You're listening to Roundtable with myself, He Young.
I'm joined by You Shun and Ding Hung in the studio.
Coming up, scrolling through social media, you've probably seen influencers promising to teach you the secrets to becoming an online star and making a fortune in just a month.
But do their secret tricks really hold the key to success?
Or are you just paying for a shortcut to nowhere?
And food has a magical way of bringing people together, whether it's celebrating the Mid -Autumn Festival with mooncakes or enjoying a Christmas dinner with loved ones.
Across cultures, we gather around tables to connect, indulge, and share.
But what is it about eating together that makes us feel so good?
Our podcast listeners can find us at Roundtable China on Apple Podcasts.
Now let's talk about social media influencers making a buck.
And after getting to the bottom of it, are you willing to contribute to that buck?
Have you ever come across those eye -catching ads promising you can get rich in 30 days by taking an online course from a popular social media influencer?
Chances are that you've come across them online.
These flashy videos, the hashtags, the bold claims of overnight success.
But with so many influencers selling their so -called secret tips for growing an online following and making money, the real question is, are these online streamer courses actually worth the money?
So what do you see is happening here?
So what we can see is that recently these kind of courses on teaching people how to become internet celebrities or streamers more directly are being sold and are very popular on many social media platforms.
Hashtags on DoYin which is Chinese version of TikTok or lifestyle sharing platform Red such as pay99yuan that's about 13 US dollars and master short video editing or a hashtag like from zero to hero.
Masterclass on livestreaming skills have gained national or huge attention, attracting many people to pay and get trained only to discover that some of these courses are not as helpful as they claim.
That is something that we can see quite popular because the whole industry of livestreaming is growing in recent years based on data from the annual report on the development of China's internet audio visual industry.
The daily update volume of short videos on major social media platforms is nearly 80 million with more than 3 .5 million livestreaming sessions held daily.
Basically you're scrolling on your short video platforms and maybe two seconds there will be a livestreaming platform.
And here in China because I know it's kind of different in maybe some of the other countries but livestreaming is not just about showing you what's happening around me or you know in the screen right now but it's about selling stuff.
So essentially this is a marketing ploy and we've talked about many times on this show but if you've not caught previous shows here's a quick recap.
In China, livestreaming is about selling stuff and because it's all happening in real time there's a sense of urgency.
It's like when you've got this appealing social media influencer who you might feel somehow attached with and then they're telling you to buy this now or this deal is going to be gone in 30 seconds and showing you how amazing this product is and then thanks to really great digital infrastructure building
you can click on the link in that exact livestream booth or room and immediately buy the thing and that's how it works.
You don't come across as somebody who might pay for the from zero to hero master in livestreaming skills but would you be interested in you know maybe you learn a few tips about short video editing or whatnot actually I wouldn't mind learning some short video editing tips and I might even have some
second thoughts about learning to become a livestream host.
What do you feel about these courses?
And when we talk about these courses when I make my own decision about whether I would learn a few tips in this regard maybe a very important factor to think about is the pricing how much money they charge me for me to learn these tips whether they are free for free that's most more often than not unlikely
but if it's 100 yuan I will probably pay this money to learn something but I guess that's way more expensive than 100 yuan because the prices I guess ranges from a few hundred yuan to even tens of thousands of yuan in some cases and some of the courses are disappointing to many of those so -called students
or learners in the sense that they mainly focus on this kind of theoretical training rather than operational stuff rather than practical skills.
Here, I can share a story I have read about from a newspaper.
Last year, an influencer named Xiao Aixin from Shenyang City in northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning she entered this live streaming industry she studied by purchasing courses from a locally well -known food live streamer for 99 yuan only to find out that this so -called teacher was merely reciting
from those theoretical courses the theoretical knowledge which was not really that useful or not that friendly to a beginner like her so basically after that experience her conclusion is that there were very few useful training sessions she stopped taking online courses and later signed up for several
offline training courses and though she started from scratch now she is boasting more than 110 ,000 followers so abandoning this online course and embracing offline course and now she has some initial success yeah that has something to do with the content right you know because many times this kind of you
know career training courses including live streaming or just video editing may test more than just so -called streaming skills or just that kind of direct word of skills you know for example sitting in front of a camera to start a live stream is actually a very simple thing to do everybody can do that if you
would just pass that kind of identification thing but if you want to become a professional streamer you know whether you are just selling products as Gao Yang said or just streaming other content like gaming or other stuff it may require a higher level of you know professional knowledge one example
is that you know being sensitive to maybe trending products if you are selling something knowing how to introduce products in a very lively and engaging way that makes viewers want to buy and also even including some business and marketing knowledge and that is what you need to learn but not some theoretical
knowledge that you need to know about the whole maybe live streaming industry and in this internet era the entry threshold for maybe live streaming can be very very low but what we can see is that the ceiling can also be very high and not everybody can be a top seller in live streaming industry and in fact
most people can't become that top seller and most people they're they're living in obscurity just like you and I just like myself so we don't really know what happens to them but there were a few years though when I guess there was a lot of quote -unquote hot capital that poured into the industry and also there's
something appealing about being your own boss or being in charge of your own schedule to a certain extent that you don't need to clock in or out doing some regular office job or answer to you know a corporate structure and you are basically selling stuff you only need to connect with your viewers and if they
buy your stuff then that's cha -ching for you and maybe you share a certain amount of a portion of your income with maybe one of those incubator or agent people and then that's about it so I can see why that with this and now it's officially been recognized as an occupation a live stream host or a streamer
then there's something pretty appealing about it not only because it earns you know a living for people but also you know just this the nature of this job and the format of the job so one perception on my part is that about this whole issue is that of course on one hand we need training because there
are specialized knowledge in those particular fields that you hope to stream about either be it makeup or fashion or photography etc etc but on the other hand I also feel like the knowledge about those industries or about those particular fields be it the product itself or the live streaming techniques
or equipment the knowledge about all these things can hardly be be imparted by short -term online training courses alone if you check with some experienced human resources training provider they would basically tell you that currently there is a general lack of instructors with those very useful practical
experience in the market so um yeah I think you raise a really good point but also the flip side of it is let's be real about this live stream doesn't take a rocket scientist to do it's not brain surgery you don't need a lifetime of knowledge to learn how to do this but it's okay this is from an outsider's
perspective and feel free to disagree everybody listening but you need these practical skills and it'd be really great if somebody can really show you how the ropes are done but that might be the issue here and online now there are all these people sharing an opinion that these online courses of social
media influencers you know get rich in 30 days kind of online courses could be a scam do you think that it's a scam or is it a legit online course that actually depends on like what you need you know because we of course they are like offering that kind of content maybe most of them are just offering
as we say it is a kind of a scam because most of them are just offering a kind of whole picture of this industry and how this thing works and not actually teaching you these little secrets of practical skills that you when you need so you know why is that it depends on what you need because this actually
reminds me of the popular financial courses in the past years right people teach you how to get into the stock market teach you how to buy a fund these kind of thing for example if you just want to spend a little money pay attention to it you need to spend a little money you cannot spend like thousands
of yuan on this kind of courses because you don't know what you're going to get right so if you spend a little money to understand the industry and learn about some operational processes and your goal is just simply to know what these things are and then it might be fine but if you want to become a you
know professional investor and in this case a streamer who can strategize and make decisions skillfully then those goals are I think unlikely to be achieved through just you know a few online courses i'm so glad you brought up those investment uh investor courses quote -unquote courses let's just again think
about this if you were a successful investor would you spend your precious time running courses to teach others how to get rich if i were that person i would be right now on the beach of Barbados sipping my margarita and counting my cash yeah well no no way for me to if i know how to get rich in some
30 days i mean either in terms of economic boom or economic downturn period yeah i would say opportunities and wealth is always relatively speaking limited and competition for these resources opportunities is always intense and fierce if i know the secrets of become how to become rich very quickly why
should i share this knowledge with other people this i share with you my friend because we're friends but i'm not sharing with strangers yeah but there's one thing though um and i have to admit i haven't checked the details of this is with this social media influencer course thing are these social media influencers
famous themselves can we see if it's like you know these big names in live streaming and they're opening courses then in a way their own identity their own success story is proof that they know what they're doing but if it's a complete nobody and say no i'm gonna teach you how to become famous on social
media and make a lot of money then that just sounds bogus to me hmm and i guess um internationally speaking there is a similar training system called the master resale rides course or mmr m r r oh m m m r or m r r yes m r r master resale rights so um are they courses or are they marketing schemes i
would um tend to choose the letter description because um here an award -winning offer and money expert janice tarry once analyzed in one published article earlier this year that these courses m r r courses are essentially multi -level marketing schemes they send they seem like seem to be very enticing
but um they rarely deliver uh she believes one will only make money if you repackage the same course and get your own followers to buy it so yeah i feel like you really need to be to be aware of those all these all those hidden fee in chinese we call tau lu right this hidden strategy or a a a fixed
strategy to uh to try to reap money out of your pockets on the surface they might have delivered you something but in the end nothing yeah but guys um well today all three of us were chinese people so we probably know the chinese situation quite well um for the last few years i think we've all heard
or maybe even experienced ourselves that online courses have been all the rage in china for busy and anxious workers in this country we feel oh i have some free time my leisure time i should probably get another online certificate or i go take one of these online courses with um well you know they can be
relatively expensive or cheap depends on your financial situation but often it's a few hundred or thousands of chinese you on and you feel like okay let's let me beef up my skills in let's say um java or um whatever coding or maybe try to see if i can develop another skill so in case that i need to
switch careers i can do that or maybe this skill can help boost my current career and as you guys kind of established from the top livestream has been seen as a way to get some extra cash and some people what was the number one in a thousand chinese people are presumably someone who's a life streamer
who could be a full -time life streamer or something like that so there's people perceive it as well there's money to be made there and do you think that you know this online course thing is all that different from you know this this this trend that's been going on for quite some time in china i mean this particular
like the live stream course thing or maybe it's just the latest development of it and then some of these are bad people who are using it to siphon money but there are other courses who might have taught something valuable there one thing is that um why these people would like to get into or just buy
these courses is because they can actually see how popular these streamers can be and how much money they can get from these live streaming platforms or just um rooms you know they when they're just selling for example we know that like um the shopping night of china double eleven shopping day people
some kind of these top streamers can get really really huge amount of income from just only one night and people can see that and that's i think basically a lot of people seeing how and why they're trying to get into this industry because oh i think i can just you know standing in front of the camera and do
the selling thing maybe i'm so good at selling things to people and maybe i can be a good streamer and but um what we can see is that yes of course we can see this streamer is becoming officially a profession but we need or it is it it has some threshold i think the threshold for this industry naturally
exists on its own right um any adult can start live streaming as i said on the platform after completing their identity verification but if your content isn't engaging enough or your product just not attracting enough you will naturally be drowned out in the vast sea of live streams yeah well there's
only one michael jordan there's only one michael jackson there's only one i don't really want to name those names because you know these days you just people don't know what's gonna happen um so basically uh survivorship bias is also in play here because we only see the ones who succeeded the ones who survived
the competition um so it's also important to sort of look at you know not just the tip of the pyramid but the vast body of the pyramid which um you know might not all get all that attention um do you have like a final comment on this topic before we move on well very briefly one thing i feel really
uncomfortable about those kind of online courses is that they tend to create or generate a a feeling of urgency and apply high pressure to bad customer customers before the customers have the chance to to really do research about these instructors um legitimacy and if you encounter this kind of situation be
aware maybe that's a trap and file a complaint if something bad happened yeah well whether it's a family reunion or a holiday feast meals unite us and this is the last topic we want to discuss today so like this makes me think of different cultures you know we have um the spring festival coming up and i
can all of us all chinese people will have a big feast maybe it involves making dumplings or not depends on which part of the country you're from and for americans and canadians apparently um they celebrate thanksgiving and the thanksgiving turkey the big meal is what gets everybody back into their
um family home and then apparently you know you could have there's always one family relative that's making the holiday dinner difficult by making some comments that you think my goodness the family unites us and the food does well and it's only family that you really cannot choose but that's kind of off
the topic and guys why do we um eat together so that you know this is a way to connect and this is the the way to do things all around the world well um according to a 2017 study conducted by a professor with the university of oxford eating meals together for humans um is more often than not linked
to higher well -being this particular study asked the people living in the uk's case how often they had meals with with others uh be be it loved ones or or friends the conclusion of the studies on statistical analysis is that eating with others more frequently is correlated with greater satisfaction satisfaction rather
in life and having more friends to rely for support this is one study i want to cite here and there were other studies but yeah so uh uh we can basically say eating together for the sake of well -being is supported by statistical and scientific evidence that's so interesting you know but um when hearing
your question i would think why not that is just so natural that people was together together and uh why is it natural that why people why humans are social animals that that is how i think of course i don't have any like you know biological or history evidence for that but indeed everything is middle
school i think i always seem to have friends to eat lunch with and even now there's a term for it called fandas right um we call them companions for meals or meal buddy this might be because of the you know social aspect involved during the process of eating together you are like communicating exchanging
information which is something that some people may need in their daily lives it can even be an activity that promotes um sometimes mental or even physical well -being when you're just communicating or talking with people i think that's a really good point and in china we are a nation of foodies to some
extent people have very high requirement of what's good food and if you're sharing food especially in china like usually you know traditionally there weren't really even service spoons you're literally using your own utensils and eating from the same plate so i think there's something okay your thoughts
about that might vary but there's something about you know sharing food and being close to the people who are seated at the same table and we're sharing this thing that's precious and for his colleagues i think eating together is very very important as well an interesting experience if for example if you
go to a canteen together you say some nice words together about today's food or have some complaint about today's food that's a very enjoyable experience and a very good break from your daily work pressure yeah that's also a really good point and that brings us to the end of today's roundtable thank
you so much dinghong and you should for joining the discussion thank you for tuning in you can always find us on apple podcast at roundtable china and also there are other ways to find us email us roundtable podcast at qq .com i'm he yang we'll see you next time
