the payment for knowledge reached its limit?

"This only proves that the track is no longer as hot as before, but it does not mean the end of the industry." Many industry insiders told reporters that the knowledge payment track is currently at a turning point, and those knowledge service providers who truly provide valuable content and services to users will have the opportunity to stand out.

From a certain perspective, the emphasis on content is a sign that the paid knowledge track is "returning to its original intention." What knowledge creators need to answer is what kind of "knowledge" is more attractive in the current track.

Pan Helin believes that there are two types of paid knowledge: interesting knowledge should be free, and systematic and highly professional knowledge needs to be paid for. For example, some vocational education and online education platforms have been popular for a long time, and they provide the content quality that paid knowledge should have.

He predicted that on the Internet platform, knowledge payment may extend to fun. In other words, in the future, people may not only pay for knowledge, but also stories and short plays. His explanation is also very straightforward: "Most users of self-media platforms are motivated not to learn, but to relax."

This trend has already begun. According to the iiMedia Research 2023 China Knowledge Payment Industry Status and Development Prospects Report, in recent years, pan-entertainment content in the knowledge payment track has become increasingly popular in the market. Some traditional platforms have achieved success by intervening in the story category, such as Zhihu's Yanxuan members and Baidu's paid columns.

It is worth mentioning that paid short dramas are also regarded as a new growth point in the track due to their short production cycle, fast content payback, and large market demand. In the first half of 2022 alone, 2,859 short dramas were planned and filed in the system of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. Tencent Video, iQiyi, Youku, Douyin and other videos have launched incentive plans to attract more content creators. It can be said that Internet giants who have failed in the traditional knowledge payment track are opening up new traffic battlefields in the subdivided fields.

New content brings new hope. However, for traditional knowledge payment "players", the decline in traffic is an indisputable fact. Pu Guang believes that eggs cannot be put in one basket. "At present, the entire industry track environment is changing. Knowledge payment operators should not rely on only one platform, but should distribute content on multiple platforms, such as Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and Baijiahao, to resist the risks of a single platform."

(Source: Chao News)

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