web star economy作文

How to make a million in a year? First, start a micro-blog, post

catchy photos and get famous. Next, open an online shop.

That is what Fei Bao is doing.

One Sunday afternoon in May, Fei Bao live-streams from her

office in downtown Beijing to hype the launch of her clothes

store on Taobao, an online shopping website by Alibaba. Fei

Bao is a PhD student at the University of International

Business and Economics. Like many other up-and-coming

web stars, Fei Bao built her fame on twitter-like Weibo and

then was discovered by incubators. Now she stands at the

forefront of one of China's most enterprising industries.

Sales from the Taobao's web star shops doubled from April

2015 to March 2016. According to a CBNData report, China's

web star economy will be worth over US$$8.7 billion in 2016,

triple UNIQLO's 2015 sales in China.

Fei Bao's web stream lasted three hours. She changed clothes

in a sample room, walked out, spun to offer a view of the

clothes in front of the camera, and chatted for 15 minutes

before putting on a new outfit. Over 30,000 people watched

the stream.

It's Fei Bao's second experience with Taobao live streaming.

about this is the conversion rate. While live streaming on

Taobao, you can send links. So even if you are just chatting

away, about yourself, they'll ask you where you got your

mascara.

volumes have become very significant. Some of those shops

sell hundreds of millions of yuan a year. One million for a new

release is only normal,

at a web star incubator.

Running a shop on Taobao takes a whole team, hence the

importance of web star incubators. They sign stars and hire

designers, photographers, copy writers, and Weibo

operations staff --- and take a cut of the profits. Most of them

are in Hangzhou, China's e-commerce capital, and tier-1 cities

like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Xu Zihan is a co-founder of Weidu, a web star incubator. Plans

for Weidu began in mid 2015, and by early 2016 the business

had already moved from Guangzhou to Beijing's most trendy

area

—

Sanlitun. Her office window offers an extended view of