You call this entrepreneurship?

Chapter 474

Qin Shaoyan felt a little sorry that hao123 fell into the hands of Baidu. This website did not belong to any company. It was just a personal website established by Li Xingping himself. It was a top traffic portal at the time.

The most correct decision Baidu made was to take down this website, which is very difficult for the outside world to understand.

But Baidu is well aware that requests from hao123 already account for one-tenth of Baidu's search volume, and the traffic of the entire website accounts for 40% of Baidu's overall traffic. Taking over hao123 is the fastest way for them to seize the market of lower-tier netizens and occupy a high position in Internet traffic.

Unfortunately, Qin Shaoyan was reborn a little late, and his entrepreneurship was still in its infancy, so he did not have enough funds to acquire hao123.

Even if I had the funds at the time, it would have been difficult to convince Li Xingping to sell the website to me because I couldn't offer any other additional conditions.

After Baidu acquired hao123, it also gave Li Xingping a lot of preferential conditions, which cannot be solved by money alone.

For example, after selling hao123, Li Xingping did not lie down and enjoy a free life, but instead created several more websites, including the IP query website ip138, the music player 7789 and other collection websites.

None of these made much of a splash, except for the small game website 4399, which became popular.

Since 4399 went online, hao123 has provided two traffic entrances, which can bring it millions of traffic every day.

Therefore, the popularity of 4399 has a lot to do with hao123. Even if Li Xingping sold hao123, he can still conveniently use this traffic entrance.

Although it was a pity, Qin Shaoyan didn't care too much about it. This was the era when the Internet was experiencing explosive growth, and it was convenient to obtain traffic at a low price.

In contrast to the later formation of the BAT giant structure in the Internet, traffic has become much more expensive.

Although 4399 is very popular now, there are some problems in monetizing this huge traffic. The advertising revenue is not very good. Li Xingping is now worried about how to make a profit.

After Google entered China, it was eyeing the search engine market covetously. Baidu also treated it as a formidable enemy and began to tighten its traffic. The traffic of personal websites declined rapidly, and 4399 was also affected.

Someone coming to discuss cooperation at this time was not a life-saving straw for Li Xingping, but it was a relief after a long drought.

Qin Shaoyan not only tried to win over 51.com and 4399, but also sent people to contact other websites to attract a group of medium-sized websites with traffic and users.

Without exception, these websites have the same flaw, which is lack of profitability. They have users and traffic, but they just don’t know how to monetize them.

The traditional way of making money is through advertising. As long as there is traffic in the early stage, advertisers will come to you. You just need to put a link on the web page and wait to get paid.

But now there are more and more websites, and large websites have sufficient traffic and high-quality users, which naturally attracts most customers. They can only compete by low prices and cannot make much money.

Qin Shaoyan brought them over just to absorb some of their traffic, and as for helping them make money, that was just a side benefit.

If you don't give them any benefits, why should they let you smoke?

……

In the conference room, Qin Shaoyan's right-hand men were all present.

Zhang Pingyi and Zhou Yuan from the Campus Network Department, as well as the core members in charge of the Happy Farm project, Fan Xiaoqian and Hong Fei, Liu Kun and others from the game company.

According to the company they belong to, they are seated in two rows on the left and right.

Qin Shaoyan sat in the first seat, looked around, and listened to the "Happy Farm" project team's report on their achievements with a smile on his face.

"Currently, Happy Farm has more than 30 million registered users, and the maximum number of online users is close to 10 million. We are currently working hard to develop a new version, listen to user feedback, and actively respond..."

Qin Shaoyan didn't wait for them to finish their report and said directly: "I am going to start charging now. Is the Happy Farm project team ready?"

Zhang Pingyi answered without hesitation: "Yes, the payment process is the same as that of "Warring States OL". It has been tested and can be directly involved in the "Happy Farm" project."

Zhou Yuan also replied: "I can top up my account at Internet cafes, Taobao, or my cell phone bills, no problem."

"Then we'll set it on the 1st of next month, when Farmville will officially start charging for props." Qin Shaoyan made the decision directly, "The project team should make a good plan and prepare a few sets of good-looking farm skins in advance."

"Fertilizers, special seeds, monthly card bonuses, special pets, decorative skins, these paid items must be handled with extreme caution."

"The purpose of charging for Farmville this time is not to make money. I am not trying to assess your revenue PKI."

"The main purpose of this campaign is to show Facebook and other shareholders the strong profit potential of Farmville and let our partners see our strength."

Others may be confused about who these partners are, but Zhou Yuan is very clear about it. The reason why Happy Farm is charged is to show it to 51.com and 4399.

Let others see that web games can also make money.

Qin Shaoyan said seriously, "Happy Farm is our key project. We want to build it into a super traffic reservoir to attract as many users as possible."

"Whether it's campus network or Qvod, whether they come from portal websites or Baidu, we must do our best to retain customers and keep them addicted to social games."

"Master Zhang, is the built-in chat system of Happy Farm ready?"

"We already have a preliminary prototype. Currently, the functions are limited to chatting, sending built-in emoticons and private chatting." Zhang Pingyi said as he thought, "Chatting does not put pressure on the server. Our goal is not to consider too complicated things. Chat records do not need to be saved. The function is very simple."

"What if we make Happy Farm into a micro client and port the built-in chat separately?" Qin Shaoyan asked.

"Sure." Zhang Pingyi quickly gave a technical idea. "The micro-client we made is equivalent to a simple browser. It has a webpage embedded in it that can only open Happy Farm. This is not difficult."

The technical solution is not difficult, but Qin Shaoyan’s idea is hard to say.

The purpose of web games is to be convenient, fast and hidden. You can play them just by opening a web page. Now we have to develop a micro client for web games, which is really unnecessary.

But since President Qin had spoken, he naturally had his reasons for doing so, and no one dared to speak out against it.

They have never been able to keep up with Mr. Qin's thinking, so they just need to do as he says.

Qin Shaoyan looked at Fan Xiaoqian and the other three again, "Pick a few people to go to the campus network to help them set up a web game studio, mainly providing some technology and game design ideas."

"Are you still recruiting people?!" Fan Xiaoqian said unhappily, "There are not enough people in the game company right now, and we have so many projects on hand."

Liu Kun also looked embarrassed, "Boss Qin, if you want to arrange it this way, we won't be able to do our job."

Qin Shaoyan was a little surprised. "Didn't I tell you to poach people a long time ago? There are only more than 200 people in the company now. What can they do? There should be at least 500 people."

Hong Fei also complained, "It's not that easy to recruit people. I've been trying to poach people from NetEase and Sohu these days and they're almost getting angry with me."

"Who's angry?!" Qin Shaoyan is not afraid of this. "It's normal talent flow in the industry. What's there to be angry about? If anyone is dissatisfied, just let him come to me and talk." Hong Fei coughed. "They mainly think that we have disrupted the salary level of the industry and raised the average salary."

"How is it high?" Qin Shaoyan snorted, "Our company has always offered this salary for so many years. Don't lie. People in the gaming industry have had a hard time in recent years."

"Do you think our high salary levels are disrupting the industry? Sometimes you should look for the reasons in yourself, whether you have worked hard, and whether the company's profit level has increased."

"Even if Ding Lei and Zhang Chaoyang come, I still have something to say. If they can't retain talents, it's because they don't have the ability. Just do your job with confidence!"

Qin Shaoyan made too many promises for Valve in the early stage, and now it is a bit struggling. There are too many projects to be launched and there are not enough people.

There is a shortage of people in all positions including planning, programming and art, especially those requiring special professional skills, such as numerical planning, back-end programmers and 3D modelers.

"At present, we have four online games, not counting the already launched Warring States Online." Fan Xiaoqian began to count on her fingers, "Sword Heroes and Counter-Strike Online for Penguin, a reskin of Warring States for Sohu, and the new project of Xunxian launched by Kun Ge."

"This is just an online game. You have already completed several stand-alone projects. I think our Counter-Strike: Modern Warfare is going to be delayed. You received a 20 million US dollar deposit from Gabe Newell."

Qin Shaoyan coughed awkwardly, "It doesn't matter if the release date is delayed. It's normal for a single-player game to be delayed. We still have to cooperate with Valve on Counter-Strike Online. Teacher Fan, this is your favorite."

"Bye, stop making promises. I really can't eat any more!" Fan Xiaoqian protested immediately, "First, finish our Counter-Terrorism: Modern Warfare game, and then we can talk about other things."

Qin Shaoyan said in a gentle voice: "Teacher Fan, I will just add two small projects. It's not like it will be next year."

"One is a Three Kingdoms-themed SLG, and the other is a web version of Legend, both are relatively simple."

Fan Xiaoqian rolled her eyes and refused to give in, insisting that the person she wanted was gone.

Seeing that Fan Xiaoqian and the others were seriously resisting, Qin Shaoyan knew that forcing them would be useless and could only give up for the time being.

After the meeting, Qin Shaoyan kept Zhang Pingyi to discuss the talent gap issue.

Before Qin Shaoyan could say anything more, Zhang Pingyi rejected him directly. "There are not enough people in the campus network right now. Don't even think about transferring them from us. I'm currently working on two big projects, Weibo and your instant messaging software."

"You can put the instant messaging software aside for now," Qin Shaoyan immediately soothed him, "but you have to hurry up with Weibo, it's our key project for 2007."

"If there are talents, focus on securing Weibo first. Also, pay more attention to see if there are any good talents with potential that can be cultivated."

Zhang Pingyi nodded. "Speaking of talents, I noticed a guy named Li Xiaoxiao. He is a native of Beijing, but he is very capable. I think Weibo can give him a try."

Qin Shaoyan showed an interested look, "Where did this person come from?"

"He's from our campus network. He was previously in charge of the popular square." Zhang Pingyi said proudly, "I recruited him from USTC."

"Okay, I trust your vision." Qin Shaoyan immediately decided, "Weibo should let him take on more work, and he will be the CTO of Weibo in the future."

Zhang Pingyi does have a keen eye, having previously discovered Wang Jun, the current CTO of the campus network.

Wang Jun is indeed very capable. The number of users on the campus network has increased many times over before, but the server has never had any major problems.

Now that Li Xiaoxiao has been recommended, it means that this person is very talented in programming.

"When you have time, bring Li Xiaoxiao here so I can meet her." Qin Shaoyan sighed, "There really aren't enough talented people."

At this moment, Qin Shaoyan deeply felt the value of that classic line.

Talent is the most expensive in the 21st century.

……

On December 12, "Happy Farm", which had been online for two months, became increasingly popular, and the number of users has been showing explosive growth.

The peak number of online users exceeded 15 million, and the number of registered users exceeded 50 million.

At this time, "Happy Farm" announced that it would open the VIP mall function.

Various paid props will be sold in the VIP mall, including fertilizers, special seeds, dog food, new pets, special props, etc.

At the same time, "Happy Farm" will launch a VIP monthly card function, and monthly card users will receive a certain amount of fertilizers and seeds for free every day.

In addition, farms that activate the monthly card function will have a 20% profit bonus and accelerated crop growth.

When Happy Farm first announced that it would charge a fee, some people scoffed, thinking that the campus network was going to start taking advantage of the situation.

After the paid function was launched, everyone found that the price was quite cheap, only 10 yuan for a monthly card.

As the most important item in the game, fertilizer is the most commonly used by players. Fertilizer can ripen crops and reduce the growth time by ten minutes.

A bag of fertilizer costs only 5 cents, which is equivalent to users spending 5 cents to buy ten minutes.

It is not very effective for crops with a short growth cycle, but for those high-end crops that take several hours to mature, fertilizers have become users' favorite.

As soon as the mall opened, the most sold item was fertilizer.

In addition to various convenient props, the most popular are the new pets, different breeds of dogs, there are eight types to choose from, from Border Collie to Husky.

Of course, a pet dog is not cheap, costing fifty dollars, and of course a new doghouse is even more expensive, costing a hundred dollars.

There are also skins with various fashion themes, which cost hundreds of dollars.

These things are naturally prepared for the rich, and ordinary users can only buy monthly cards, fertilizers and seeds.

However, everyone, including the campus network, underestimated the users' purchasing power. On the day the VIP mall went online, the operating turnover reached 10 million.

When Zhou Yuan saw this number in the background, his heart skipped a beat and he thought there was some bug.

After repeated confirmation, Zhou Yuan felt his legs go weak and his whole body began to tremble.

"Happy Farm" makes more money than "Warring States OL". It's just a web game, is it necessary to be so exaggerated?

(End of this chapter)