Today during a casual chat in the market, a student showed me a trending topic—a certain KOL with a massive following posted a screenshot of a donation to the Hong Kong fire incident. But netizens quickly exposed it as photoshopped—a fake. Even more outrageous, they immediately posted an ad right after.

How is this any different from those fake earthquake donation scandals back in the day? Taking advantage of a moment when everyone is anxious to fake charity for hype is indeed a shortcut to becoming a "big influencer."

On that note, let’s talk about how KOLs actually make money.

**The four mainstream ways:**
1. Ad monetization
2. Scamming followers
3. Earning commissions
4. Trading themselves

If you count training, that’s five.

**Ads:** On platforms like TikTok or Xiaohongshu, if you have traffic, you can get ads. But there’s a big difference between doing this with or without a conscience—we can’t control others.

**Scamming followers:** Things like launching coins, or calling out coins to buy. If a certain influencer didn’t have a big position in BTC, would he keep hyping BTC every day? If BTC works out, countless altcoins go bust.

**Earning commissions:** Just look at their pinned posts and bios and you’ll get it. But again, it depends. Some do it shamelessly, some do it based on skill. The key is, exchanges open up this channel, and ordinary people don’t even qualify.

Honestly, real pros who are good at trading contracts couldn’t care less about these commissions. Let’s do the math: open a 100x leveraged position with 1,000 USDT, that’s 100,000 USDT principal. For BTC, at a 0.015% fee, a single trade costs 100 USDT in fees, and 50% commission is 50 USDT. But to make money in contracts, you can’t trade frequently. For example, this time shorting at 92,000, a 5% move on 100,000 USDT is a 5,000 USDT profit. How much is the fee? The difference is 100x.

People who can make consistent profits don’t care about that little commission at all. Same with spot trading—you won’t operate frequently. Why trade all the time? Anyone who knows the business knows: the more you trade, the more mistakes you make, the heavier your losses.

**Trading themselves:** No need to explain, everyone understands.

**Training:** Compared to the above, this is the slowest and most tiring way to make money. You have to put in real, hands-on work. Right now I have a student staying with me for 30 days. I basically don’t take a break; I teach and trade live every day. If you don’t have the skills, you’ll be exposed quickly. I put in the effort and get the reward I deserve. No scamming, no ripping people off. I treat every crypto friend who trusts me with sincerity.

I mentioned these on today’s livestream. I wasn’t planning to talk about industry secrets—it’s unrelated to trading and distracts from the focus. But the students brought it up, and the media exposed it, so I just said my piece.