Traffic Is More Than Currency: The Social Role and Responsibility Behind Influence

A friend asked me: “Why is everyone talking about monetizing traffic these days?”

My answer: because the world isn’t short of products—it’s short of attention. Whoever can capture attention has a chance to convert that attention into income.

But then I added a second sentence: “If all you can think about is monetizing, you usually never cash in.”

He didn’t quite get it. So I explained.

Traffic Is the Quantification of Trust

Most people’s understanding of “traffic” is too narrow. They equate traffic with “eyeball count”—the more people see you, the larger your traffic, the more you can monetize.

But this understanding misses the essence of traffic. Traffic is not just eyeball count. It is the quantification of trust relationships.

Think about it: why do you keep following a certain account? Not just because the content is interesting, but because on some level you trust the person—you trust their taste, their judgment, their honesty, or their expertise.

This trust has a specific scope. Trusting a doctor’s medical knowledge doesn’t mean you trust the supplements they recommend. Trusting a critic’s film reviews doesn’t mean you trust the investment scheme they’re pitching.

Trust has boundaries. Monetization that crosses those boundaries is overdrawing on trust.

Not All Traffic Should Be Monetized

This is the most overlooked point.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare’s pandemic livestreams drew enormous traffic—but their purpose was public communication, not monetization. Greenpeace’s environmental videos rack up high view counts—but their purpose is to convey values, not sell products. A teacher’s freely shared educational content gets viewed by hundreds of thousands—but its purpose is education, not profit.

None of this traffic is “monetized,” yet it is what keeps society running.

In “When Nudity Becomes Language: Bodily Grammar and Algorithmic Symbiosis in the Digital Age”, I discussed how algorithms push all content toward “maximizing engagement.” But engagement isn’t value, and reach isn’t influence. The value of some traffic lies precisely in the fact that it isn’t commercialized—it stays pure, and so people trust it.

The Disaster of Role Mismatch

The core concept here is Persona—the mask of personality.

Who you are determines the nature of your traffic. Your Persona determines why people follow you, trust you, and are willing to spend time on your content.

If you’re a knowledge-driven opinion leader, your influence comes from your professional depth and your non-commercial stance. People trust you because you don’t appear to be selling anything—you appear to be sharing knowledge.

Now, what happens if you suddenly start promoting some product? What will your followers think?

“How much did he get paid?” “Were the things he recommended before also sponsored?” “Turns out he’s no different after all.”

Once these thoughts appear, the trust you accumulated over years can collapse within days.

This isn’t hypothetical—it’s something that happens on social media every day. A KOL in the nonprofit field starts taking sponsored posts; a commentator who once discussed public policy starts selling courses—and the confusion of roles immediately triggers a crisis of trust.

Wanting everything often turns you into the bat that fits nowhere: telling mammals it’s a mammal, telling birds it’s a bird. In the end, neither side claims you.

The Right Way to Use Influence

So what should you do? Can you never monetize at all?

No. The point is that your method of monetization must be consistent with your Persona.

If you’re a professional knowledge-driven creator, your monetization can be writing books, teaching courses, offering consulting services—all of these are extensions of your professional ability, consistent with your role, and your followers won’t feel a sense of dissonance.

But if you go off selling unrelated products—weight-loss pills, financial tools, some brand’s skincare—that’s role mismatch. It’s not that you can’t sell, but you must clearly understand: every act of monetization through role mismatch is consuming your most precious asset—trust.

In “Technology Begins with Humanity: The Business Lessons of Facebook’s Algorithm Overhaul”, I discussed how Facebook shifted its algorithm from “maximizing engagement” to “meaningful interactions.” Brands and individuals need to make the same shift—from “maximizing traffic” to “maximizing trust.”

Trust is a hundred times harder to accumulate than traffic, and a hundred times more valuable.

Refusing the Clamor of Conformity

“Monetize your traffic” gets repeated endlessly because it’s a manifestation of humanity’s herd instinct. We see others talking about it, so we talk about it too, as if not discussing traffic monetization makes us obsolete.

But profound influence requires sedimentation. It comes from solitary thinking, not from noisy bandwagon-jumping.

What is your influence? Who does it serve? In what form should it be conveyed?

Thinking these questions through clearly matters far more than rushing to “monetize.” Because those who monetize without thinking it through ultimately produce not money, but a pile of unfollow notifications.

Don’t let your influence degenerate into a cheap number that reeks only of money.