Most of the curators who set up picture books are young mothers. They have plenty of time and have their own theories about picture books.
These young mothers are full of passion and affection. They decorate their picture books warmly, treat every little customer as kindly as their own children, and tell stories in different ways from time to time. I have to say that such a curator is very remarkable and worthy of respect.
But is that enough?
For a curator who regards the library as a public welfare, of course, as long as she is satisfied, this is of course enough. However, for the vast majority of curators, what they expect is a return that matches their own efforts. After all, without a certain income, it is absolutely impossible to support the long-term development of this cause.
So today, we will discuss some feasible business models of picture books, hoping to help those curators who are in financial crisis or are about to step into this industry and are still confused.
First, promote library cards, although you can't rely on them to eat.
The library provides reading places, so the most basic business of the library is borrowing services. Lending service is like the cornerstone of a picture library. The foundation stone is solid, and your photo library can run longer.
Why is loan service so important?
1. is determined by the hardware of the picture library. To open a library, two essential elements are library collection and environment. And these two elements constitute almost all the conditions needed for lending services. I can't imagine what it's like to have a picture library without lending services. Therefore, the picture library opens a lending service, just like a restaurant will sell vegetables, and the two are closely combined.
2. High cost performance. To manage 50 lending members, one person only needs to sit in front of the computer, register, recommend and find books for lending customers. This is a relatively easy, continuous and stable job.
But can you imagine a person taking 50 members to do activities? I seem to hear the noise in the meeting. This does not include planning activities, venue arrangements, etc. And you have to do this thing over and over again. It hasn't started yet. I'm worried about your brain cells
At this time, you will find that the book borrowing service is a cost-effective activity. You just need to do a good job of promotion in the early stage of recruitment, and then you can sit in the store and serve dozens of your customers, and maybe you can find time to catch a play.
Saving manpower, time and management is particularly important for small workshop-style picture books.
Of course, there are many additional values in developing lending services. For example, we can cultivate a group of the most sticky customers. Parents who appear in your photo gallery one or two days a week are your most valuable customers.
Of course, a library only has a single lending service model, which can't help you solve the financial problem.
We can do some calculations. According to the market price, even if the monthly rent of your photo library is 3,500 yuan plus utilities, it will cost 42,000 yuan a year; The annual fee for library card is 500 yuan, which is higher than usual and has no added value. Suppose you can recruit 100 members, your annual income is 60,000. After deducting the expenses, you still have 18000, which seems pretty good, doesn't it? But if you are in charge of this 100 member by yourself, and you spend one year, your monthly income will be 1500. This does not include the cost of depreciation and pre-promotion of your book after one year.
It can recruit 100 members. This photo library is already excellent, but personally, I am very pessimistic about how far this photo library can go and what the prospects are.
Borrowing service is very important for the operation of picture books, but we can't just rely on it to eat.
Second, several business models of picture books
1. Deep reading service-more affectionate than picture books.
Deep reading service has many dimensions, and children of different ages have different models. Let's take the picture book familiar to the curator as an example.
Everyone can talk about picture books, but can everyone talk about good picture books?
Students who have participated in the picture book training camp should be deeply touched. A classic picture book may have the same connotation as any literary work. Therefore, we still have a lot to explore on the road of talking about picture books and teaching them well.
In-depth reading service requires you to provide the most professional reading guidance. Your client's mother may have a high degree, and some are very experienced, and can tell the picture book vividly.
But the reading service you provide is the most professional. You mean reading service, not telling stories to children. You are very enlightening. Develop their minds, inspire their imagination, or use your beautiful language to make children more willing to express themselves. You should not only talk about it, but also encourage them to communicate more and form their own opinions.
This is something you need to do for a long time, and you need to have enough accumulation. What is more difficult is that reading is not utilitarian, but mothers are still a little selfish, hoping that their children can gain something easier to show through reading.
So at the beginning of promotion, you should lay out your ideas. The good news is that it is not difficult for our young mothers to accept this idea now. The better news is that we have more curators and reading promoters have done a good job in this area.
To sum up, the difficulty of in-depth reading service lies in the need for word-of-mouth accumulation in the early stage, and the curator constantly improves himself. The advantage is that once you have accumulated a certain reputation and users, your own value is immeasurable, which is conducive to your own improvement. A curator who is suitable for in-depth reading service needs systematic study and keeps the habit of learning.
2. Parent-child activities-weekly brainstorming.
Parent-child activity is a common business model of picture books now. Parent-child activities are indeed a good choice, whether to retain new products or to ensure user stickiness.
If you make money through parent-child activities, then you need to pay attention to these problems.
Control your budget.
Ensure the quality of activities.
Establish a stable promotion channel
Using parent-child activities to make a profit is not like a normal museum doing an activity to give back to its members. Since we want to make a profit, we need to consider the feasibility and sustainability of making a profit from all aspects.
It's relatively easy to do two parent-child activities, but if you want to do this kind of activity for a long time, you'd better find a few partners to brainstorm and keep coming up with new ideas, so as to attract your new customers at once and not make your regular customers feel full of routines.
Curators with passionate team, connections and ideas may wish to try parent-child activities. And one trick is that you can communicate with other curators within your best ability, and I believe their activities will give you unlimited inspiration. You can also share your activities with them, and everyone can learn from each other.
3. Story meeting-every little listener is your God.
Story meeting is also one of the standard activities in every photo gallery. It will be more difficult to make a profit by stories alone. Unlike in-depth reading services, stories will stay at a shallow level. You might as well imagine how many parents will teach money and then come all the way to listen to your stories every week. Money may be second, but the important thing is that you delay other people's time.
So give up the story?
Of course not. Since the story will be one of the standard activities of the photo library, it certainly has the value of existence. As it is difficult for us to finish this story alone, we will integrate this story into other models.
For example, you can combine the book borrowing service with the story meeting to improve the value of the membership card. We can organize story meetings regularly every week, and members can listen to them for free. Turn the story into a right enjoyed by members. This will not only give you an extra bargaining chip in promoting the credit card, but also increase the cost of the credit card without making it so unacceptable to your users.
For another example, we can combine the story meeting with parent-child activities. We plan a lantern-making activity in the Mid-Autumn Festival, so we can introduce this activity with the story of the Mid-Autumn Festival. It will not make our parent-child interaction become a manual activity, but also promote our photo library.
Don't stick to the form of story meeting. Flexibility is the king of long-term survival. Our library once made "You look delicious" into an apron play, and the response was very good.
If you want to hold a story meeting, there are several suggestions.
Analyze your little audience's hobbies.
The form should be changeable.
Try to have a very prominent theme in each issue.
The story will not be too long.
Last but not least, prepare well for every story meeting and treat your little audience seriously.
4. Introduce the mechanism-the wool is no longer on the sheep.
The previous business model is common and has been practiced, but this model is still my original idea and has not been practiced. I hope to write it and communicate with you.
First of all, let me explain what an introduction agency is.
I found that there are many educational institutions for children in the market. They want to enroll students, but there are no channels for enrollment. Or you have had this experience yourself, and you can't find accurate target customers quickly.
What our photo library should do is to provide such a platform for them to find accurate users quickly.
The first thing to do is to attract a large number of users. We can let them enjoy our reading service at a very low price or simply for free. Once we have a large number of users, we can introduce organizations that suffer from publicity.
For example, cooperate with a children's dance organization and let them hold enrollment activities here, and we will help recruit people. By time or by enrollment.
We no longer have a direct interest relationship with users, but settle for the second best and become an intermediate platform. There are many advantages to doing so. For example, our business will become very simple, and our photo library will become a public welfare platform. Feelings that you have nowhere to put can take root here.
Of course, there are many imperfections in this concept. You can communicate more if you are interested.
In fact, picture books have many business models. The wisest thing to do is not to put eggs in one basket. We can choose two or three eggs to operate within our ability. As long as we work hard, I believe that the problem of food and clothing can be solved.
Every picture book curator must have feelings in his heart and interests in his hand, so that he can last for a long time.