How to Grow on Bilibili: Views, Followers and Danmaku

You found the video through a friend's link. Halfway through, the screen fills with scrolling white text, hundreds of comments flying right to left, and at one exact second the whole thing erupts into the same two characters: 前方高能. You don't read Chinese yet, but you can feel it. Something is about to happen, and a few thousand strangers already know. Then you look at the uploader's page, see a creator from Ohio or Manchester with a big following on Bilibili, and think: wait, people like me do this?

They do. Bilibili (哔哩哔哩, nicknamed B站) is the closest thing China has to YouTube, with a community layer YouTube never built. Growing there feels confusing at first because the signals are different: coins instead of thumbs, danmaku instead of a comment section you scroll past, partitions instead of a single algorithm soup, and a membership quiz before you can fully join in.

This guide walks you through how to grow on Bilibili from zero: getting an account set up, how danmaku culture works and how to design for it, what the triple (一键三连) and coins mean, choosing a partition, video length and covers, the money side through the Creator Incentive Program and charging (充电), and what foreign creators should know after Bilibili's 2026 international relaunch.

What makes Bilibili different from every app on your phone

Bilibili started in 2009 as a small anime and gaming site built around danmaku, the bullet comments that scroll across the video at the moment they were posted. It now covers knowledge, tech, food, music, games, vlogs and live streaming, and the community roots never left.

The numbers come from Bilibili's own quarterly reporting. On its second quarter 2026 earnings call, Bilibili said daily active users grew 7% year over year to 117 million, monthly active users reached 371 million, and average daily time spent per user rose to 113 minutes. It also said that by the end of that quarter its "official members" (users who passed the membership quiz, more on that below) reached 299 million, with 12-month retention around 80%. Monthly interactions, which include comments and bullet chats, hit 17.4 billion.

Two details from that same call matter for you as a creator. Bilibili said watch time from videos over five minutes grew 18% year over year, and the number of creators with more than 1,000 followers grew 30%. Translation: longer videos are still the core of the platform, and small creators are breaking through.

Getting set up: account, real name and the membership quiz

For years, the first wall for foreign creators was identity. Since July 2017, Bilibili has required uploaders to complete real-name verification (实名认证), a change it attributed to national policy. Mainland users verified with a Chinese phone number or ID, while overseas uploaders had to submit a passport or similar document. Plenty of people gave up at that step.

That changed in August 2026. Bilibili relaunched its international Android app (with a pink icon and a small globe to tell it apart from the Chinese version), and its creator account on X, @bilibili_create, said the global version offers "better localization & easier sign ups" while sharing the same content as the Chinese app. TechSpot and Semafor reported that Bilibili had quietly dropped the passport or ID requirement for overseas users to upload. At the time of writing, reporting said iOS support, an English website and a finalised monetisation structure for international creators were still on the way, so expect the details to keep moving.

Practical setup steps that hold either way:

1. Install the app that matches you. The international app suits creators outside China, while students and residents in the mainland usually use the Chinese app with a +86 number.
2. Pick a handle that works in two languages. Many foreign UP主 add a short Chinese name so viewers can search for them.
3. Write a simple bio in Chinese that says who you are and what you post.
4. Know that your location shows. Since July 2022 Bilibili displays an IP location (IP属地) on profiles and comments, showing the province for mainland users and the country or region for overseas users. Viewers will see you are posting from abroad, which is often part of the appeal.

The membership quiz (转正答题)

New accounts start at level LV0 as registered members (注册会员). To become an official member (正式会员) you take a quiz: the long-standing format is 100 questions, with 60 points needed to pass, covering community rules, danmaku etiquette and a choice of interest topics. New registered members have limited commenting and danmaku privileges until they pass. Passing moves you to LV1, and you keep levelling up toward LV6 through daily activity like logging in, watching and giving coins.

Do the quiz yourself, with a translator open if you need it. The rules section teaches you exactly which behaviour the community and the moderators dislike, which is the same behaviour that gets videos reported.

Danmaku culture: design videos people want to talk over

Danmaku is the heart of the platform. Every bullet comment is pinned to a timestamp, so a viewer watching tomorrow sees today's reactions flying past at the same moment. A video with no danmaku feels like an empty cinema. A video with lots of it feels like a party you're late to.

The habits you'll see

• 前方高能 ("high energy ahead"): a warning that something big is coming. If viewers type this before your best moment, you built the moment well.
• 空降 ("airdrop"): viewers posting a timestamp so latecomers can skip straight to the good part. Lots of 空降 to the same spot tells you where the real content starts, and that your intro is too long.
• Repetition waves: hundreds of people typing the same joke or lyric at the same second.
• The danmaku density graph (高能进度条): the curve above the progress bar showing where bullet chats cluster. Check it on your own videos. Peaks are the moments you should make more of.
• Etiquette: spoiling, flame wars and off-topic spam in danmaku are frowned upon, and the quiz covers this. Viewers can filter or block danmaku, and they will report the worst of it.

How to build for danmaku

Treat your video like a stand-up set with pauses for the audience:

• Give a beat after a punchline or reveal. Half a second of silence or a freeze frame is where the comments land.
• Ask a question on screen. "Which one would you pick?" with two options turns into a vote in danmaku.
• Plant a recurring bit. A catchphrase, a sound effect, a pet that walks into frame. Regulars will start announcing it before it happens.
• Show Chinese subtitles. Even if you speak English or broken Mandarin, burned-in Chinese subtitles let viewers quote you, and quoting is half of danmaku.
• Reply in the comments. Fans notice when the UP主 shows up.

Do not fake it. Bilibili's own Creator Incentive rules list 刷弹幕 (padding danmaku), alongside padded plays, reads and favourites, as ways of gaming the system that strip earnings from the affected video and can get you removed from the program for good.

The triple (一键三连) and what coins really mean

On YouTube a like costs nothing. Bilibili built a signal that costs the viewer something, and creators obsess over it.

The triple, 一键三连 ("one-click triple"), is like (点赞) plus coin (投币) plus favourite (收藏) at once. Long-press the like button and the app does all three. Creators end videos asking for 三连 the way YouTubers ask you to subscribe, and getting one is a real compliment.

Why coins are the expensive part

Coins (硬币) are scarce. According to Bilibili's own explanation of coins, accounts at LV1 or above with a bound phone receive one coin per day for logging in. Viewers can give one or two coins to a video and cannot coin their own work. When viewers coin your video, Bilibili says the UP主 receives 10% of those coins as a coin reward, so 1,000 coins given to you becomes 100 coins in your balance.

Coins themselves are not cash. You can't withdraw them, and creators who explain the system on Bilibili are clear that coins bring no direct income. What they bring is signal. A viewer who only gets one coin a day and spends it on you is telling the platform your video was worth more than everything else they watched. Bilibili does not publish its recommendation weights, so treat claims about exact coin multipliers as folklore. What Bilibili does publish is that its Creator Incentive earnings use "user preference" as the primary measure, calculated from interactions such as likes, so the engagement side clearly feeds the money side.

A useful health check: if your "how to" video gets likes but almost no favourites, people aren't finding it useful enough to keep.

Picking your partition (分区)

Every upload goes into a partition, a zone like 知识 (knowledge), 游戏 (games), 美食 (food), 生活 (life), 科技 or 数码 (tech), 音乐 (music), 舞蹈 (dance) or 动画 (animation), each with sub-zones beneath it. Viewers browse partitions directly, rankings are partly organised by them, and each one has its own culture and in-jokes.

Bilibili adjusts the zone list from time to time, adding or merging sub-zones, so choose from what your upload page shows today and stay consistent. Some zones also have restrictions. Bilibili's Creator Incentive rules exclude videos in the 番剧 (licensed anime), advertising and 放映厅 (films, TV and documentaries) areas from incentive earnings, and ordinary UP主 can't upload licensed anime episodes anyway.

How to choose:

• Pick the zone where your target viewer already hangs out. A foreigner cooking Sichuan food fits 美食. The same person explaining why British people queue fits 生活 or 知识.
• Watch the top 20 videos in that zone before you post. Note title formats, cover styles, typical length and what the danmaku jokes are.
• Stay in one primary zone for your first 20 to 30 videos. Followers on Bilibili tend to be interest-driven. Jumping between gaming, makeup and finance confuses both the audience and the recommendation system.

Video length, titles and covers

Length

Bilibili is a mid-to-long video platform. Its Q2 2026 call highlighted watch time on videos over five minutes growing faster than the platform overall, and video podcasts passing 100 million daily watch minutes. The audience will sit through a long video when it earns the time.

• Explainers, reviews, documentaries: often 8 to 20 minutes, sometimes far longer for deep dives.
• Vlogs and food: commonly 5 to 15 minutes.
• Memes, edits and short comedy: under 3 minutes is fine, and Bilibili has a vertical feed for short clips too.

Those are typical ranges from what ranks in each zone. Check the 空降 timestamps in your danmaku. If people keep jumping past your first 90 seconds, cut your intro.

Titles

Bilibili titles tend to be longer and more playful than YouTube's. They often include a hook in brackets, a number or a specific situation: 【美国人第一次吃螺蛳粉】 ("An American tries luosifen for the first time") is a format you'll see over and over. Write the title in Chinese, and get a native speaker to check it.

Covers (封面)

Covers do the same job as YouTube thumbnails. Make them 16:9 at high resolution and keep the key text and face away from the edges, because creators report that some app feeds display covers cropped toward 4:3. Big readable Chinese characters, one strong expression and a clear subject work better than a busy collage. Many Bilibili covers carry more words than a typical YouTube thumbnail.

Becoming an UP主 people follow

UP主 comes from "upload" plus 主 (owner or host), a term Bilibili inherited from Japanese video-sharing culture. It carries more personality weight than "content creator." Fans follow an UP主 the way you'd follow a friend's ongoing story, and Bilibili's Q2 2026 call said the average active user follows 96 creators. Your job is to be one of the 96 they actually open.

Things that build that kind of loyalty:

• A clear identity in one sentence. "The German engineer who rates Chinese EVs." "The Nigerian student learning Cantonese opera." Specific beats broad.
• Series and collections (合集). Numbered episodes give viewers a reason to binge and a reason to come back for episode 12.
• Posts in the 动态 feed. Bilibili's dynamics feed works like a community tab. Share behind-the-scenes, polls and quick updates between videos.
• Taking comments seriously. Pin a good comment, reply to corrections with grace, and say thank you when someone fixes your Chinese. The community remembers the UP主 who argue with every critic.
• Collaborations (联动). Joint videos with an UP主 in your zone introduce you to an audience that already trusts their taste.

Making money on Bilibili

Bilibili's 2024 ESG report said nearly 3.1 million UP主 earned income on the platform that year. Most of that comes from a few channels, each with its own entry bar.

The Creator Incentive Program

Bilibili's rules describe the program as paying for original, self-made videos based on "user preference, content popularity and content verticality," with user preference (calculated from interactions such as likes) as the primary measure. Earnings start the day after you upload and settle in Bilibili's "shell" (贝壳) system, which you can withdraw from once you reach 100 shells, minus tax and fees.

Three rules catch foreign creators out:

1. Bilibili must not get your video late. The rules say an incentive video's publish time on Bilibili cannot be later than on other platforms. If you post on YouTube on Monday and Bilibili on Thursday, that video earns nothing and repeated breaches lead to suspension from the program. Upload to Bilibili first or at the same time.
2. No commercial promotion inside incentive videos. Logos, sponsor reads and soft ads disqualify the video from incentive earnings.
3. Original work only. Re-uploading other people's videos breaks the rules and can lose you eligibility permanently.

The 电磁力 ("electromagnetic power") score is Bilibili's creator rating, built from your uploads, play and interaction data and fan activity, with a separate credit score for rule-following. Bilibili has changed these thresholds over the years, so check the 创作激励 page in your creator centre for the bar that applies when you apply. Bilibili does not publish a per-view rate, and incentive income is widely described by creators as modest. Treat it as a bonus.

Charging (充电)

Charging is Bilibili's fan-support system. Bilibili's charging service agreement describes two modes: custom charging, where fans pay any whole number of B币 (Bilibili's currency, priced at 1 yuan each, with a minimum of 1), and monthly charging, which includes a standard monthly tier and higher tiers whose price UP主 can set. Monthly supporters get a badge and can unlock perks you choose to offer, including exclusive stickers, giveaways, member-only posts and exclusive videos for higher-tier chargers. The agreement does not state the creator's revenue share, so check 收益管理 for your actual figures. Bilibili said on its Q2 2026 call that Fan Charging revenue grew nearly 50% year over year, so this is a growing part of how creators get paid.

花火 brand deals

花火 is Bilibili's official marketplace for sponsored videos. Its entry guide lists real-name verification, being at least 18, having at least 10,000 followers and meeting a 电磁力 credit-score bar. In 2023, e-commerce outlet ebrun reported a Bilibili notice that, from 12 November 2023, video collaborations for UP主 with 10,000 to 100,000 followers would be managed through 花火.

Foreign creators on Bilibili: what works and what to watch

Foreign UP主 have been a recognisable genre on Bilibili for years: people living in China documenting daily life, students reacting to Chinese food and slang, overseas creators explaining their own countries. The 2026 international push suggests Bilibili wants more of you. TechSpot reported Bilibili hiring community managers in Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, São Paulo, Istanbul and Tokyo, and said the company has been encouraging big global creators to upload to the existing platform.

What tends to work

• Curiosity in both directions. "What I got wrong about China" travels when it's fair and warm.
• Effort with the language. Trying Mandarin, even badly, earns goodwill.
• A real skill or niche. Engineers, chefs, musicians and athletes who happen to be foreign build longer-lasting followings than "foreigner reacts" channels.
• Respect for the community. Learn the in-jokes before you use them, and laugh at yourself when danmaku roasts your pronunciation.

What to watch

• Content rules. Bilibili operates under Chinese law and its community rules, and political and sensitive topics are moderated strictly. Read the rules covered in the quiz and the upload guidelines before posting anything near those lines.
• Monetisation for international accounts is still forming. Reporting on the relaunch said revenue sharing for international creators hadn't been finalised. Before you count on incentive or charging income, confirm you can actually withdraw it with a payment method Bilibili supports where you live.

Why buying engagement backfires here

Bilibili's Creator Incentive rules name padded plays, reads, favourites and danmaku as cheating, strip any earnings from the affected video, and allow Bilibili to remove you from the program permanently if you did it yourself. Purchased coins and triples also wreck your own data: you can no longer tell which videos your real audience loved. LitFame does not sell Bilibili services. Grow it with real viewers. If you're building in parallel on platforms where you already have a base, our YouTube services are there for that side of your channel, and the YouTube algorithm guide covers how to grow it.

For a map of where Bilibili sits next to Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Weibo and the rest, read the guide to Chinese social media platforms. If your content is more lifestyle and photo-led than video-led, the Xiaohongshu (RedNote) growth guide is the better fit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can foreigners make a Bilibili account and upload videos?

Yes. Since 2017 Bilibili required real-name verification to upload, and overseas users had to submit a passport or ID. In August 2026 Bilibili relaunched its international Android app, and TechSpot and Semafor reported that it dropped the ID requirement for overseas users. The details are still changing, so check the current sign-up flow in the app.

What does 一键三连 mean on Bilibili?

It means the one-click triple: like (点赞), coin (投币) and favourite (收藏) at the same time, triggered by long-pressing the like button. Creators ask for it the way YouTubers ask for subscribes, and it is the strongest show of support a regular viewer can give.

Do Bilibili coins make creators money?

Not directly. Coins can't be withdrawn as cash. Bilibili says creators receive 10% of the coins viewers give them as a coin reward, and coins work mainly as a strong appreciation signal, since viewers only get about one free coin a day. Real income comes from the Creator Incentive Program, charging, brand deals and live streaming.

How hard is the Bilibili membership quiz?

The quiz is 100 questions and you need 60 points to pass and become an official member. Questions cover community rules, danmaku etiquette and interest topics you choose. With a translation app and some patience, most people pass, and the rules section is worth reading properly.

What are the requirements for Bilibili's Creator Incentive Program?

Bilibili's published rules, last edited in January 2023, ask for a creativity or influence score of 55 and a credit score of at least 80 in its 电磁力 creator rating. Videos must be original, free of sponsored content, and must not be published on Bilibili later than on other platforms. Bilibili changes thresholds over time, so check your creator centre.

How long should Bilibili videos be?

There is no ideal length, but Bilibili leans toward mid and long videos. On its Q2 2026 call it said watch time for videos over five minutes grew 18% year over year. Explainers and reviews commonly run 8 to 20 minutes, vlogs 5 to 15, and comedy or edits can be under three.

Can I repost my YouTube videos on Bilibili?

Yes, as long as they're your own. If you want Creator Incentive earnings, Bilibili's rules say the video cannot go live on Bilibili later than on other platforms, so upload to both at the same time or Bilibili first. Add Chinese subtitles and a Chinese title so the partition audience can find and quote it.