Is the WeChat business a pyramid scheme?

Wechat business is not a pyramid scheme, although it looks very similar. But I can say that WeChat business is a mythical canteen. Will you have the urge to hit me? Bear with it, and then pat the brick after reading it.

There is a lot of discussion about WeChat business now, mostly criticism. Especially not long ago, the news that a post-90 s online celebrity claimed to have an annual income of seven figures sold poison masks made more people pay attention to WeChat business in the circle of friends. Cases of poisoning caused by the purchase of WeChat merchant masks even appeared in newspapers. The poisoning is mild and allergic, but the blood lead content exceeds the standard, and pregnant women who have used it even have the risk of miscarriage. There are many negative news like this, which is equivalent to many myths that WeChat business claims to be trying to make money every day. For a while, those WeChat business coffees that supported WeChat business and the public opinion that voiced for WeChat business were quarrelling.

First of all, we must reverse the conviction of WeChat business.

But the question is, has the war of words really hit the nail on the head? We may wish to solve several major entanglements about WeChat business first. However, let's define it accurately first. The WeChat business mentioned below, without special explanation, mainly refers to people who sell things in the WeChat circle of friends.

The first tangled point is the quality of goods. The negative public opinion about the purchase of "three no products" by WeChat merchants has been entangled in front of the public, and there is no need to elaborate too much. The reason for this is also very simple. At present, WeChat business is mostly unlicensed, relying on the trust relationship of friends to sell goods, thus giving three products the opportunity to exploit loopholes. In fact, this statement is correct nonsense, and the reason is equally simple. Three products will appear in any commercial channel, especially in its early days, before Taobao actually had such a stage. Whether the supervision of blind vomiting is effective or not, and whether the merchants have conscience, has no special practical significance. On the contrary, this requires the self-purification function of the market to play a role, and quality problems will inevitably lead to a decline in the trust of friends, and the result is obvious. In fact, whether in the circle of friends, Taobao or other traditional markets, goods with reasonable prices and guaranteed quality will be rewarded in a short time.

The second tangled point is whether to sell pyramid schemes. There is a joke about WeChat business that 90% of the goods in WeChat business are actually accumulated in the hands of the last agent. This is also one reason why it is regarded as a pyramid scheme variant. But it actually involves the setting of WeChat business. According to statistics, the number of employees in WeChat business has exceeded 6.5438+million. It can basically be asserted that among thousands of WeChat merchants, except for a few who can create their own products and sell them, others who want to start a business through WeChat merchants can only get goods from superior agents. The only difference is whether they are flat first-level distribution or N-level distribution with unlimited price increase. The latter is bound to reach the level of N 1, and the more expensive it is, the harder it is to sell, which is a bit of a typical bubble economy. So it doesn't matter whether MLM sells or not. The key is to take over the last agent and the price range he can choose, and whether it can stimulate the consumption desire of friends.

The third issue is profit. From the cracking of the last two tangled points, it has been able to explain that the so-called "staying at home and moving your fingers to earn 10,000 yuan a month" is nonsense, and "ten WeChat businesses and nine losses" have certain rationality. But how do you explain this? The White Paper on the Development of 20 14 WeChat Shopping released by Analysys think tank shows that in 20 14, the scale of mobile shopping users in China exceeded 300 million, and the scale of mobile shopping transactions was close to 10 trillion, with a growth rate of 270%. The reason is still very simple. The former and the latter are both facts, but they are not the same thing. The latter refers to mobile e-commerce, including but not limited to WeChat business. The real big cake was carved up by B2C mobile e-commerce companies such as Taobao, JD.COM and Dangdang. Of course, WeChat business is also very profitable. According to the 28 Law, we can actually know clearly how many people can make money in WeChat business, especially in the field of e-commerce with winner-takes-all as the main theme.

These are actually not the key to the WeChat business problem. The key lies in the WeChat business, which is actually our common canteen in the past.

How can the canteen be bigger?

Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist at Oxford University, proposed Dunbar's Law in 2009. According to the simian's intelligence and social network, it is inferred from the law that the number of people with stable social network will be allowed by human intelligence to be 148, rounded to about 150. If you use the saying that you are surrounded by WeChat friends, it means that no matter how many friends you have on WeChat, your real friends are 150.

Whether this law is completely accurate or not, everyone has his own measuring point, but the gap will not be too big. But how big is the scale of 150 people? At best, it is just a community. /kloc-What is the result of friends circle sales with a scale of 0/50 people? It's just a community canteen.

First of all, those powder artifacts were sentenced to death. Selling on the basis of a canteen based on the trust of friends, how many strange fans will come in?

Secondly, Zeiss sentenced the WeChat business model in the circle of friends to death. A grocery store faces only such a big market. How likely is it to be a comprehensive supermarket? This also explains why 90% of the sales and products of WeChat business in 2065438+2004 are masks, because this product can be sold repeatedly and is a fast-moving product. Unlike Coca-Cola, it has a stable brand loyalty.

Perhaps some people will use reduction to absurdity to refute the above views. For example, it takes 8 years for Alibaba to achieve a transaction volume of 200 billion yuan, and it only takes 1 year for WeChat business to achieve 654.38+050 billion yuan. Even if this data is true, it is actually unconvincing. Because the WeChat business still adopts the long tail rule, and the long tail is the WeChat business personnel scattered in the circle of friends, this long tail has created huge sales performance at the top.

What should I do about WeChat business?

Is it possible to make a big canteen? I think the answer is yes. But it's not as simple as adding powder to words. There are the following solutions:

The first is the plane proxy. In fact, many large enterprises are already trying this. Pat micro-stores to play is to distribute goods in JD.COM through micro-stores in the form of first-class agents. Even Ctrip, a tourist, launched the Ctrip WeChat service in May, opening a product library, and everyone can be its agent. Of course, this kind of first-class agent can solve many price problems in WeChat business, and besides, you don't have to stock up at all.

The second is to earn advertising fees. After the intervention of businesses like JD.COM and Ctrip, the product quality is indeed more directly guaranteed, but the problem lies in the lack of personalized goods. At best, WeChat business is just a migrant worker posting small advertisements, becoming a promotion channel, earning not agency fees but advertising fees. Does this pattern look familiar? In fact, in the era of Taobao, it also had a name called taobao guest, but at that time it was mainly to attract customers online, and now it is precision marketing to friends.

The third is personalized goods. In fact, the first two solutions can't solve practical problems, because there is no difference in price and products of WeChat business. If you do more, you can only do beauty theory and recommend products by friends such as Mushroom Street. Those who can really be active in WeChat business are those who sell their own products and personalized goods, and WeChat business and friends circle become the path for them to quickly complete the original accumulation.

Then after the products of O2O, C2C and B2C are accumulated, they will land on the big platform, and the WeChat business will become a supplement and maintenance, and that's all. The myth of the canteen ends here. ...

In other words, there is another way to succeed in WeChat business, that is, fooling others about WeChat business courses, but that doesn't last long.