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Make money online with Kuaishou – Share videos

Baptiste Wicht | Updated: |

(Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links)

Mrs. The Poor Swiss started a new side hustle recently. She started video streams on Kuaishou. It is a top-rated app in China. She managed to get some money out of it. I wanted to discuss this because I have not seen any other blogger mention it. It could be an exciting side hustle for some people. It is a bit like Twitch but not related to gaming at all.

Even though the application is mostly used by Chinese people, there are more and more foreigners that have started using it. Almost every people speak Chinese on it. But you can run a show in any language. The problem is that there will not be many people to understand you if you do not speak Chinese.

I am not sure I understand the success of Kuaishou. But this is something that is working in China. And it seems to be working for Mrs. The Poor Swiss as a side hustle. She helped me complete the facts for this article.

Kuaishou

Dumb game on Kuaishou
Dumb game on Kuaishou

Kuaishou is a very popular mobile application from Beijing in China. It is a mobile application where you can share videos and stream your life live. The app has been backed by Tencent, one of the biggest Chinese internet companies. Now, it has more than 700 million users today. And about 100 million of them are also live streaming.

There are many things you can do in Kuaishou. People are sharing many videos on the application. You can only share videos of about one minute. You cannot share anything longer. These videos help you get followers. And then, you can do a show, a live stream, during which people can watch you and support you. Before you start live streaming, you need to be vetted by Kuaishou. People watching you can also chat, and you can answer their questions or respond to comments.

When you are in a show, you can also play games with other users on Kuaishou. When you are in a game, your supporters can donate to make you win. The one user that gets the most money from the followers wins. And generally, the loser needs to do a dumb thing like doing pushups, singing, painting his face, or many things like that.

There are also two other things people can do in Kuaishou. You can do a voice show. It is the same as a video show, but, you guessed it, without video, only the voice. It generally works worse than video shows, but some people are doing it a lot. And finally, you can also post moments just like on WeChat.

History

Kuaishou was founded in 2011 in Beijing. Initially, it was only a picture converter and a sharing app. It soon allowed users to share videos as well. And they added live streaming later on.

Something is interesting about Kuaishou’s history. It started in the poor rural areas of China. Initially, only poor users, mostly from third-tier cities and below, were using Kuaishou to show off their lives and get some money. It quickly became very popular. Once people saw the success of Kuaishou streamers, more and more people started to try it. Now, there are many different people using the application. Not everyone is trying to make money with it, but most people are.

Now, Kuaishou has been backed up by some of the biggest Chinese companies, such as Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu. They are growing at a solid pace.

Side hustle

People can get money from Kuaishou. You cannot get money by sharing videos. But people can give you money while you are doing a show. There are many ways your supporters can give you money.

It is kind of funny the way it works. The supporters can give you gifts. The system is way more complicated than it should be, in my opinion. The currency used in Kuaishou is called a gift (liwu in Chinese). Users are purchasing gifts with real money, RMB. One gift is one cent (1/100 RMB).

Then, the users can send gifts to the people streaming. You cannot send an arbitrary amount of money. You can only send some special gifts. There are 24 different kinds of gifts. The most you can send in one gift is 288 RMB. In that case, it will give you some advertisements for your channel. Your followers are paying to advertise you. How cool is that?

The other gifts are merely making some animation on your show. For instance, 66 RMB will show applause, 32.8 RMB will show an arrow flying to the sky, and 20.8 RBM will display firecrackers. Many things like this act as gifts. The smallest gift is one cent of RMB.

One weird thing is that the gifts displayed will show a value ten times higher than the number of gifts. For instance, a 288 RMB gift is displayed as 2’888’000. So you have to divide by 10 to get the real amount of gifts. And then divide by one hundred to get the amount of RMB. I do not know why they made a system so complicated. But it is probably to desensitize people to spend money so that they spend more.

Kuaishou will take 50 percent of your earnings. They call it a commission. I think that is a lot. But it seems that for China, it is not so bad. Kuaishou’s competitors are charging even more than this! So every time you get something from one of your supporters, you only get half of what was given. You can transfer your earnings either to your WeChat account or to your Alipay account.

Other money-making strategies

There is another way to get money on Kuaishou. Once you have a lot of viewers, you can get companies to pay you to advertise their products. It is a side business of the top performers from Kuaishou. Kuaishou does not integrate this into the application. But some performers get a lot of money from this business. That also means that Kuaishou will not take its cut off your earnings. That is probably the way to get the most cash from Kuaishou. However, you need a lot of viewers for this.

If you are trying to sell things, you can directly link your Taobao, the local equivalent of eBay, shop from your show. That means that you can promote your items on your show, and people can directly go to your shop. More and more local sellers use that.

Kuaishou users

Users on Kuaishou
Users on Kuaishou (Source: Kuaishou)

There are many types of Kuaishou users now. It seems almost everybody tries to be on Kuaishou. And you can see almost anything on it.

As I said, it started with people in rural areas. These people were just trying to share their lives and earn some money. Many people in the big cities are a bit disconnected from the rural areas of China, on which they still depend on food production. Speaking about food, there are many people giving cooking shows on Kuaishou. You can find almost every kind of cooking style in Kuaishou. There are many people doing shows while eating and sampling food. And, of course, many Chinese gamers are streaming while playing games!

There are also some sick people doing shows while they are in hospital. They are trying to get some money to pay for their healthcare. There are also many people doing outside shows while they travel. They show new things to people. From what I know about Kuaishou, it is very popular to show other countries! And it is also very popular for them to interview and talk with foreigners.

From what I have seen, there are mostly a lot of girls on Kuaishou, singing and dancing. And some are merely speaking for hours. And they get a lot of gifts from boys. You can probably find any kind of show on Kuaishou.

Some people get a lot of money from Kuaishou. Many people are living on that income.

Mrs. The Poor Swiss Results

Mrs. The Poor Swiss on Kuaishou
Mrs. The Poor Swiss on Kuaishou

Mrs. The Poor Swiss started doing shows in September of this year, about three months ago. She is doing shows where she sings and dances. And she is also speaking a lot about Switzerland. She is showing things particular to Switzerland and unknown to the Chinese.

She has had growing followers and supporters count. In these three months, she made about 21’000 RMB (around 3000 dollars). This is for about two months and a half. And she was blocked for some time during these months. I think it is good. Some shows are very successful, with several thousand RMB. And some shows are less successful, with a few hundred. But her show has been growing in followers and money.

She did not spend a lot of time on the shows themselves. But she spends a lot of time watching other shows and chatting with other users of Kuaishou.  There is also some work related to gathering new followers. If you count all this time, it is probably not very good pay per hour. But it is still profitable!

One last thing I should mention is censorship. Since the application is run in China, it is highly censored. It is much more limited in what you can show compared to U.S. equivalents. And some rules are very ambiguous. For instance, girls can make a show in a bikini but cannot show cleavage in regular clothing. And shorts and skirts cannot be too short. Moreover, you cannot talk about many subjects, such as some political subjects or sex.

If you violate one of these rules, they will block your account. The first time, they will block it for one day, then two days, up to 1 week. After one week, you risk getting blocked for a few months or forever. If you do not get blocked for some time, the next time penalty will decrease. Mrs. The Poor Swiss got blocked a few times for up to five days. It means that she could not earn any money on Kuaishou

Conclusion

Kuaishou can be a profitable side hustle. If you have a talent for performing or can speak for hours, you may be able to get enough followers to support you. You can show anything. If there are not already too many people showing the same things, you could well hit success on it.

You may have to speak Chinese to get serious about Kuaishou. If you do not speak Chinese yet or you want to improve, you could try to use FluentU to learn. But foreigners speaking Chinese seem very appreciated on the application, probably because there are still very few.

I do not get Kuishou. I am unsure I understand why people give so much money to it. From what I have seen on Kuaishou, there is very little interesting content. However, it is working, and Mrs. The Poor Swiss likes it and getting some money out of it!

What about you? Do you know Kuaishou? Do you have any weird side hustle?

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Baptiste Wicht started thepoorswiss.com in 2017. He realized that he was falling into the trap of lifestyle inflation. He decided to cut his expenses and increase his income. This blog is relating his story and findings. In 2019, he is saving more than 50% of his income. He made it a goal to reach Financial Independence. You can send Mr. The Poor Swiss a message here.

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8 thoughts on “Make money online with Kuaishou – Share videos”

  1. Hello! Thank you for this article! I was wondering, so for short videos we can’t make money from that but we can make money from livestreams, shows, and from other companies who want us to advertise their products? I also wish it will be easier to transfer money (even if we’re not from China) :D

    1. Hi K,

      Yes, you can definitely make money from other companies. That’s how the biggest people on Kuaishou make money. But you can make money without it by doing shows and short videos if you rely on gifts.
      For non-residents, it’s definitely very complicated to get money to and from Kuaishou/Wechat.

  2. Thank you dear , i am using this app almost from two years but, as you say that it is mostly in Chinese so i didn’t understand many things even just confirm from you that gifts change to RMB too, , basically a chinese boy mentioned me this app, that beautiful girls on it, i am actually looking for chinese girlfriend and i almost success , because i talked with thousands girls and share my thoughts with them , and may soon to get achievements, but one thing is if you outside China you can’t live because it is need verification and in verification you need chinese id and number, maybe i am wrong and have another way too , but i am sure there is no any other way to use chinese tiktok and this app for live hosting, like, if you out side China you can’t verify on wechat for pay system also on alipay, if there anyway please share with me too, thanks

    1. Unfortunately, it’s indeed very difficult to use Chinese apps if you are not Chinese or not in China. For instance, I can’t transfer money to my Wechat account even with a credit card. It’s likely the same with Kuaishou :(

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