Monetization at 100 Followers: WeChat’s Self-Rescue vs. My Commitment to Reading Experience

Found some good news today: The threshold for becoming a “Traffic Master” (monetization) on WeChat Official Accounts has been lowered.

As long as your follower count is 100 or more, you can now activate most advertising slots. This includes “Comment Section Ads,” “Bottom Ads,” “In-Article Ads,” “In-Article Keyword Ads,” “Post-Video Ads,” and “Commission-based Product Promotions.”

For long-tail, small subscription accounts like ours, this is absolutely a win-win situation. Official Account authors get incentives to continue creating, while the platform gains more ad revenue and more content.

(Note: The threshold for “Mutual Selection Advertising” has not been lowered; it remains at 500 followers. The Traffic Master backend overview shows it requires >= 500 followers, but the activation page displays a threshold of >= 100. This is likely a copywriting bug.)

1 Why Lower the Threshold?

As a creator of a small subscription account (low follower count), let me discuss a few phenomena I’ve observed:

1. In 2025, acquiring traffic for subscription accounts has become increasingly difficult.

Although algorithmic recommendations can bring traffic to small accounts, the general feeling in 2025 is that recommended traffic is shrinking. It is obvious that the recommendation strategy has undergone a major overhaul, now placing greater emphasis on account weight (follower count, account activity, and output quality).

At the same time, the use of “Content Boost” (search/recommendation promotion) has become stricter. In 2024, my account could use boost coupons, but in 2025, I am surprisingly blocked from using them, with a prompt stating, “The current account cannot use the boost function temporarily.” There is no issue with the quality of my articles (all handmade originals), and the WeChat Open Community is full of similar cases. It can be inferred that restrictions are being applied based on account weight.

In 2025, I haven’t felt the platform’s traffic support for small subscription accounts; in fact, the support seems to have diminished. It is also possible that the articles I post simply don’t suit the taste of the recommendation algorithm.

2. The recommendation algorithm and account weighting are a mystery.

The backend no longer displays data for “Recommendation Impressions” or “Click-Through Rate,” only “Recommended Reads” (clicks). Creators can no longer reverse-engineer the algorithm’s preferences through data. This may be intentional on the part of the Official Account platform to prevent writing specifically to pander to the algorithm. This might be a good thing, forcing everyone to return to the content itself.

3. Growing follower counts is getting harder.

Even with a viral article getting 10,000 reads, it might only bring in about 100 new followers. With the recommendation feed, users don’t care if the content in their stream is from an account they follow or a recommendation—as long as they are interested, they will read it even without following. This lowers the impulse to follow.

Users will only generate a desire to follow if they truly recognize the value of the subscription account’s content and want to see more of its articles.

4. The Matthew Effect is intensifying.

Even after a user follows, if they don’t “Star” (mark as important) the subscription account, it is very difficult for the account to appear in their subscription feed. The lower the read rate from existing fans, the less traffic the article gets for diffusion, making it even more unlikely to generate new followers. This forms a dead loop: small accounts cannot grow, leaving only the big accounts, turning the Official Account platform into stagnant water (which could likely lead to decline and extinction).

In the era of short video, Official Account traffic is shrinking, gradually being overtaken by short video platforms. Facing the shockwave of short video, Official Accounts need fresh blood.

Lowering the threshold is intended to let small accounts earn a little income so they can continue updating. Only then will the platform have a continuous source of high-quality text-and-image content. The platform needs more quality content to retain traffic and maintain user stickiness.

At the same time, I hope the Official Account recommendation algorithm can lower the weight of the account and give higher weight to the quality of the article. Only then can small and new accounts grow, and only with fresh blood can the platform flourish. Simply put, it needs a decentralized, equal-rights recommendation algorithm like Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book).

The introduction of “paid boosting” also means that without payment, there is a high probability of not being recommended, which conflicts to some extent with the free “content boosting” in account growth. How to balance paid promotion and content-based recommendation (free of charge), that is, to balance commercial income, user experience, and support for small accounts to maintain a healthy ecosystem, is a consideration for WeChat official accounts.

2 Final Thoughts

2.1 Why do I insist on writing text-and-image content?

The information density and acquisition efficiency of reading text far exceed that of video (whether short or long).

At the same time, text is much friendlier for information retrieval/search, which is the advantage of Official Accounts. For knowledge acquisition, my personal habit is to prioritize text and images; I will only watch a video if I need to see a demonstration of an operation.

Posting on my Official Account satisfies my desire for expression, stemming from my habit of blogging. The Official Account is just something I do on the side—a byproduct.

2.2 Regarding Income

I don’t expect the Traffic Master program to bring me substantial income. My attitude is: If there is money, it’s the icing on the cake; if not, I earn influence. The easiest place to make money by posting text is the Ant Community, where a casual 50-word post or a post with 20k views can earn over 100 RMB.

I have a bottom line: Reading experience comes first.

Even if I were destitute and down and out, needing to earn these few scraps of silver, I would prioritize placing a donation link on my blog rather than ads.

For my Official Account articles, I will not enable “In-Article Ads” or “Comment Section Ads” or other forms that interfere with reading. I want to leave you with a clean reading space.