Creating and monetizing a channel in Zen correctly

Zen is one of the fairly common channels with personalized content recommendations, operating on the basis of modern neural networks. It is also one of the largest publishing platforms. Today, it provides a virtually endless feed of publications, which is issued to users in accordance with their requests, individual preferences, and interests. You can also find the latest, most relevant news on the platform. Consumers can use the service both from desktop devices and from their smartphones. In the latter case, a separate application has been developed for Andriod and iOS. All this makes Zen quite popular in the consumer market.

After the platform separated from the Yandex ecosystem, its audience began to grow at a fairly accelerated pace. Today, Zen is used by more than 40 million people, while at the end of last year their number barely reached 30 million. That is, over the year, the audience has increased by about 25%. At the same time, over 6 million short videos, more than 6 million large full-length videos, as well as about 16 million articles were published on the platform. Similar statistics are provided by the platform itself in the section for authors, thereby stimulating them to join the community and offer users their original content.

As part of today's review, we will dwell in more detail on what this platform is and the innovations that have appeared on it relatively recently. We will tell you about the features of creating and setting up your personal channel in Zen. Get acquainted with the basic requirements for publications and the nuances of promotion on the platform. We will describe in detail how to set up monetization for individuals, self-employed persons, sole proprietors, and legal entities. We will highlight the main difficulties that you may encounter in practice when working with the Zen platform. You can get acquainted with the main trends and features of Zen channels for business here.

A Brief History of the Zen Service

Initially, the platform was created by Yandex, and its original name was Yandex. Zen. It was a kind of service with recommended material for users with different interests. The trial version appeared on the market in 2015. There was no unique author's content here, and readers were simply offered materials taken from popular sites. And only in mid-2017, Zen began to offer publishers, authors, and brands to publish their own content here. It is interesting that the service was initially launched on mobile devices, and later the classic accessible version was also pulled in. But about a year later, Zen became a full-fledged business project with an individual development strategy.

A number of fundamental changes in the platform occurred in 2019:

• March. A mobile editor was launched. Information about reader activity is now displayed directly in the user profile. A special algorithm was used to identify channels in narrow niches and select content for users that received the highest ratings from other people.
• July. A new mechanism was launched that allows you to identify people who watched a video to the end or read the material completely. There is already a division between channel subscribers and the audience. Even engaged users who regularly study materials on the platform did not always subscribe to the channel. And now these concepts have been separated.
• August. When posting a publication, it was now possible to add marks about native advertising.
• September. Zen launched the ability to monetize channels for self-employed individuals. At the same time, any authors, regardless of their category, could post their video content on the platform.
• November. From this time on, several people could simultaneously get access to the same channel on Zen. Moreover, these could be both authors and advertisers.

The platform's development did not stop there. In 2020, the audience increased significantly. This is largely due to the lockdown introduced in response to the widespread coronavirus infection. The channel developers also made changes to the feed design and added a number of rules for different categories of users. About a year later, Zen began working with a new publication format - posts. Significant changes also affected the "Statistics" section in the users' personal account, and cross-posting to Telegram was launched through a built-in bot. By the way, from that time until today, there have been special broadcasts and recordings of Zen Mondays and Zen Fridays, during which meetings with channel authors are held, conferences for journalists, media, and publishers are launched.

September 2022 is the date when Zen passed from the Yandex platform to new owners - social network VKontakte, turning into an independent content hosting. Since then, the platform has begun to develop at a faster pace. Significant changes have occurred in the monetization schemes that existed at that time. In particular, content creators began to receive payment only after subscribers interacted with the material. Here, the number of views, reading rates to the end, placing likes and comments were taken into account. This is how the system determined the interestingness and usefulness of the presented materials and could subsequently recommend them to other readers. At that time, only those channels with more than 100 subscribers could count on monetization.

The last time the monetization rules on Zen were changed was at the end of the summer of 2023. To activate it, it was necessary to get at least 30 hours of viewing from subscribers per month. Also, not only subscribers, but also the general audience of the platform that interacted with the material began to be taken into account here.

Additional innovations

For greater convenience of familiarization with the rest of the innovations of the Zen platform, we have highlighted a number of key changes and provided them in the form of a list:

• The design of the platform has become more subscription-oriented: initially, users are shown publications from those channels to which they are subscribed, and then — other relevant content;
• smart feed algorithms allowed young channels to compete with those who have been working on the platform for a long time and get into recommendations;
• to subscribe to a channel you like, you need to go through the authorization stage on the platform;
• the unification of Zen and Pulse as services belonging to the VKontakte platform;
• a new section has been added for viewing user comments and posting your responses to them;
• the presence of reposts, allowing people to share their favorite publications in the feed of their channel;
• you can now embed a block with polls in the posts themselves;
• the Promo Pages tool has been launched to promote advertising materials, and paid promotion has been disabled;
• if desired, the channel owner can delete the viewing history, individual publications or all materials: clearing the history does not affect personal recommendations, and all reactions and interests continue be taken into account;
• the content presented in the feed is sorted by format, which simplifies the selection of the appropriate option for yourself;
• subscribers can pin up to three channels that are most interesting to them: they will be displayed at the top of the list;
• to create a channel cover, it will be enough to get 500 subscriptions, while previously the figure was 1000 subscriptions;
• a section "Topics" appeared with such thematic tabs as: Beauty and style, Travel, Sports, Food, Gaming, Economy, Auto (material that has received the widest discussion on the network is added to trends);
• the channel feed is almost endless: the user can scroll through it without going to other pages;
• via the video player, you can remove the black fields along the edges of the video and set an individual playback speed;
• withdrawal of earned money is possible through the fast payment system directly to a bank account: relevant for residents of Russia, and the withdrawal amount is minimum 10 rubles.

All this makes the platform extremely convenient and functional to work with, as well as accessible to everyone who can create unique original content and would like to earn money on it.

What you need to know about the features of the Zen feed formation

At the beginning of the review, we talked about the fact that Zen offers users relevant news, blogs, videos and publications. That is, when forming its selections, it takes into account the individual interests of a person. But here we are not talking about specific channels, bloggers, but directly about the publications themselves. Thanks to this, interaction with a huge number of content makers is ensured, which allows you to hear different opinions on the same topic and make an appropriate conclusion for yourself. In addition, anyone who subscribes to Zen will be able to pin 3 favorite channels to their feed, and thus constantly stay up to date with new releases.

Along with the recommendations themselves, the platform also provides explanations, indicating why the user was provided with this particular material. That is, as an option, it could be a subscription to a similar channel, viewing similar publications, etc. At the same time, users can easily interact with the content, put likes, dislikes and other reactions. By the way, they will have a direct impact on the recommendation feed, so it is in your interests to create content for Zen that would be highly appreciated by the user audience.

If the material receives a dislike, a window will automatically open with information indicating that in the future you will be shown less similar content. You will also have the opportunity to complain about this or that material and even hide all publications of a certain channel for yourself. If you decide to change your mind, you can cancel this dislike.

If you like any of the materials on the Zen platform, you can share it on your social networks, copy the link to it and send it to friends, acquaintances, or save it for the future. For those users for whom the platform has not yet collected material, that is, has not found out their interests, the platform offers universal publications that are interesting to the majority of the audience. Subsequently, thanks to artificial intelligence, Zen will learn, identifying those materials that most interested a person. Here, the topics and time spent studying this or that content will be taken into account. That is, the more activity you show on the platform, the faster it will adapt to your interests and will offer the most relevant publications. If you work with the mobile version of the platform, you can use the filter system here and set up a smart feed for yourself based on your own preferences. That is, you can mark the topics that may be of interest to you.

Main functional capabilities of the Zen platform

Zen is a fairly universal platform that will be useful for a fairly wide market segment. In particular, it can be used by:

1. Content authors. Here they will be able to find regular readers for their publications and build an effective channel of interaction with users and even make money on this. It will be possible to launch native advertising, form separate advertising blocks in their publications. To implement the latter point, it is necessary to take into account the relevant requirements that exist on the platform.
2. Publishers. Zen will help attract a fairly impressive target audience that will be happy to contact you. To do this, it will be enough to simply post interesting author's content in the feed, including links leading to personal sites.
3. Brands. In the face of Zen users, you will find a huge target audience, and you will also be able to interact with it, which will help increase loyalty. In addition, here you can place native advertising completely free of charge. And this is what minimizes your costs for promoting your business online.

That is, we can confidently say that Zen is an excellent channel for attracting a target audience for both business and independent authors, online publications. The only thing left is to do it so that you end up in its feed. We will talk about how to do everything correctly here later.

The nuances of creating a channel in Zen

The first thing we would like to draw your attention to is the free use of the service. If you want to make sure that your material is posted in the Zen feed, you just need to register on the site. This can be done through a personal account in Yandex or through the VK ID service. Before starting work, the site will offer you to choose one of the most convenient ways for you to post your publications, namely through Zen Studio or by connecting your site to this service. According to many, the first option is simpler, more functional and easier to use. This is what we will talk about next.

We also want to draw your attention to the fact that you can get a special channel verification icon. To do this, you need to be a media personality, a brand, or a popular opinion leader, and meet one of the following requirements:

• having rights to a verified social network account and the ability to confirm this;
• having a personal article in Wikipedia: you will need to provide it;
• having publications in well-known media dedicated to a specific company or person.

Now let's move directly to how to launch a publication through Zen Studio.

How to place a publication through Zen Studio

If you are just starting to work on the site, then launch the first publication dedicated to your channel. In particular, you need to go to Zen Studio, and then select "Settings" in the menu. A window will open in front of you, where you write the name of your channel, upload its cover and avatar. Also, be sure to describe the sources from which the material will be included in the publications.

Further settings are performed in the corresponding tabs:

• "Additional". Here you can provide links to your website, profile on social networks, specify your email, contact phone number.
• "Notifications". Specify here those user actions about which you will receive notifications.
• "Contacts". Write your phone number. It can be used to restore access if you forget your password.
• "Video Player". Customize the settings based on which videos will be played for your browser and the device itself.
• «Accesses». Add users who will run the channel with you. To do this, simply click on the «Add» button and enter the person's email. Also add access rights for him: administrator, editing, viewing.
• «Black list». All blocked accounts will be stored here.
• «Crossposting». Here you can link your channel to a profile in Telegram or VK Play. In this case, publications from them will be automatically duplicated in your channel on Zen.
• «Pulse». If you still use this service, you can transfer all publications from it to your channel on Zen.
• «Web analytics». Connect analytics tools that will allow you to quickly and easily analyze the behavior of your readers.

In order to place the publication itself, you will need to go to your personal account and click on the icon with the «+» sign located in the upper right corner and then select the content format that suits you. You can find out more about the available publication options here. If you want to place a video, then after clicking on the corresponding button, a window will open in front of you, into which you simply drag your file. If you place an article, then a full-fledged editor with a set of classic tools for formatting text will open in front of you.

Also, under the channel name, you can see data on the number of viewing hours that you need to get in order to activate monetization. In any case, you must post only unique author's content, be loyal to other authors and your target audience, avoid knowingly false data, spam and other publications with questionable links. Also, it is prohibited to advertise weapons, drugs and other similar categories of goods on the platform. If you comply with these requirements, your channel will be subject to pessimization or even blocked. It is allowed to add clickable links and promo codes to the material.

What content display models are used in Zen?

Today, the following content display models are used in Zen:

1. Advanced display. It can be used by channels with a large number of subscribers or where a wide target audience is represented, a very popular topic, as well as those that can boast good statistics on views, reads, reactions.
2. Subscription display. Only channel subscribers will have access to such materials. With the general feed of recommendations, these publications may be inappropriate.

If you repeatedly violate the requirements of the platform, it will apply sanctions to you. Initially, the material will be shown only to subscribers. But if the problem is not resolved, the channel will be completely blocked, often without the right to restore.

Basic rules for promotion in Zen

In order for your Publications to generate income, so that you can connect monetization to them, it is important to ensure good promotion of the channel. And there are several key aspects here. The first thing I would like to draw special attention to is the high quality of the material. Only such publications are able to win over the user audience and contribute to the fact that the platform will promote them in recommendations. The process of ranking content in the feed is carried out automatically. Moreover, there is no option to pay for recommended impressions. What is important here is the rating from users, the number of people who subscribed to your channel, left positive feedback, sent requests for material on a similar topic. The total number of readers, likes, and clicks on each publication is also important. It is on the basis of these parameters that the ranking of channels in Zen is carried out.

This means that the only way to ensure a stable flow of user audience to your channel is to prepare useful, informative, interesting content that people will appreciate and recommend, speak well of. The platform automatically selects the 100 best channels in different topics and invites its readers to study this list. Those publications that become popular and attract an audience have every chance of making good money.

Here it is very important to initially attract the audience to your channel, because this is the only way they will be able to appreciate the usefulness and uniqueness of the material presented on it. This can be done in the following ways:

• Launch advertising through famous bloggers. To do this, you need to select channels working in a topic related to yours, where there is already a large number of subscriptions, constant publications. Send them your offer of paid advertising and, perhaps, they will publish material containing links to your channel.
• Using mutual PR. If you manage to find a channel that works in your subject and also needs promotion, you can launch a series of mutual reposts, which will also increase the reach of the target audience.
• Using the capabilities of social networks. Today, social networks are one of the most popular and convenient ways to communicate with the target audience. You can safely ask your regular subscribers to subscribe to your channel in Zen. If you have earned yourself a loyal audience, then most likely people will take this step without any problems.
• Placing comments under other people's publications. This also applies to materials from your subject or related ones. If you leave your comments under such publications, if they are professional and useful, then readers will be interested in getting to know your content. Remember: expert opinion always deserves respect and attention.

To ensure the most effective promotion in Zen, you need to constantly be on trend. This means that you should offer your audience only useful and relevant material. Write only about what you really understand. Dedicate your channel to one topic, do not jump from one issue to another. You must earn a reputation as an expert in a certain niche. Build the content itself in such a way that the most important things are presented in the first 3 paragraphs. Let's call this your limit, within which you can attract an audience. If you fail to interest a person in the first 3 paragraphs, they will not read further. This will immediately reduce the readability rate and minimize the chance of securing traffic for yourself in the future. The publications themselves should be regular. Make it a rule to post material at least once every 3 days.

All these recommendations work great in practice, despite the fact that Zen keeps its ranking formula a big secret. You don't have to be a big expert to understand that channels with a large number of subscribers, a regular audience, publications with likes, reposts will be automatically promoted by the platform and have every chance of getting into the TOP in their subject, getting the most out of monetization.

Now let's move directly to how you can make money on Zen.

How can you make money on Zen?

Today, you can make money on Zen in two ways:

1. Publications of native advertising. We are talking about posting material containing hidden advertising to which users will respond and go to your pages.
2. Connecting monetization. Only those channels that have been able to gain 30 hours of viewing from the audience over the past month will be able to take advantage of this opportunity. After that, the corresponding button will become active in Zen Studio.

Let's take a closer look at both of these ways to earn money on Zen. This way, you can navigate the available options and choose the one that will be most convenient for your subsequent work.

What is earnings on native advertising

If you choose to earn money on native advertising, you will need to negotiate directly with advertisers. That is, you prepare interesting material and offer this or that company to use it for their advertising purposes for a fee. Such a solution will be quite attractive to many bloggers. The main thing is not to overdo it here. If the site detects obvious advertising, it will not recommend the material to the user audience. That is, you need to do everything as interestingly as possible and within the rules established on Zen. In this case, during the publication process, you will need to go to the settings and select an option such as "partner material". No additional agreements with the site are required here.

Native advertising can be simply a mention of a brand, a specific product with a link, or any other product placement. It is important that everything looks as organic as possible here. A small recommendation: work only with those companies that provide goods or services in the context of the topic that you cover on Zen. This is the only way to get into the site's recommendations, meet the advertiser's expectations, and make a profit for yourself. In addition, working in the same niche will allow you to get the most loyal audience, which means that people will actively respond to your publications, repost them, leave likes, comments, which in itself will contribute to the promotion of the channel on the site.

Features of channel monetization on Zen

There is nothing complicated here. The only thing is that you will need to delve into the distinctive features of the upcoming work. Essentially, you will have to fill out a questionnaire, upload the relevant documents there, and accept the terms of the offer. Then the request is sent for moderation and, if everything goes well, you start earning. But, connecting monetization directly depends on the status through which you plan to work on the platform:

1. Individual. In this case, we are talking about the fact that the platform will automatically place advertising blocks inside your publications so that you receive money. Income in this case will directly depend on how effective the interaction of the user audience with your content is. That is, the more popular your material is, the more advertising blocks the platform will place in it and, accordingly, your income level will increase. To connect monetization, go to the appropriate section and click on the “Fill out the form” button. From the drop-down list, select the “Individual” option, and then attach a copy of your passport and SNILS to it. Sign an agreement with Zen. In the platform's mobile application, take your selfie with your passport. Next, we get acquainted with the offer, accept its terms and send the application for moderation. The entire review process takes a couple of weeks. As soon as permission is received, advertising blocks will begin to appear in your material. You will be able to withdraw the first money you earn in 2 days after the verification is completed through the "Balance/Withdraw money" section. You can use the YuMoney wallet, VK Pay, and also bank cards. In this case, the platform will automatically withdraw 13% of personal income tax and transfer it to the state as a tax.
2. Self-employed. We are talking about individuals who pay income tax as self-employed. Initially, you enter into an agreement with the platform, as we have already described above, only you choose the monetization method "Self-employment". Then register in the taxpayer's account directly on the FTS portal. Send a connection request directly through the "Self-employed registration" window. Next, confirm all permissions in the "partners" tab on the FTS website. After that, all you have to do is connect your taxpayer account on the Zen platform through the "Self-employed registration" window and activate monetization by clicking on the corresponding button.
3. Individual entrepreneur. Individual entrepreneurs registered in the territory of the Russian Federation and working under the simplified taxation scheme can also enter into a cooperation agreement with the platform. In this case, the tax rate is 6%. In order to connect monetization, you need to select the "Individual entrepreneur" option at the stage of filling out the questionnaire and indicate the relevant data in it. Also, copies of documents, in particular, a passport and SNILS, are mandatory to upload. In the mobile version of the platform, take a selfie with your passport. Next, accept the offer and you can send the application for moderation. All funds will be automatically transferred to your individual entrepreneur bank account.
4. Legal entity. Legal entity. This option is suitable for people who have opened an LLC. A mandatory condition here is Russian registration. Zen works with any organizations, including those that use a simplified taxation system. To connect monetization in this case, you must select the "Legal entity" option at the stage of filling out the questionnaire. Next, fill in the relevant information and accept the terms of the offer. After that, you can send your application for moderation. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that in this case, payments will be made only once a month and only after the amount on your balance exceeds 3,000 rubles.
5. Social commerce. At the time when the site belonged to Yandex, it was allowed to publish product widgets directly in articles, but now this option is no longer active, but still, if you would like to add reviews and links to your products, then you should use an option such as social commerce. In this case, you should select the appropriate option from the drop-down list when connecting monetization, namely when filling out the questionnaire. In this case, you will need to fit the link into your content as organically as possible, and also add the name of the product to which it will lead in the title and description. For social commerce, it is optimal to use publication options such as selections, reviews, personal experience of use, solving a specific problem, comparing the same products from different brands or different models, covering new products. In order for the material to attract as many users as possible, rely on personal experience. Show your expertise in this niche, describe the advantages and disadvantages of the product, compare its quality and price, provide recommendations for choosing.

What problems can you encounter when working with Zen?

If you are just starting your work with the site, then we want to say that you have chosen a not very easy option for earning money. There are a number of points here that you should know in advance. Namely:

• The platform changes its work algorithms very often. As a result, it may happen that without any apparent reason your impressions may sharply go down. Such swings will have an extremely negative impact on monetization indicators. That is, in this case, there will be no way to talk about any consistency of earnings.
• Content preparation on the platform should be constant. We have already said that at least it is necessary to release material every 3 days. But not everyone can provide this. This requires not only direct writing of text, recording of video, but also its design, photo processing, editing, as well as searching for original ideas. Is this option suitable for you personally? Will it justify itself in practice?
• There is no universal approach to channel development. You will have to constantly experiment, test different topics, formats, and presentations of material in order to understand which solutions appeal to the target audience the most, causing them to interact with you in return.
• You need to be an expert in your niche. This is what will guarantee high-quality publications, which readers will appreciate.
• Difficulties with choosing a niche. On the one hand, if you choose a fairly narrow topic, you will be able to attract people with your expertise. But the problem is that you can run out of ideas for publication very quickly. On the contrary, a niche that is too broad provides a lot of opportunities for preparing interesting material, but will you be able to implement it in practice? If you show even a little bit of your incompetence, the audience will stop interacting with you.

Now it's time to think about whether it is worth launching your Zen channel. Weigh all the "Pros" and "Against" to make the most correct decision.

Summing up

We hope that the information we presented in this material will help you understand the feasibility of launching your own channel on the site. Yes, Zen is currently one of the most effective channels for promoting publications for all those who specialize in content creation. Yes, it opens up good prospects for earning money both on native advertising and through monetization. Ordinary content makers will get a good free platform here for posting their materials. Brands will be able to increase their target audience reach, increase the level of engagement, loyalty. But still, you cannot do without an extraordinary creative approach and constant work. Only if you constantly prepare materials, process them professionally, you will be able to get your channel into recommendations, which will be the key to making a profit.

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