Live video anchor agent firms are fixing their eyes on undergraduates

Agents promise the undergraduates of 10,000 yuan salary per month but end up offering only several hundred yuan.

Web star agents promise to offer several thousand yuan per month to undergraduate anchors

Shortly before summer vacation, Wang from Capital Normal University noticed a recruitment poster in the campus. The recruitment was for live video anchors and potential web stars. “We’d like to recruit good-looking anchors who are enthusiastic about performing, singing, dancing, and modelling, etc.", said the poster, “students who received professional training are preferred.”

Such posters and leaflets from different agent firms were soon distributed across several campuses in Beijing. The rewards seemed quite attractive. Some agent firms claimed to offer RMB 3,000 to 5,000 per month for 2-3 hours’ live video streaming work per day.

Recruit poster in campus

The agents said that many undergraduates took the anchor job with a monthly earning of 2,000 to 10,000 yuan.

The anchors are requested to dress up and chat

Our correspondent got in touch with a manager of one agent firm in Beijing and sent him a candid photo. The manager suggested that she’d better improve her appearance and replace the glasses with contact lenses. The manager invited her to a face to face interview after some chatting. “Do remember to put on your make up and dress well”, he reminded.All conference rooms are filled with applicants when the correspondent came to the company for the interview. So, her interview was taken place in one of the live video streaming rooms. 

One live video streaming room in Beijing

The correspondent is requested to come every day and work for 4 to 6 hours per day to amass fans. Otherwise, she would need to purchase for the live video devices herself and work from her dormitory.

To become a web star, you need to work as an anchor first

The web star agents were recruiting good-looking versatile anchors when they claimed to look for potential web stars. “It’s not easy to make the anchors web stars. You don’t need to become web stars to earn money”, said one manager.
The “web stars” would be graded by their appearance, talents and performance, and their payments would differ depending on the grading. The basic salary for the lowest ranking anchors is 1,500 yuan per month plus commission of 40%; for the highest ranking anchors, it is 10,000 yuan per month plus commission of 50%. To get a basic salary, they need to work at least 2 hours a day, and 22 days per month. They also need to secure ten high-quality videos per month.

“Sexy figure” is a plus

One manager from a web star agent showed the correspondent a sample popular video. In the video, a scantily-clad young lady was playing guitar. “This is the kind of video we want, we just need to avoid being caught by the platform”, said the manager, “some graduates already earned 30,000 yuan this month in this way.”

Chatting history with the agent

Some anchors only get 200 to 300 yuan per month

Li Ru from Capital Normal University has worked as a part-time anchor for a few months. Her purchased her own devices and worked in her dormitory. What she needs to do is singing, chatting and dancing. "Although the basic salary is 2,000 yuan per month, I've never achieved the basic work hours. Usually, I can only get 1,000 yuan, and there's only several hundred left to me after the deduction of commission fees", said Li. “And some audiences would speak ill of me, which hurts me a lot”. She once considered quitting. But she eventually goes on because this is a relatively easy way to make money.

Undergraduates should know how to protect themselves when engaging in the anchor job

Undergraduates should protect themselves by reading the contract carefully and refusing any illegal performances when doing live video streaming. Some undergraduates are so obsessed with the idea of becoming web stars that they are prone to be cheated by the agents. However, even becoming a web star does not mean that one can take it as a lifetime job. He or she should make long-term career plans and be more helpful to the society.

Avoid emails if it can be delivered over call or meeting

In 2001, Neal Pat­ter­son, the CEO of Cerner Cor­po­ra­tion, sent an email to his work­force rep­ri­mand­ing them for not work­ing the long hours he ex­pected. He threat­ened to with­hold pro­mo­tions until the em­ployee park­ing lots stayed full from early morn­ing until late at night. The email be­came pub­lic. Cerner stock fell 22%, cost­ing the com­pany around $300 mil­lion. The les­son: Never send an email while angry, stressed or upset. Never be overly in­for­mal or too ver­bose, don't hit Reply All un­nec­es­sar­ily and don't fail to re­spond to your email. Fun­da­men­tals of email eti­quette in­clude using self-control, writ­ing in a re­spect­ful tone and valu­ing your cor­re­spon­dents' time. In­clude a clear sub­ject line. Be con­cise; use proper gram­mar, punc­tu­a­tion and spelling; and copy only those who need a copy. Don't send an email when the con­ver­sa­tion is bet­ter de­liv­ered face-to-face or on the phone. Don't in­clude any­thing in an email that you wouldn't say in per­son. Humor and sar­casm sel­dom work in text.

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Sleep does wonders

Your brain slows in the af­ter­noon, but a nap can work won­ders. Nap­ping for 45 min­utes will turbo-charge your brain for six hours. Con­versely, stu­dents who skip even an hour of sleep each night face a dra­matic drop in aca­d­e­mic per­for­mance. Sleep de­pri­va­tion im­pairs "at­ten­tion, ex­ec­u­tive func­tion, im­me­di­ate mem­ory, work­ing mem­ory, mood, quan­ti­ta­tive skills, log­i­cal rea­son­ing abil­ity, gen­eral math knowl­edge." Wouldn't it be great to match job sched­ules with peo­ple's in­her­ent sleep pat­terns? Plus, a later school day would ad­dress teenagers' nor­mal ten­dency to sleep late.

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Roic as core value

ROIC is a pil­lar of the core value of cash flow gen­er­a­tion. A firm's abil­ity to im­prove its ROIC depends on its com­pet­i­tive po­si­tion within its in­dus­try. A com­bi­na­tion of strat­egy, industry characteristics and ri­vals' prac­tices pro­duces a cor­po­ra­tion's com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage.

"Com­pa­nies will go to great lengths to achieve a cer­tain earn­ings per share num­ber…but this is mostly wasted en­ergy."

Com­pa­nies may be first movers in their sec­tors, and scale and scope both can pro­vide an edge. Product and ser­vice might dif­fer­en­ti­ate a busi­ness as well. High-ROIC in­dus­tries tend to offer uniquely spe­cial­ized brand prod­ucts, like cos­met­ics, and in­dus­tries with low ROICs gen­er­ally mar­ket generic items, like paper. Their ef­fi­cient use of cap­i­tal is crit­i­cal. Price pre­mium and cap­i­tal cost efficiency dic­tate ROIC.

Growth is the other main­stay of core value, but not all growth is equal. Suc­cess­ful prod­uct introductions into new mar­kets can add rev­enue streams, which turn into new earn­ings and cash flows. Such mar­ket ex­pan­sion tends to con­tribute the most value to a firm. Slash­ing prices to in­crease prod­uct share in a mar­ket helps very lit­tle, be­cause com­peti­tors can read­ily cut their prices, too, thereby un­der­min­ing any gains in value.