How Do You Understand Traffic?

It’s great to finally have members of the knowledge base ask me this question.

This post contains the culmination of my understanding of traffic.

I can’t claim it’s all correct, but it includes some very deep thinking of mine.

Why do we need to understand traffic? Because traffic and wealth are inextricably linked.

In this world, the essence of any money-making endeavor (business) is traffic.

Note that the “money-making” mentioned here doesn’t refer to your job, your nine-to-five salary. While that is also making money, it’s not a business.

A business always involves non-linear income, whereas employment always involves linear income.

Even if your hourly rate is high, and you’re a “salary king,” your income is still linear.

Linear income and exponential income have fundamental differences.

Unfortunately, many people are forced to learn this lesson through layoffs.

If you currently have a good job, a stable salary, and a high position,

you won’t start thinking about this, especially if you might have stock options or be a small shareholder.

This can mislead you into thinking you own the means of production, but your exponential growth is very low; you’re in a slow lane.

The fortunate side is that when, for various reasons, people lose their safety net and are forced to fend for themselves in the market,

many quickly abstract a priceless formula:

This formula is simple, effective, and correct:

Business = Traffic + Problem Solving

No business can escape these two elements.

Any other elements are subsets of Traffic + Problem Solving.

Therefore, the importance of traffic is paramount.

For example, if you break it down:

A restaurant’s traffic consists of: foot traffic from its geographical location + online traffic it actively builds.

A gym’s traffic consists of: its geographical location + online traffic it actively builds.

Almost all successful brick-and-mortar stores didn’t succeed solely because of their good geographical location, but because of the online traffic they actively built.

The biggest difference between physical traffic and online traffic is capped vs. uncapped.

So, this article primarily discusses the online traffic component.

I have achieved some success in the short video domain in China. Besides Hardcore Canine itself, I’ve successfully launched and positioned numerous accounts from scratch.

During this process, I realized some interesting things:

From a global perspective, the entire online traffic landscape is divided into China/Global.

China’s traffic pools are mainly concentrated in a few major social media platforms:

Douyin, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Weibo, etc.

Here’s a question I’d like to pose:

If we consider traffic as an asset,

I pose a question, please think carefully:

On social media, is the asset value of an account with 10,000 subscribers the same as an account with 1,000,000 subscribers?

Our initial inclination almost makes us think the 1,000,000 subscriber account is more valuable. For the past two years, this was indeed the case.

However, almost all platforms are now doing one thing: using algorithms to squeeze creators, much like how they drive food delivery riders.

Platforms (the “boss”) must continuously filter out the “best-looking content right now” to maintain their “daily active users” (company performance).

Through “dynamic” algorithms, they intentionally break down “moats,” ensuring new creators always have a “chance to shine.” This incentivizes 10 million people to contribute content to the platform.

At the same time, this algorithm has a concept of time decay.

If you don’t post for a period, or if your content attempts to privatize traffic,

it will be quickly flagged and deprioritized.

In a project I was once involved in,

an account with 1.5 million followers only had a meager 1,000 or even a few hundred views per post.

So, a significant fallacy is: a self-media account with millions of followers is a traffic asset.

The truth is, it’s likely worthless.

Under the platform’s algorithm, what is valuable?

It’s the account’s average viewership baseline, which is the result of a new reward function created by the platform.

You must use your creativity to maintain this baseline, otherwise you will lose it.

I can tell you almost with complete certainty that all social media platforms in China are using this algorithm to incentivize you to create content.

Friends who use Xiaohongshu know that

Xiaohongshu has been extremely vigilant recently about conversions to private domains.

They clearly realize that the moment you move traffic to a private domain, the transfer of wealth is complete.

It’s not just Xiaohongshu; all traffic platforms in China are trying to protect this.

Do you see it?

If you realize that you need to break away from linear income and leverage media,

this leverage is then constrained by the algorithm.

It turns it into a new linear job, and the accumulation that should have occurred in between is exploited by the platform.

You will never see an evergreen video on Douyin.

Because the algorithm forces a lifecycle on every piece of content.

No matter how profound the thought in your content, it cannot break through the life shackles imposed by the platform itself.

When a video’s lifecycle ends, it is firmly restricted.

The truth is, much content can circulate for a very long time.

Some ideas can be highly condensed and abstract and spread for a long time.

There are many ideas in this world that have been passed down from ancient sages.

The medium at that time was the “book.”

A book is a read-only medium; once released, it cannot be changed.

So, before publishing, it would be repeatedly a topic of thorough discussion and carefully written.

That’s why many books became classics.

Do time-honored and compounding traffic pools truly exist in the online world?

Now, let’s shift our perspective to the global stage.

Google Search has firmly followed this guidance throughout humanity’s decades of internet history.

It never favors you just because you’re trending.

It’s old-fashioned; it only recognizes authority.

An article you wrote 10 years ago can still play a significant role today.

For example,

DigitalOcean, a second-tier cloud computing company, brings in 5.8 million search traffic monthly via Google, reaching almost one-eighth of industry leader Amazon AWS.

I first noticed this company because when searching for technical issues, their tutorials often appeared in search results, and the content quality was exceptionally good, such as this article on installing Docker on Ubuntu: https://digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-docker-on-ubuntu-18-04

Almost every developer searches for many technical terms many times throughout their life, and these articles are mostly ranked on the first page or even in the top three.

Reading this, aren’t you excited, thinking, “Wow, this is exactly the potential, non-linear traffic pool we’ve been desperately seeking!”

Don’t rush.

Everything has two sides.

Precisely because Google values authority, age, and accumulation more,

this creates something that deters all newcomers: a moat.

If you wanted to build a business similar to SendGrid today, you would have absolutely no chance of beating them in relevant search results.

They are like a colossal, heavy mountain, looming in front of you.

If you hope to attack the territory of Semrush or Ahrefs today,

you would also have absolutely no chance.

Because that’s how authoritative traffic pools work.

Assets are passed down and become wealth.

Above, are the traffic pools I’ve observed.

One is an endlessly running “hamster wheel,” and the other is an “impenetrable vault.”

Desperate?

So, what is our way out?

The answer is: stop choosing between two extremes, and start building a “hybrid system.”

The era you live in now is the best era; AI is just showing its first signs of promise.

If you carefully read the methods mentioned in my knowledge base,

you can definitely use AI to help you solve efficiency problems, leveraging “opportunities” to start and “authority” to accumulate.

The value of this knowledge base is that I hope everyone can master two cards:

One building card, one traffic card.

And AI can help us solve most of the building part today.

As for traffic, if you chase it to its deepest layer,

you’ll find that traffic and content correspond one-to-one.

And the correct use of AI is the greatest help for content.

So, what do you really want to do?

1. If you want to “start quickly,” embrace the “game of opportunity,” but be clear that you are just playing a “high-level job,” and you must continuously contribute.
2. If you want to “accumulate assets,” embrace the “asset game,” but be prepared that you must spend 3-5 years (not 3-5 days) in an extremely niche field to build your “authority.”

And the most advanced players combine both: they use the effort from the “game of opportunity” to water the seeds of the “asset game.”

Once you see all this clearly, your anxiety should subside.

Because you know the meaning of each step. Every Douyin video you post is sifting the first visitors for your castle (on Google).

This is my thinking. I share it with you all.