In today’s rapid development of AI technology, entrepreneurs are constantly exploring how to apply artificial intelligence to various fields. This article tells an amazing AI online text entrepreneurial story: Meng Ge and his team took less than a year, with the efforts of two people, to achieve an AI online text platform with a monthly income of one million and more than 20,000 monthly active users.
Today I want to tell you an entrepreneurial story that makes my blood boil, the protagonist is my good brother Mengge, who staged a wonderful drama from 0 to 1 in the AI online text track. In the early stage, only 2 people worked full-time, and in less than a year, they achieved 20,000 monthly activities and a monthly income of one million. And all this happened in our small group – 4 people, 3 of whom were starting AI businesses, witnessing each other’s whole process from scratch.
I hope that through this case, we can help everyone understand how an AI application goes from 0 to 1, how to build a moat, and how to find its own ecological niche in a market that seems to be a red sea and grow rapidly! This is definitely a basic plan to choose the right track, the team worked together to verify the PMF, and then the whole link of AI application growth that gradually jumped left and right was publicly shared with good articles!
First, let’s take a look at a few exciting data
First of all, in order to ensure authenticity, I specially asked Brother Meng to show me all the real data in the background (yes, I am so serious):
Timeline:
- June-July 2024: Meng Ge uses ChatGPT to write online articles to obtain manuscript fees to verify ideas
- Early July 2024: Product launch begins development
- At the end of July 2024: The product will be launched, attracting seed users in the online author group
- Mid-August 2024: Open the recharge function, and earn 2000+ on the first day
- Spring Festival 2025: With DeepSeek, daily active users will increase from 1,000 to 2,000, with a monthly income of 880,000
- May 2025: Continued growth, with monthly revenue exceeding 1 million
Core data:
- Monthly active users: 20,000+
- Payment rate for all registered users: 18.44% (this figure is simply the ceiling among AI products)
- Repurchase Rate: 52%
- WeChat groups: 45 (500 people each)
- Community users: 20,000+
User revenue data:
- Users with monthly manuscript fees of more than 10,000 yuan: 600+
- Users with a monthly income of 30,000+ manuscript fees: 300+
- Highest user monthly income: more than 100,000
- No. 24 seed user: Earned 150,000 turnover in two weeks
- Highest daily income user: 6,000 yuan manuscript fee
Seeing these numbers, my first reaction was: this is not making AI products, this is printing money!
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But behind these numbers is a well-designed product ecosystem.
2. Why AI online text? ——Finding the right track is more important than hard work
1. Huge addressable market
According to the “2024 Research Report on the Development of Online Literature in China” released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, by the end of 2024, the number of online literature users in our country reached 575 million, a year-on-year increase of 10.58%, and the usage rate of netizens was 51.9%. The scale of online literature authors reached 31.198 million, and 1.904 million new authors were added.
But there is a cruel saying in the industry: “Of the 100 online writers, at least 90 have no income, and the remaining 10 people, maybe only 1 person can earn enviable wealth.” ”
What does this mean? If AI can help those 90% of authors make money, this is a huge incremental market. Moreover, the market size of online text IP adaptation will reach 298.56 billion yuan in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 14.61%. This cake is so big!
2. Unique advantages for founders
Brother Meng is not a layman, he wrote an online article 10 years ago.
His work “Invincible Death System” had a collection of 100,000 yuan when it was launched on the Genesis Chinese website, and the first monthly manuscript fee was 4,300 yuan. The setting of this book is very interesting – the protagonist gets a death system, and if he doesn’t die, he will die, so he has been dying. (Sounds like the daily life of an AI entrepreneur, haha)
But Brother Meng finally gave up for a simple reason: he was too tired.
“If you think about it, a person has to take out 2 hours every day to do one thing, and do it for 6 months in a row, it’s really difficult.” Brother Meng said, “Especially on weekends, everyone else is out to play, and I am all writing novels.” At least 4,000 words a day, and the manuscript will be updated on weekends. ”
It was also this experience that made him deeply understand the pain points of online writers: it’s not that I don’t want to write, it’s really too tiring. At that time, his monthly salary was more than 20,000, and he only wrote a novel for 4,300 a month, and his efforts and income were completely out of proportion.
In turn, I have also communicated with the heads of some online text platforms, they don’t understand AI online text at all, and they have not reached the level of being able to win perfect attendance awards, and you find it hard to believe that they can really make good AI online text products.
In the early days, we discussed some details about what the model generates
3. Market segments that large factories don’t look down on
“Compared with the short drama market, the AI writing tool market is too small.” Brother Meng analyzed very thoroughly, “For online text platforms, their core is to build a content platform and sell content to consumers.” They don’t really care who wrote the content and how it came about. ”
That’s why although China Literature and Tomato have AI assistance functions, they don’t do it well – they don’t have enough motivation to optimize, and it’s easy to encounter obstacles.
This also leaves a sufficient window for AI online text entrepreneurship.
In the early days, we discussed a lot of how large online companies treat understanding AI
4. Exponential growth in AI capabilities
This is the most critical variable.
The progress from practice to now also verifies Brother Meng’s judgment:
- July 2024: AI can only assist with expansion and polishing
- End of 2024: AI can write the body directly
- Early 2025: AI can write outlines
Now: Experienced authors can use AI workflows to produce short stories directly, and the manuscript fee is 300-500 yuan
“There is a serious lag in industry cognition,” Meng Ge said, “Many editors and head authors also think that AI can only expand and polish, and feel that AI has no emotion and cannot write a reliable outline.” This is an outdated perception. ”
On the Xingyue platform, some users charge 6,000 yuan a day for manuscripts, and they are the top authors in Tomato, and 90% of their works are AI-generated. It’s like a secret weapon that only a few know how powerful it is.
3. The extremely streamlined entrepreneurial process – from 0 to PMF
1. No recruitment or rental of offices
For a long time, it was Brother Meng and his technical partner. Companies are registered after the project makes money, and WeChat is used directly to collect payments at the beginning. This minimalist approach to entrepreneurship reminds me of the saying: “Entrepreneurship is not about burning money, but about solving the most critical problems with the least amount of money.” ”
2. Quick verification
Brother Meng first talked to his partner, but the partner didn’t understand online literature and was not very interested.
So I first used ChatGPT as a conversational tool to verify it, and wrote 80,000 words to verify it in the Pomodoro test. “More than ten yuan a day, at that time, I was able to reach the perfect attendance standard of tomatoes, and if I updated enough, I could have 1,000 yuan a month.”
The key is: write quickly with AI. This validates the core hypothesis: AI can indeed help online writers make money.
3. Change of partners
In early July, Meng Ge persuaded the technical partners to start development. “He still believes in me, but he doesn’t necessarily feel like he can make money.”
At the end of July, the product was made into a web form, and the core functions were available. Brother Meng drew some seed user tests in the online article author group, and the feedback was particularly good.
Brother Meng said to his partner: “We will be able to see the money in two weeks.” ”
Partner’s reaction: “Impossible.” ”
As a result, two weeks later, more than 2,000 were collected on the first day of opening the recharge function.
“At that time, the company had not yet been created, and we used WeChat to collect payments directly.” Brother Meng recalled, “Although there are only a few dozen users, if users buy it, my partner will be confident.” ”
It reminds me of the saying, “The best business plan is income.” “Nothing is more convincing than real money.
4. The essence of community operation – let users help you sell products
1. A well-designed conversion funnel
In the early days, Meng Ge quickly discovered that it was a big challenge to retain users after drainage.
So I began to explore the operation mode, and after a long period of time, the operation SOP was formed, and each link was carefully designed:
Step 1: The private domain undertakes Bilibili to the official account to the enterprise WeChat
Step 2: Set up hooks to attract users to the community tutorial (lower the threshold for use) communication group through benefits
Step 3: Daily operation rhythm Every day, the community has a given operation SOP action
This set of funnels effectively covers the users that Xingyue’s current traffic can cover, and effectively converts. To be honest, seeing this operation system (omitted above), I want to write an online article!
2. The art of motivation
“Many new users are actually watching after joining the group, and they don’t even watch the tutorial.” Brother Meng said, “But at noon the next day, there were people in the group who collected 300 a day.” He calculated, his daily income was 300, his monthly income was 9,000, and the perfect attendance bonus was 10,000, which was higher than his salary, and it was written with AI. ”
This stimulation is the most direct. Brother Meng will send all the money-making cases in groups: “Zhang San’s manuscript fee income today is 500 yuan”, “Li Si’s commission income this month is 10,000 yuan”, “Wang Wu made 20,000 yuan in customized prompt words”, “Zhao Liu pays for knowledge and pays 100,000 yuan per month”
“If there’s one thing, I’ll share it.” Brother Meng said, “Anyway, everything I posted is true.” ”
Think about people in third- and fourth-tier cities, and see these real cases, whether the minds that were still waiting and seeing come alive. This is the essence of community operation: let the stories of successful people inspire new people and let new people see hope.
3. The power of ecology
Now Xingyue has 45 WeChat groups of 500 people and more than 20,000 active users. But more importantly, a multi-level ecology has been formed:
– User Ecology: Novices→ Veterans→ Masters, Old with New
– Content ecology: Free prompts→ paid customization→ knowledge payment
– Benefit Ecosystem: Users→ promoters→ prompt writers→ lecturers
The prompt word to knowledge payment is very important, which constitutes the path of user advancement and is also the key to stickiness.
5. Prompt word ecology – the core barrier that has been ignored
1. Why are prompts important?
“AI’s ability now cannot even generate the content the author wants in the future through one or two simple sentences.” Meng Ge explained.
There are too many dimensions that need to be controlled when writing online articles: whether the structure of long and short sentences is stalked, whether it is funny or serious, how much to describe in the proportion of dialogue, how to write the fight scenes, and what vocabulary style to use (such as using the vocabulary of Journey to the West to describe the battle between gods and demons)
“It’s too much.”
It is precisely because the complexity of online content is high enough that if you want to write well with AI, you need very fine prompts to guide the model to generate content. So I often see many friends saying that they use AI to write good online articles, which are all for their own amusement and they can’t make money at all by submitting them.
2. Why can’t prompts on the Internet?
“Most of the prompts circulating on the Internet are written by people who understand AI and do not understand online text, and they are all self-satisfied.” Brother Meng said bluntly, “Xingyue’s prompts are several generations ahead of them, because many of them are customized by the author at the cost of money, and they have been iterating for almost a year, and they are all prompts that have earned manuscript fees.” ”
For example: What is the biggest problem with AI continuation? “If you let the AI write directly, it is very likely that the protagonist will be written to death in three chapters.”
Professional continuation prompts should be considered: refer to the previous plot, conform to the popular formula, maintain the rhythm without collapsing, and continue the character’s personality
In fact, it is very difficult to do this, which is equivalent to first being a professional author, understanding the routines of popular online articles, and then solidifying a large number of routines in the form of prompt words, which can guide the model to output the corresponding content according to the requirements, which is quite difficult.
Because the more powerful the model, the more it relies on prompts, so the prompt ecology has emerged:
3. Prompt Ecology
The Xingyue platform already has thousands of prompts, forming a complete trading market:
Basic customization: 50 yuan
High Custom: 200 yuan
Prompt writer’s monthly income: 10,000+ (some freshmen earn more than 10,000 yuan this month)
Customized types: writing outlines, writing golden fingers, writing brain holes, expanding and polishing, continuing writing, etc
“One user customized more than 20 prompts because different books require different styles.”
On Xingyue Writing, creators are allowed to divert private domains, customize prompts and sell other courses! This openness allows creators to earn more income around Xingyue, and Meng Ge even pulled Xingyue creators to monetize the community to encourage more people to make money, so everyone recognizes Xingyue very much.
But there is a key point, isn’t the prompt easy to leak? Yes, so Star Moon spared no effort in protecting the prompt mechanic.
4. Protection mechanisms
At the basic level, in the stars and moons, the prompt words are not exposed and are closed.
Secondly, there will still be many people who use various methods to crack the prompt words, and Brother Meng has made a lot of efforts for these cracking methods:
- Technical anti-theft: Detect theft and directly reduce account bans
- User experience is also anti-theft: “We use various methods to detect user input”
- Take the initiative: Find someone selling prompts in Xianyu, and offer a reward of 500 yuan to find contact information
- Tough rights protection: warn other platforms to “sue you if they don’t take it off the shelves”
“I told the prompt writer that even if I spend 100,000 yuan, I will find out the pirate.” This attitude makes creators feel very secure and more willing to create prompts on Xingyue.
In this way, Xingyue’s prompt word ecology is the richest on the whole network, forming a strong competitive advantage. This reminds me of the saying, “You don’t dig the moat, you fill it little by little.” ”
6. Growth flywheel – the secret from 1000 to 20000
1. Bilibili: The most stable growth engine
In August 24, Brother Meng started with 0 fans.
After 2 months of persistence, soon 99 + private messages a day, and Brother Meng’s network sense is really good
Meng Ge often shares his content operation methods in the group
Up to now, it often exceeds 10,000 views, and the traffic is stable.
Meng’s Bilibili topic selection strategy has three directions:
– Direction 1: Large model evaluation Compare the effects of different large models in generating online articles to attract online writers who are interested in AI
– Direction 2: Real case sharing The true story of “user No. 24 earns 150,000 yuan in two weeks” is the most convincing
– Direction 3: Imitate popular models Use AI to imitate well-known online articles to demonstrate AI’s capabilities
“Basically, the videos made have 10,000 or 20,000 views, and some can reach hundreds of thousands.” Under the video, there will be various diversion mechanisms, comments in the video introduction, comments in the comment area, follow replies, etc. These are all good ways to acquire customers at low cost.
2. User fission system
Commission mechanism: Invite users to recharge to get a 10% permanent commission Users charge the annual card 1400, and the referrer gets 140 permanent share, not a one-time income of more than 10,000 yuan this month
Empowering Promoters: “I write and teach users the SOPs for making videos, so that they can promote them on various platforms.” Brother Meng said, “In this way, my energy alone has mobilized dozens of people to help me recruit new people.” ”
The combination of these two is equivalent to mobilizing the people, which is indeed a wonderful way of promotion. I can’t help but think: Isn’t this turning users into your sales team? And it’s the kind that doesn’t need to be paid!
3. Seize traffic opportunities
During the Spring Festival of 2025, DeepSeek suddenly became popular. Brother Meng immediately made an evaluation video of “DeepSeek Writing Novels”.
“The effect of DeepSeek writing novels at that time was actually average, but with the help of DeepSeek’s traffic.”
The result? The daily active activity has directly increased from 1,000 to 2,000, with a monthly income of 880,000.
“At most, eight or nine hundred to 1,000 new users are added a day.”
This is the power to seize the tuyere! In the field of AI, the update and iteration of models is very fast, and every release of a new model is a traffic opportunity.
7. Knowledge payment – from tools to ecology
1. Why pay for knowledge?
“AI writing is an extremely difficult thing, even for people with writing experience.” Meng Ge said, “This means that a lot of customer service is needed to solve the problem. ”
But what if the cost of hiring customer service is too high? Let users teach users, and by the way, let users make money!
From entry to advanced to advanced, Brother Meng slowly built a multi-level system:
2. Multi-level advanced system
Entry:
- Star and Moon Companion (21-day check-in) fee: 99 yuan camp fee + 199 yuan
- Deposit mechanism: 15 days after completing the deposit, the uncompleted deposit will be distributed to the completer
- Effect: 200 people were recruited in 3-4 days, and the user feedback was particularly good
Advanced: Vertical Boot Camp
- NetEase Loft Training Camp: 88 yuan, teaching the easiest type to make money
- Effect: As long as you are willing to write, you can make money
- Problem: Even if you pay, 50% of people don’t write
Advanced: Special courses
- Short/long special course: 999 yuan
- Commitment: 40% pass rate (70%+ if you don’t write it)
- Lecturer income: up to 100,000 yuan per month
3. The true value of knowledge payment
“As long as they experience these knowledge payment systems, users who can make money will stay in the stars and moons very firmly.”
Why?
Because they are familiar with the operation of Xingyue, establish writing habits, have a stable income, meet a group of peers, creators are very lonely, and it is important to have fellow travelers
“It’s easy to use, you can still make money, and the price is not expensive, why change it?”
Some people say that paying for online knowledge is cutting leeks. But firstly, hundreds of people have earned manuscript fees through Xingyue’s courses, and secondly, Brother Meng did not want to share, all these tuition fees are given to teachers, so this is a win-win situation where users have income after paying, and creators pay for their energy and rewards, which is good for the platform as a whole.
Based on many of the above points, I believe you will understand that Mengge’s AI online text products have formed a certain moat:
8. Moat – why this business is difficult to replicate
We have talked about this question many times, you may look at it and think that “I can also do it”, in fact, it is not easy, there are also some teams in China that do it earlier and take more money, but as far as I observe, there is basically no difference from hanging, which shows that this matter is not simple, and it is probably as follows:
First, the prompt word ecology
As we said above, the prompt word ecosystem is composed of creators + prompt thesaurus accumulated with money and protected, which is difficult to be quickly replicated: a high-quality prompt thesaurus accumulated in a year (all of which have made money), an active prompt word writer group (with stable income), and a perfect anti-theft mechanism (technology + legal double insurance)
Second, the social network effect
Brother Meng has always insisted on doing a very heavy community operation, and a large number of active users have had in-depth communication with him, so a community atmosphere has gradually formed here, recognizing the stars and the moon, recognizing this community, but all friends who have had community experience know that this stickiness is very scary, in addition to these, it also includes: 20,000 active communities have people posting income every day (real stimulation) Old users spontaneously answer questions (zero-cost customer service)
Third, cognitive barriers
I found that many founders are not heavy users of their own product direction, which will directly affect their understanding of the track, many times I read an online article is good, it will be directly thrown into our small group of 4 people, Brother Meng and another friend will quickly give an accurate judgment, this kind of understanding ability in the vertical track can help the platform and creators form high stickiness, and the platform to create high-quality Workflow and tools. The founder has 10 years of experience in online literature, deeply understands the boundaries of AI capabilities, and quickly iterates and optimizes capabilities
“Many people think it’s very simple to make an AI writing tool,” Meng Ge said, “but people who don’t understand online literature don’t know what a popular formula is, what is rhythm, and what is a golden finger.” ”
Fourth, interest binding
Having said so much, but it is very important that users can continue to make money through tools & Workflow, otherwise they can’t retain users, we see that Xingyue’s paying user renewal rate is very high, and behind it is still everyone really makes money, which is extremely important: users earn manuscript fees on the platform, promoters make money on commissions, prompt writers make money by customization, and lecturers make money by courses
“Everyone has made money in this ecosystem, who will leave easily?”
9. Some thoughts
In this article, we have broken down in detail the story of Brother Meng’s Xingyue writing entrepreneurship, I believe that everyone on the market has hardly seen the same detailed analysis, after writing, I have a few thoughts:
1. Timing is more important than effort The explosion of AI capabilities + the pain points of the online text industry + the industry experience of founders, all three are indispensable.
2. Let users become your employees Through the benefit mechanism, let users help you promote, answer questions, and create content for you.
3. Ecological thinking is not about being a tool, but about building an ecosystem. Tools can be copied, but ecology is difficult to replicate.
4. Positive feedback loop Users make money → share cases → attract new users → more people make money, and the flywheel can’t stop once it spins.
I believe you will also have your own thinking.
Who says domestic AI applications can’t make money? The key is whether you have found the right track, whether you really understand user needs, and whether you have built your own moat.
Brother Meng used the case of Xingyue AI to tell us: The opportunity is always there, it depends on whether you can seize it.
Finally, I would like to say that AI is not here to grab human jobs, but to help humans better create value. In the field of online writing, AI is not to replace authors, but to give more people the opportunity to become authors and more people to earn income through creation. This may be the greatest value of AI.
