What are we-media creators? We-media (also called self-media) is a platform on the Internet. It gives a user the facility to write articles and published videos that possess a very unique identity. On the basis of content format, we-media platforms can be split into three types, namely text, video, and audio-based. Besides the conventional we-media, like blogs, other we-media platforms that are gaining prominence are live-streaming platforms and self-made funny video platforms.

  In 2020, some practitioners said there were more than 3.7 million full-time and 6 million part-time we-media creators in China. Of these, the majority are freelancers. University students and recent graduates are the mainstays of we-media creators. the past two years have brought unprecedented disruptions to the Chinese employment market. the post-epidemic short-form video advertising industry, live-streaming ads, and other new formats are emerging to bring growth to internet advertising. According to PwC’s Global Entertainment and Media Industry Outlook 2022-2026, “Generation Z” is becoming more dominant, and demand for advertising is becoming more customized, personalized, and smart. Internet advertising has an advantage over traditional advertising. At the same time, 10.76 million Chinese university students will graduate in 2022, and they will face increasing unemployment rates every year. 16.5% of those graduating in 2021 will choose flexible employment. A report on the Chinese social networking site Bilibili shows that the most desired career for university students today is that of a we-media creator.

Practitioners working for MCNs say that the we-media creators who sign up with companies today are mainly university students or graduates within three years. Apart from signing up with a company, more of these we-media creators would choose to be on their own lone courage. Be a freelancer.

The reasons that drive young people to become we-media creators are simple: high earnings, flexible working hours, free products, and the attention of others …… But not everyone can earn their first bucket of money through self-publishing. In one Chinese forum, the Douban group, there is a “Doing Sideline Failed Day.” This group is full of users who have tried their hand at blogging on various platforms, sharing their experiences of creating content with each other. Most of them were posting different tracks of content across the platforms to test the waters.

For them, self-publishing is a spice of life, a tool for continuous learning, a way to earn money for rent, and a way to express themselves. 

They know that you can’t put your eggs in one basket, so they usually run several accounts at the same time, with different account IDs, different content tracks, and even different ways of presenting themselves – for example, one platform for graphics and another for videos. The girl who runs the most accounts has five different accounts at once.

In these days of doing self-publishing, some people earn extra money above their hourly rate without any effort, but many more have been running their accounts for almost a year but haven’t earned a dollar yet.

There are only a very few we-media creators who can make an account that receives consistent advertising. Not only do they need high-quality content to allow the platform’s algorithm to allocate more traffic, but the content of the account is also even more important to give the viewer emotional value while allowing businesses to see the commercial value. Many we-media creators are still unable to have the expected income after gaining followers and exposure. The shift to commercialization is the first lesson for every we-media creators.

But even if they are lucky enough to make a profitable self-publishing account, we-media creators still face pressures and challenges on all fronts. Anxiety about traffic, fear of decreasing followership, anxiety about not being able to meet merchant targets …… I interviewed 3 we-media creators with 10W-50W followers and social media advertising as their only income. All had varying degrees of anxiety, but all were, at the same time, finding their own ways to make peace with it.