Selling mobile phone wallpapers can easily earn 100,000 a month?
There are many descriptions in the hot search on Weibo: "Selling wallpaper earns 100,000 yuan a month", "AI can be used", "commercial value cannot be underestimated"...... Together, these sentences form the legendary "Code to Get Rich".
This business seems to be a small business with a lot of profits. Taking an online platform as an example, the price of a single wallpaper is generally about 2 to 10 yuan, and the one with the highest sales volume is nearly 5,000 orders, "casually it is a profit of several thousand." So says in a tutorial.
According to the industry-class self-media "Tech Planet", a wallpaper studio with only 3 people can earn 120,000 yuan per month, with an average of 40,000 yuan per person per month. In comparison, the median salary in Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen is 10,000 yuan, and the latest average salary in the Internet industry is about 40,000 yuan.
▲ Artificial intelligence-generated mobile wallpaper According to the idea of the picture worm
In the past 3 days, "Selling Wallpapers and Earning 100,000 a Month" has maintained a high popularity on Weibo, with a total of 120 million views, and some netizens have left messages "Seeking Private Tutorials". This description has made many people excited, and some companies have already left the market early. Major mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei, VIVO, OPPO, and Xiaomi are pushing mobile phone wallpapers to pay.
But the story of the tutorial is that this business seems to be easy to do, but it is actually not easy to make money. A number of mobile phone wallpaper bloggers told Red Star News reporters that whether it is selling wallpapers or using the gimmick of "free wallpapers" to attract traffic to earn advertising revenue, there are very few who can earn 100,000 yuan a month, and the invisible sunk cost is not low. "Maybe you only saw the wolf eating meat, but not the wolf being beaten. ”
In addition, the copyright issues arising from this and the drainage of "three nos" products are also the "knots" that this small business needs to solve.
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AI wallpaper is "simple and crude"?
Merchants: In addition to making good use of AI, you also need good content
In the business of mobile wallpaper, AI is a tool that cannot be ignored. According to previous media reports, the function of AI "drawing to generate pictures" can often produce unexpected effects, so it is quite favored by merchants.
Xiaoxue, a merchant who sells mobile phone wallpapers on an online platform, told the Red Star News reporter that compared with traditional professional drawing software such as PS and Sai, the AI operation threshold is lower and the speed is faster. "Enter keywords, or use some popular images as AI references, and you can quickly generate images, dozens or hundreds. "Midjourney, Playground AI, and Baidu's Wenxin Yiyan are among the most reputable AI painting apps in the industry.
▲Screenshot of the "AI Painting Ranking" network released by a blogger on a certain platform
Most of the prices of this kind of mobile phone wallpaper range from 1-5 yuan per sheet, and the price is higher if you want to further customize personalized elements. In the Kuaishou live broadcast room, there are many anchors who use AI tools to create exclusive surname wallpapers, and the price of a single one is about 10 yuan.
Input instructions - generate pictures, it seems that the process of making wallpapers by AI is quite "simple and crude". But that doesn't mean you can always make a beautiful wallpaper. A number of mobile phone wallpaper merchants emphasized that the threshold for using AI well is not low.
"For example, with Midjourney drawing, it generates quickly, but the quality is random, and the creator needs to master a lot of 'spells' (keywords), and repeatedly choreograph and adjust. It's not just a matter of giving a few instructions and getting a satisfactory result. A merchant on an online platform said that diligent creators can generate hundreds or thousands of images every day, and good-looking pictures can be tried to put on the shelves.
Another merchant who focuses on original design also mentioned that AI needs a run-in process. "Ordinary people with no design experience may not be able to use AI well, and inferior images will account for the vast majority. And even with the tools, the aesthetics and thinking system are more difficult to learn. If you want to draw a set of images, it is more difficult to create them with AI. ”
Getting started with AI is just the first step. Even if a beautiful image is generated, it is unknown whether it will be visible to the user. "It's not just the wallpaper that's sold, it's the content. Xiaoxue said, "Our promotional copywriting needs to combine the latest hot topics at the moment, such as 'Dear Wanyu', the lines of the hit drama, and choose the right label." ”
She was a little troubled by the platform's traffic mechanism. "In the same way, some posts have hundreds of thousands of views, while others only have a few hundred. ”
Giving value to wallpaper has become the main battlefield for merchants to compete. In many wallpaper promotion copywriting, there are not a few descriptions such as "Peach Blossom", "Manifestation of the Law of Attraction" and "Change of Luck", and even some businesses have launched customized services based on this. "Provide your name and wish at the time of purchase, and limit each photo to one wish. A merchant introduced. In its store, this wallpaper that claims to be "willing to be injected" is priced at 25 yuan.
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The other side of the mobile wallpaper business:
Some people have been in business for less than 10 transactions in the past 1 year
Putting wallpapers on the shelves as virtual goods isn't the only way to do this small business. More commonly, users are redirected to third-party platforms with the gimmick of "free wallpapers", where users need to watch ads or sign up for membership to download the original images. "To put it bluntly, it is drainage, and (users) can earn advertising fees or commissions once they watch it. Hua Hua, who takes this as a side hustle, said.
Generally speaking, this kind of blogger will post a large number of wallpaper videos and wallpaper posts on various social platforms. Where does the wallpaper come from?"Mainly to find authorized pictures on various platforms, try not to find hand pictures. Hua Hua said that it can be understood that they are the porters of pictures.
Compared to the original wallpaper, this type of model is more competitive. "There's almost no threshold, as long as you can search. But the wallpaper you can find can also be found by others, and pure wallpaper videos are not good, and the copywriting should also be thoughtful. Hua Hua said. He and Xiaoxue faced similar troubles, "The traffic is unstable, there are hundreds of thousands of views, and there are dozens of views. ”
When it comes to income, whether it is an original wallpaper seller or a "wallpaper porter" like Huahua, the views are the same: those who can rely on this small business to "earn 100,000 yuan a month" can only be a minority of the few.
"If a wallpaper can sell thousands of orders, then it is indeed a profitable business, almost all of which is pure profit. But this kind of case is a small probability. Xiaoxue said. She has discussed with many wallpaper merchants in Xiaohongshu, "Some businesses have a lot of fans, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and most of the fans are young people, but the sales of wallpaper products are not considerable." Eventually, they came to the conclusion that paying for mobile wallpapers is not yet the mainstream.
She cites her own shop as an example. "Accumulation has almost 50,000 fans up to now, there are about 100 wallpapers on the shelves, but only about 10 can be billed, and the average sales volume is more than a dozen. ”
The above-mentioned merchant with original design also told reporters that her store has been in operation for nearly 1 year, but the number of fans is less than 500, and the number of transactions is less than 10. "I believe there are examples of 100,000 yuan a month, but there are not many. You may only see wolves eating meat, but you don't see more wolves being beaten. ”
▲ AI painting creative picture according to the picture insect creativity
Huahua, who relies on carrying wallpaper to drain the traffic, has less income. "When I first started, I read a lot of tutorials and said that I could earn 50-100 yuan a day by spending 15 minutes a day, and 3,000 yuan a month, but this was very difficult. He thinks that he is quite diligent, and he has also made explosive videos with hundreds of thousands of traffic, but the reality is that in half a year, his total income in this area is less than 700 yuan.
There are not a few examples like Huahua. In the Douban group's "Day of Failure of the Side Hustle", many netizens posted that "the sunk cost is too high". "It took a lot of time and energy to operate, and I only had an income of 3 yuan a month. A netizen said.
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Stealing pictures, infringing, and draining traffic for "three no" products
The "knot" to be solved in the mobile wallpaper business
In the eyes of many respondents, the small business of mobile phone wallpaper is not exactly as "golden" as described in the hot search, and it is not easy. From the current point of view, there are still many chaos to be solved in this market.
Copyright is the primary issue. "Even if it is stated in the post that it is forbidden to change the second commercial use, and the watermark is added, the picture may be stolen. The above-mentioned merchants who mainly focus on original designs said, "Some mobile phone case merchants will even take away the wallpaper as a material library without our authorization." ”
Wallpaper videos born for drainage are also a high incidence of infringement. The Red Star News reporter found a "mobile phone wallpaper project tutorial" on the Internet, and the text directly stated: Just find the target account to steal the picture. "Don't steal too much from an account.,3 to 5 pieces of a work are OK.,It's best to download it with a watermark.,If you don't, you can take a screenshot directly.。 The tutorial is so prompt.
"This kind of picture is more like piracy, and the possibility of infringement is relatively high. Hua Hua said. In contrast, he prefers to spend energy to search for authorized images on major platforms, and promises that he will not use them commercially. However, by making wallpaper videos to attract traffic to third-party platforms, and then earn advertising fees, can this behavior still be recognized as "non-commercial"? Regarding this question, Hua Hua hesitated for a moment and said, "I'm not sure. ”
In addition, it is debatable whether the goods/services sold by the party being diverted are legitimate in this business model. A netizen posted that she had posted a wallpaper video to attract traffic to a third party, and then she found that the third-party platform sold a "three-no product".
It is undeniable that this small business, which has suddenly become famous, still has a lot of challenges to overcome before it becomes the mainstream of trendy consumption. Recently, a number of lawyers have given suggestions on the infringement during the period.
Qian Hongliang, a lawyer at Guangdong Meilitian Law Firm, said that Huahua's situation is still actually used for commercial purposes. According to the Copyright Law, in general, except for public welfare purposes, everything else is considered to be commercial, that is, it needs to be approved by the copyright owner or pay the corresponding remuneration. "Infringement without the consent of the other party is an infringement and compensation is required. ”
Yu Mengmeng, a full-time lawyer at Zhejiang Jindao Law Firm, emphasized in an interview that the current copyright law has increased the punishment and accountability for copyright infringement, and clarified that punitive damages can be applied to serious infringements.
"Some creators believe that after reporting and complaining that the other party has taken down the video, the creator has nothing to lose and does not need to go to court to sue. This idea is one-sided. According to the law, the standard of damages for intellectual property infringement includes not only the economic losses caused by the infringer to the right holder, but also all the benefits obtained by the infringer as a result of the infringement. Yu Mengmeng further stated that according to Article 49 of the Copyright Law, reasonable expenses incurred to stop the infringement, including attorney's fees, can ultimately be borne by the losing party. Based on this, we still recommend that creators take litigation to protect their rights. ”
Yu Mengmeng suggested that in order to efficiently litigate and protect rights, creators can prove that they are the original creators by adding watermarks and marking the source, use "timestamps" to confirm their rights, and pay attention to preserving the evidence of plagiarism by the other party. In addition, it reminded that according to the relevant provisions of the Regulations on the Protection of the Right of Information Network Transmission, short video platforms should be jointly and severally liable if they know or should know that the infringement exists.
"Depending on the specific circumstances, the rights holder may sue the website and the infringer separately or both at the same time. In practice, it is also common to use the first litigation platform to obtain the information of the specific infringer and then add the defendant to achieve the purpose of litigation. ”
(At the request of the interviewee, Xiaoxue and Hua Hua are pseudonyms)
Red Star News special reporter Wu Chaoxin reporter Zhang Yanliang
Editor: Guo Zhuang Editor: Ren Zhijiang