Three years ago, the paid knowledge sharing sector was like a gold mine. Zhihu released Zhihu Live; Guokr started "Fenda"; Luogic Talkshow public account promoted a hit column "Lixiang Reference of Business Inside"; Ximalaya FM launched the first content consumption celebration named "123 Knowledge Carnival" in China; three months later, JD.com initiated a paid Q&A section "Jingda" with books as a platform; Douban Time introduced a paid column. By June 2017, Toutiao invested heavily in incubating "Wukong Q&A" and gathering paid knowledge sharing influencers.
Three years later, the paid knowledge sharing sector has become a land of lava, where a slight carelessness could destroy a business. Fenda hit the wall first and had no choice but to transform and rename as "Zaihang". The speech delivered by Zhenyu Luo on the New Year's Eve was alleged of spreading anxiety like pyramid schemes. New World Marketing Class got blocked due to suspicion of violating regulations; Mi Meng deleted its account due to content issues……
Like every lucrative opportunity, the paid knowledge sharing sector has gone through the initial expansion period. Now the market has become chaotic where bad money has driven out good. But it is undeniable that the potential of the paid knowledge sharing market is still huge. Based on statistics, the market size of the domestic paid knowledge sharing industry is about RMB 4.91 billion yuan in 2017. It is estimated that it will reach RMB 23.5 billion yuan by 2020. The number of paid users in 2018 was expected to reach 292 million. Consumers still exist, but they are beginning to calm down and pay for higher quality knowledge.
Junxiu Zhu, Founder and CEO of Qianliao, confidently stated that the paid knowledge sharing industry is in its infancy, and will gradually rise to the turning point and enter the mature or development cycle.
Junxiu Zhu, a former product manager, has already received an additional A+ round investment from Tencent. According to Junxiu Zhu, after three years of development, Qianliao's current annual transaction volume exceeded RMB 800 million yuan, and the number of registered lecturers on the platform reached 1.2 million.