Started by Lao Mai in 2012 as a personal productivity blog, sspai grew into a digital lifestyle community with 10M+ readers, monetizing through ads, content commerce, and paid subscriptions — one of China's most influential independent tech media brands.
SSPAI's competitors are not just other media outlets — they include Bilibili creators, WeChat public accounts, Jike influencers, and Xiaohongshu bloggers — all content creators are fighting for user attention. In an era of fragmentation, building brand recognition for deep reading is increasingly difficult.
Moving from content to e-commerce means transitioning from asset-light to asset-heavy — inventory management, customer service, supplier negotiations. SSPAI's solution: most products are digital goods (zero inventory), physical merchandise is only brand tokens and not produced at scale.
SSPAI requires a full-time editorial team to maintain content quality — this differs from the solo OPC model. If expanding the content team, ensure the revenue model can support staffing costs. The per-person output ceiling in the content industry is very low.
SSPAI's content style emphasizes real-world experience over spec comparisons, maintaining a long-term principle of 'recommend only what editors have genuinely used,' building extremely high reader trust. This trust asset directly translates into e-commerce conversion rates and brand premium pricing power.
| GeekPark: Conversation with sspai's Founder — A Decade of Building a 'Slow' Media Brand | Media | - |
