Meituan!

That's right, that's right, Yuanfang Group followed this time, and it was Meituan Software, which was famous in the original time and space.

Meituan was founded on March 4, 2010. Meituan has always pursued the service promotion tenet of "eating, drinking and having fun" and "Meituan is beautiful once", and its headquarters is located in Chaoyang District, Beijing, which is the Chaoyang District of Chaoyang people. Meituan has developed quite fast in the original time and space, and not long after its establishment 10 years ago, it quickly occupied the mobile phones of young people, and became the favorite consumption method of young people at the fastest speed. After all, if you trade through Meituan, it is cheaper and more convenient than on-site trading.

In 14 years, Meituan's annual transaction volume exceeded 46 billion yuan, an increase of more than 180% over the previous year, and its market share accounted for more than 60%, an increase of 7 percentage points from 53% in 2013.

In January '15, Meituan closed a $700 million financing round and its own valuation reached $7 billion. In October of the same year, Dianping and Meituan announced a merger, with the CEO of Meituan and the CEO of Dianping serving as co-CEO and co-chairman at the same time. In November, Alibaba announced its withdrawal from Meituan.

It was not until June 22, 18 that Meituan Dianping officially submitted its IPO application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. On September 20, Meituan Dianping landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange with an issue price of HK$69 per share, raising HK$32.6 billion.

In the time and space before Zhou Fangyuan's rebirth, after experiencing the regret of the school intranet and the meal, Wang Xing's third venture finally reached a recognized milestone. In the later period, Meituan has actually torn off the label of group buying, and gradually expanded to the fields of catering takeaway, hotel tourism, travel, and new retail, and is in a state of borderless expansion. Competitors have long since upgraded from the battle of 100 regiments to giants such as Ali and Ctrip. After entering the secondary market, the development of Meituan Dianping will become more and more transparent. According to the plan announced by its CEO, Meituan Dianping will benchmark against Amazon and become a super platform of Food+Platform, covering the entire consumption cycle from online to offline.

To be honest, what Zhou Fangyuan is interested in is not Meituan's ability to make money, can Meituan make money? Of course it is.

In fact, Meituan is very ruthless in making money.

There was a message on the Internet that a Meituan merchant decided to quit Meituan after a period of thinking and making choices, and not only that, but he also left a message on the Internet accusing Meituan of what it did. In the words of this merchant, what Meituan showed was indeed a little too dark, the merchant was busy in vain, and this store seemed to be opened for Meituan.

Originally, the profit of catering takeaway was very low, which is also understandable, after all, group buying, it must be to give customers some discounts, and merchants should be as cheap as possible under the condition of ensuring profits, so as not to be in vain Meituan.

However, the annual increase in commissions has soared to a maximum of 22%, which is really unbearable for most businesses.

When Meituan first entered the market in 2015, the commission was relatively small, only about 5% in most cities. Not only is the commission small, but in order to quickly occupy the market, Meituan also provides various subsidies for merchants. Especially after the first few rounds of financing, Meituan was rich at that time, and friends and bankers hated to let Meituan borrow more money quickly. At that time, Meituan had qualifications to burn money, all kinds of training, all kinds of promotions, all kinds of rebates, and forced some similar other software to retreat.

Well, of course, most of these small software are copycat Meituan.

Burning money is naturally the most effective, and Meituan's market size has grown rapidly in two years, with the number of merchants rising from 500,000 in 2015 to more than 2.7 million in 2017. As the market grew, Meituan's appetite grew, and in order to make profits, the commission rose from 5% to 15%-18%, and the food delivery merchants could barely get by.

Later, perhaps because the company went public and began to feel pressure to make profits, or perhaps because it felt that it had become a giant in the food delivery field and no longer had to worry about other competitors, Meituan once again raised its commission to 22%, becoming the platform with the highest commission in the food delivery market.

What is the concept of 22%?

To put it simply, it is a takeaway of 100 yuan, and Meituan has to take a commission of 22 yuan. If you encounter a merchant engaging in activities again, such as 50 yuan minus 5 yuan or something, Meituan still has to charge a platform fee of 22 yuan. In this way, the merchant will not make money at all.

Some restaurant owners have calculated that after deducting various costs such as rent, ingredients, water and electricity, and personnel, the profit of the restaurant is basically between 30% and 40%. And Meituan's 22% commission means that Meituan can get nearly half of the merchant's profits without doing anything.

"Meituan is probably the most profitable restaurant. ”

This is the joking name of some netizens.

In fact, there are also some of them, and the most obvious example is the bidding ranking similar to whiteness. There are so many recommended positions, and the so-called ranking formula is not known to most users, and when you open the Meituan page, how many of the stores at the top of the ranking are based on their strength? Isn't it all spent on the top of the ranking? If you want to get to the top without spending money, it's like a joke.

Of course, Zhejiang and Western China are not the most important, compared to the current Yuanfang Group, is Meituan's money important?

However, the existence of Meituan can add to the Internet ecological chain of Shenfang Group, Meituan is a typical online-to-offline operation mode, and it is a very good traffic monetization channel.

What is traffic, with a more written way to explain, traffic is commonly referred to as website traffic, that is, refers to the number of visits to the website, is used to describe the number of users visiting a website and the number of pages browsed by users and other indicators, commonly used statistical indicators include the number of unique users of the website, the total number of users, the number of page views, the number of page views per user, the average time spent by users on the website, etc. To put it more simply, traffic is actually users.

For a long time, traffic was king on the Internet. At that time, the competition between Wangyi and other portals was the competition between traffic. How did the team of the first game "Journey to the West" come about? In fact, it was exchanged from Wangyi through traffic exchange. The Internet gets up early, and traffic is king. The reason is also very simple, because at that time, the Internet was just starting, the number of netizens was scarce, and whoever had more users could overwhelm the other party, so in the morning, traffic was the most important. Then, with the development of the Internet, the number of netizens is increasing, and it is difficult for mainstream websites to overwhelm their opponents through the number of users, the channel becomes important. Moreover, channels are also a very important factor in traffic monetization, and how Internet companies make money is the mainstream of today's era. That is, the so-called channel is king.

In a few years, when the Internet develops further and the user group begins to be further segmented, content will become the determining factor.

However, whether traffic is king or channel, even if the content in the later stage is king, in the final analysis, it still depends on the traffic.

At the very least, you have to have enough strength before you can perform the various operations that follow.

Monetize your traffic!

This is the most important thing.

The so-called traffic monetization refers to the realization of cash income from website traffic through certain means. In the Internet industry, there is such a formula: user = traffic = money. The most important thing to realize traffic monetization is to have enough traffic, website traffic refers to the number of visits to the website, which is used to describe the number of users who visit a website and the number of pages browsed by users. Having enough traffic also requires strong monetization capabilities, so the key to traffic monetization lies in traffic and monetization methods. The key to traffic lies in the promotion method and user stickiness.

There are different ways to monetize specific traffic, which are generally divided into advertising, value-added services, shopping, and traffic sharing.

Pop-up ad monetization, this method is suitable for spam traffic websites, this is the lowest level of traffic monetization, without any technology and data analysis, suitable for spam websites, generally speaking, the traffic value of this kind of website itself is very low, the traffic source does not determine the goal, if your website has traffic, but you really can't find a way to monetize, you can take this way.

Then there is the advertising network monetization, this method is suitable for content article websites, the impact on the user experience is not very large, the best is of course Google Alliance, the advertising match is very good, followed by the whiteness alliance, this traffic monetization method has a certain orientation, and the content of the website itself fits, and the content of the article and advertising complement each other.

Then there is directional sales realization, this method is suitable for shopping stations, to shop or the traffic of the station, itself has a certain purpose, he is understanding a certain product, indicating that he is interested in this product, and has the desire to buy in the future, this kind of traffic value is higher, the traffic purpose is very strong, and it generally produces consumption, which is a typical representative of high-order traffic.

Then there is value-added service realization, this method is suitable for authoritative stations, authoritative websites have many repeat customers, high brand loyalty, active members, these members agree with the value of the website, will often visit or express opinions, for the value-added services of the website, many will buy, this way of traffic realization is different from the previous three, the front is to make a wedding dress for others, and the traffic is eventually led to other websites, and the realization of value-added services directly maximizes the value of traffic, local consumption, local conversion, is the advanced form and ultimate goal of traffic realization。

According to the positioning of the website and the source of traffic, different websites adopt different monetization methods, and only by fully analyzing and mining the traffic can the value of each traffic of the website be maximized.

There is also a method called traffic sharing, which is mainly for genuine music and CRBT services.

In short, in the context of Web 2.0 and mobile Internet, display advertising, mobile Internet advertising, and search advertising will become the three main lines of Internet advertising in the future. Data shows that the global mobile Internet advertising market reached $6 billion in 2014, and search advertising will reach $25 billion. Although the popularity of the mobile Internet still needs to be supported by the entire network environment, with the trend of smartphones such as Apple entering the mainstream market strongly, advertising on the mobile Internet has become a new choice for advertisers.

Mobile search traffic is relatively poor in monetization ability, and the monetization ability on wireless may only be one-tenth of that on the PC, which is a huge challenge for many Internet companies, especially when making wireless products.

Of course, these are all the original time and space, and on the earth at that time, the Internet has developed to a pretty good extent, so there are so many sayings. And now, the Internet is still in the stage where the channel is king, and the reason why Zhou Fangyuan wants to get Meituan out is just to take the lead.

There may be other APPs in the future, basically none of the APPs that are more important in the original time and space he is willing to let go, of course, when manpower is poor, and the money is inexhaustible, Zhou Fangyuan doesn't want to make things too ugly, if the appearance is too ugly, it is not good for anyone, and for Zhou Fangyuan himself, it is inevitably a little too embarrassing. In the final analysis, he is just trying to make the Internet ecological chain of Yuanfang Group more perfect, if not, there is really no need for him to engage in Meituan.

The concept of Internet ecology comes from biology, which refers to a unified whole of dynamic balance formed by different types of biological populations and their environments through mutual support and constraints. As large as a forest, a grassland, or as small as a pond, it can constitute a complete ecology.

The composition of the business ecosystem, including individual consumers, production enterprises, and subsystems formed by individuals and organizations, industries, industry alliances, individuals, organizations and system members constitute an ecological chain, similar to the food chain in the natural ecosystem, and the units at both ends of a link in the value chain are symbiotic relationships of interests, and multiple symbiotic relationships form the ecosystem of the business ecosystem. Chain-link integration forms the basis for the existence of the ecosystem. Commodities, capital, and information flow and circulate in the ecosystem through the ecosystem and the ecological chain. A business ecosystem is a highly integrated system built on top of it.

The Internet ecology is an ecological system that takes Internet technology as the core, takes user value as the guide, breaks the industrial boundary in the industrial era and subverts the traditional business ecological model, and realizes the chain chain value reconstruction through the integration of cross-border vertical industrial chain and the expansion of horizontal user relationship circle.

Meituan has a lot of value in the Internet ecology, so Zhou Fangyuan will make such a software that doesn't make much money and doesn't seem to have much value, in fact, the existence of Meituan software has a very obvious role in connecting the entire ecological chain.