Popular Video Creator Complains about Lower Income on Bilibili

A video creator on Bilibili, with 10.26 million followers, recently revealed his financial challenges on the Chinese video site. This comes after several popular creators announced a pause in updating their channels due to declining commercial advertising partnerships and high costs associated with creating long-form videos.

The uploader focusing on movie reviews, known as “Muyu Shuixin,” stated on April 23 that he has not received any advertising partnerships since 2023 for over four months. Additionally, the creative incentives provided by Bilibili are insufficient to cover his office rent.

He emphasized that his motivation for updating the channel is love, but acknowledged that it is not a sustainable solution. He stated the team is actively seeking ways to increase their income in order to continue producing quality content and create a positive cycle of growth.

On April 24th, in response to a discussion among netizens, he took to Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, and shared that as a creator who specializes in long-form videos within an ever-accelerating environment, he has faced persistent challenges. Nevertheless, he remains confident in his ability to overcome them. It’s worth noting that this year his video views averaged around 1 million, whereas, during the first half of last year, they were closer to 2 million.

Despite some content creators announcing their hiatus, the number of creators on Bilibili continues to rise. According to Bilibili‘s financial report for 2022, there was an average of 3.7 million active content creators per month, representing a year-on-year increase of 45.2%.

SEE ALSO: Multiple Bilibili Content Creators Stop Uploading New Videos

Bilibili offers two revenue sources for uploaders: one related to videos and the other to advertising and product promotion. However, Bilibili has changed its incentive rules for uploaders multiple times since last year. As a result, many uploaders have reported reduced income on social media platforms, with some claiming up to a 90% reduction in earnings.

In 2022, Bilibili‘s operating costs reached a staggering 18 billion yuan ($2.6 billion), marking an increase of 18% from the previous year. Despite distributing over 9 billion yuan to content creators in the same period, Bilibili has faced criticism for its operational and business model. On April 2nd, a former top-100 content creator on Bilibili highlighted seven major issues with the platform in a Weibo post. These included frequent changes of agents for content creators, preference for promoting new creators over old ones, and restrictions on their speech and behavior.