I met my whole family through Baidu Tieba.

Chapter 113 No middlemen taking a cut

Shen Kang and Zheng Changhao were like Ximen Qing meeting Pan Jinlian, they were instantly ignited and agreed to buy six months of GG, as well as the format and content of GG.

The Google Play contracts were readily available on Zheng Changhao's side; they were the standard contracts he used with the merchants on the commercial street. However, since Shen Kang wasn't running a physical store but a website, a clause was added on the spot, stipulating that the Google Play contract must include a hyperlink redirecting to Xianyu.com.

In addition, the current banner ad on the homepage is for a chicken hot pot restaurant, and it expires in 3 days.

After discussing it with Zheng Changhao, Shen Kang called the merchant over. They negotiated and Shen Kang gave the merchant a 3-day GG fee, plus an additional 500 yuan. The GG fee for the chicken pot would end today, and the GG fee for Xianyu.com would also begin today.

After signing the contract and paying the monthly GG fee of 4500, Shen Kang and his group left.

Zheng Changhao also called Wei Mingrui, the website's technical director, and told him about the matter, asking him to quickly create the GG with the hyperlink and replace it.

"No problem, I'll take care of it right away."

After Wei Mingrui finished speaking, he sat down at his workstation and started working on the task. Zheng Changhao also left 305.

Li Xian, an operations staff member nearby, sidled up to Wei Mingrui, who was working, and voiced his concerns: "Brother Rui, are we really going to give up on that secondhand website? Won't they steal traffic from our secondhand section?"

Wei Mingrui glanced at him, then looked away and continued typing on the screen: "I'll tell you later."

He quickly replaced the GG in the GG position, added a hyperlink, and finished the job.

Wei Mingrui turned around and said to Li Xian, "You seem to be new here this year, right?"

"Yes.

"Then you really haven't experienced this. Actually, we gave up on a second-hand website last year," Wei Mingrui said.

Li Xian was surprised: "You got rejected by a second-hand website last year? Why?"

Wei Mingrui smiled: "Back then, some people had the same idea as you, thinking, we also have a second-hand section, why are we giving other second-hand websites a bad review? It was Lao Zheng who made the final decision to give this bad review."

"Actually, if you knew the traffic data of Yangbei Forum, you would know that the forum's traffic is mainly concentrated in the popular sections 'You Say, I Say' and 'Emotional World,' while the traffic to the second-hand section is very small, accounting for less than 10%."

Li Xian still had doubts: "Even if it's less than 10%, that's still a number of people. Are we just redirecting traffic to them like this? Without these people, won't our website's revenue from selling Google Ads decrease?"

Wei Mingrui laughed: "Do you think that if these people go to other secondhand websites, they won't need Yangbei Forum anymore?"

Li Xian was taken aback. "Isn't that right?"

Wei Mingrui shook his head. "Of course not. I'm asking you, have you ever bought anything on the secondhand section?"

"I've bought it."

"If you use a new secondhand website to buy secondhand items, and no longer buy secondhand items from the Yangbei Forum's secondhand section, will you still use the Yangbei Forum?"

Li Xian instantly understood: secondhand websites were just tools, but lacked content. If he wanted to post something boastful, he still had to come to the Yangbei Forum.

Seeing Li Xian's expression, Wei Mingrui knew he had figured it out and said, "There are people who specifically use Yangbei Forum for its secondhand features, and who only visit Yangbei Forum if they're not buying or selling secondhand items, but they are very few. Most people, even if they don't use our secondhand section, will still use Yangbei Forum. When we shut down that secondhand website last year, Yangbei Forum's daily visitors didn't suffer much loss, so you don't need to worry about that."

Li Xian then put aside his doubts.

After class, Wang Yulan from Yangbei University of Science and Technology went straight back to her dormitory, turned on her computer, and logged into the Yangbei Forum to see how much the price of the trial voucher had dropped to.

She has become a loyal customer of the 302 study room these past two days, going there whenever she has time.

At first, she still used the method of buying "Supreme Latte" to learn, but after she learned from her classmate that the other person bought a low-priced trial voucher on the Yangbei Forum, she stopped buying Supreme Latte and started buying trial vouchers on the Yangbei Forum as well.

However, she hasn't bought it yet today.

She had originally planned to buy coupons this morning, but when Wang Yulan logged onto the Yangbei Forum, she discovered that the price of the trial coupons was actually—

The price kept falling, so I thought I'd wait and wait until it bottomed out before buying more at once.

"Half a day has passed, it should have dropped to 2 yuan by now, right?"

Thinking this, Wang Yulan entered the Yangbei Forum and immediately saw the new guy on the homepage banner:

A convenient and fast secondhand trading website for spare time.

Second-hand trading website?

Wang Yulan had an impression of it, but instead of clicking on the link, she went directly to the second-hand section of Yang University of Science and Technology and started looking for posts selling trial vouchers.

After reading a few posts, Wang Yulan became depressed.

"Why has it gone back up?"

早上她看的时候，都已经跌到2块7了，结果现在又涨到3块7了，低于3块7卖体验券的帖子都看不到了。

"I should have stocked up on more this morning."

Wang Yulan was frustrated for a while, but there was nothing she could do. She was about to pick up her phone and call to buy a coupon when a thought suddenly struck her: the "GG" banner on the homepage.

Are there any cheap trial vouchers inside?

Thinking this way, Wang Yulan returned to the homepage with a try-it-out attitude and clicked on the GG. Sure enough, it redirected her to a new webpage.

The page was very simple, but Wang Yulan immediately noticed the "Tickets" section among the four popular sections.

The second thing I noticed was the specific product information below:

It used to be completely empty there, but now there are four products on display.

Considering that not every phone these days has a camera, Shen Kang had Ma Liang set up an official stock image library containing standardized images of items such as "tickets" and "bicycles." When sellers upload product information, they can choose to add these officially provided images to their product pages.

The four items below all use the "ticket" images provided by the official Xianyu platform.

Below the image, there is a space for text information. The smaller part is the title and brief description of the product information. Three of them are "Selling 302 Study Room Experience Vouchers", and one is "Buying 302 Study Room Experience Vouchers".

Further down, in the larger section, there's only a price number: the prices of the three items are 3, 3.8, and 2.8 respectively. The acquisition price is 2.

In addition, the colors of the thick borders for the four items are different: the thick border for the item being sold is blue, and the thick border for the item being purchased is red.

"They really do! And the price is even cheaper than on the Yangbei Forum!"

Wang Yulan was delighted to see three trial vouchers for sale.

In addition, the website's method of displaying prices directly without requiring users to click through also made her feel very convenient.

She quickly clicked on the item priced at 2.8.

The page redirected to a login box that asked for an account and password, along with a text message stating that you needed to log in to view specific product information.

Wang Yulan simply clicked on the "Register" button in the box, registered an account on the spot, logged in, and the page successfully refreshed.

This is a simpler new page. On the left is an official image of the ticket, and on the right is the product information: "Selling a 302 Study Room experience voucher for 2.8 yuan. Contact number: 137XXXXXXX."

Wang Yulan quickly picked up her phone and made a call, "Are they selling trial vouchers for 2.8 yuan? How many are there?"

Just one.

"One?"

Wang Yulan was taken aback.

She's been buying trial vouchers on the Yangbei Forum these past two days. She's never encountered anyone selling just one voucher before, as they usually sell as many as you want.

Unbeknownst to her, the Yangbei Forum also had individual sellers who didn't stockpile goods. However, thanks to the tacit cooperation of Wu Chenhui and his group, these posts from non-stockpiling individual sellers were often quickly deleted as soon as they were published, provided the prices weren't too high. Meanwhile, those individual sellers with excessively high prices would sink to the bottom due to Wu Chenhui and his group's constant bumping of their posts, making them difficult to find and often requiring a lot of time to locate.

People like Wang Yulan naturally wouldn't spend a lot of time slowly browsing through posts; they would directly buy coupons from people like Wu Chenhui.

Therefore, this was the first time Wang Yulan had encountered such a genuine individual seller.

"Just one is fine, even just one."

After a moment's hesitation, Wang Yulan decided to take this one anyway, since it was cheaper.

After agreeing on a meeting place, she didn't go immediately. Instead, she refreshed the website and found that there were two more product listings below, making a total of five.

The two newly added product listings are also for selling trial vouchers, one for 2.7 and the other for 3.

Wang Yulan clicked into the 2.7 page again, saw the contact information, made a call, and arranged to meet at the same location.

And so she did it again, arranging for two more people to meet at the same place before heading out.

After a while, she returned to her dormitory with four more trial vouchers in her hand.

After refreshing the website again, Wang Yulan found that there were already 8 product listings, but the space below was not yet filled.

The prices are also clearly displayed, ranging from 2.6 to 3.8.

Clearly, most of these are genuine individual sellers who are eager to sell, which is why they are proactively lowering prices even when no one else is releasing large quantities of stock.

As long as the price is higher than what the merchants in the forum are charging and it can be sold, that's fine—that's the mentality of these individual sellers.

"There are even lower prices now."

Wang Yulan thought about it and decided that she couldn't wait like she did this morning. The price might go up again if she waited. So she simply started contacting the suppliers with lower prices again and continued to buy these goods.

Meanwhile, without realizing it, they contacted two people who had just bought their coupons – their coupons had been sold, but the transactions hadn't been completed yet.

After receiving Wang Yulan's call, the two quickly went online and clicked the "confirm transaction completed" button, and their product sales information disappeared.

Just as Wang Yulan was happily buying coupons online during her spare time.

At the same time, Wu Chenhui sat in his dormitory, staring at his computer screen, which also displayed the Xianyu.com page.

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