Influencers and popular users on Chinese Q&A platform Zhihu will be able to link products listed on e-commerce site Pinduoduo as a way to drive revenues for them and for the platform, tech outlet 36Kr reported on Tuesday.
Merchandise from Pinduoduo will be part of Zhihu’s goods recommendation function, which already includes products from Taobao, JD.com, and Zhihu’s own portal. The Q&A platform started offering this function last September in a move to raise revenue. Currently, only a group of selected users will be able to post Pinduoduo’s links, but the function is expected to be open to a large user base later on.
Vendors on Pinduoduo can offer a commission between 1% to 50% to Zhihu to promote their products. Influencers will get a 30% cut from the commission of each product sold, while the remaining 70% will go to Zhihu, according to the 36Kr report.
Zhihu’s move shares similarities with strategies from other short-video apps such as Kuaishou. The video platform witnessed its users buy goods worth over RMB 100 million (USD 14 million) between Aug. 28 and Aug. 30 via links from e-commerce platform JD.com, Pinduoduo, Tmall, and Taobao, KrASIA reported last year.
Kuaishou and Chinese search engine Baidu co-led Zhihu’s USD 434 million Series F round in August. The firm also has Tencent among its earlier investors.
36Kr is KrASIA’s parent company