I met my whole family through Baidu Tieba.

Chapter 170 Recharging with Ghost Money

After walking a few more steps with Bi Xiangyu, Shen Kang casually remarked, "Manager Bi, you must have thought of some strategies to deal with our Misty Rain Tea Princess, right?"

Bi Xiangyu remained silent, thinking to himself, "Even if I've come up with some strategies to deal with this, we're competitors now. Do you think I'd tell you?"

Seeing that he remained silent, Shen Kang chuckled: "Let me guess, did you also submit a report to your superiors, wanting to add more product categories? For example, adding another milk tea drink like our Yanyu Chaji, made with real milk and real tea leaves?"

Bi Xiangyu gave a dry laugh but still didn't respond.

In fact, that's exactly what he thought.

Even before National Day, after learning about the product category that Yanyu Chaji specializes in, Bi Xiangyu had this idea: to add one or more drinks made with real milk and real tea to the Wonka Milk Tea category to enrich the product line and increase profit points.

Bi Xiangyu had a wonderful idea, and was even a little excited: When the time comes, Wonka Milk Tea will be able to capture both the cheap milk teas with non-dairy creamer and the new category of real milk tea, appealing to customers from low-end to high-end markets. This will surely take Wonka Milk Tea to the next level!

However, Wonka Milk Tea is a chain brand, and the product categories and prices are managed uniformly by higher authorities.

Even if a store wants to run a short-term promotional project, it needs to submit a report to its superiors and wait for approval before it can proceed. Adding a new product category over a long period, involving manufacturing processes, raw materials, and pricing, is an even bigger project and naturally requires reporting and approval from higher authorities.

Therefore, Bi Xiangyu had already completed a detailed report and submitted it before National Day.

This report details Bi Xiangyu's overall strategy of "fully covering all levels of people across the product line".

There has been no response from above so far.

Bi Xiangyu didn't respond, but Shen Kang continued talking to himself, "Let me guess again, is it because there hasn't been a response from above?"

Bi Xiangyu remained silent.

Shen Kang continued, "Actually, this is quite normal. Although it's just adding a new product category and seems like a small matter, Wonka Milk Tea is a large and powerful company, and anything they do has far-reaching consequences. I'd venture to guess that your application will ultimately be rejected; the higher-ups won't approve it."

Upon hearing this, Bi Xiangyu finally couldn't help but ask, "Why?"

Shen Kang chuckled: "Because if you really added a drink made with real milk and real tea, how would you advertise it? Say that it's made with real milk and real tea, so it's so expensive? Then customers would wonder, 'So you're saying that all your other milk teas are fake? That all the drinks I've had before were just high-tech gadgets?'"

"In other words, if your Wonka Milk Tea were to make a milk tea like our Yanyu Chaji, it would be like you're using a new product to attack most of your mainstream products, undermining your own foundation. At the same time, it would cause confusion in brand positioning. So far, we can only see the downsides, while the benefits and the prospects of this new product are still unknown. Therefore, considering all factors, the higher-ups probably won't agree."

After Shen Kang finished speaking, he added, "Of course, these are just my guesses."

Bi Xiangyu, however, fell into deep thought.

Seeing his expression, Shen Kang didn't continue. After waiting for him to think it over, he said, "We've known each other for quite a while, but I still don't have your phone number, Manager Bi. How about we exchange numbers?"

Bi Xiangyu immediately became alert. "What do you want to do?"

After what happened with the photos Zhu Jingdong sent him, he was now a little traumatized. He wondered if Shen Kang's sudden request for his phone number was also an attempt to send him some strange photos and mess with his mental state.

Améro!

Upon seeing Bi Xiangyu's expression, Shen Kang instantly guessed what he was thinking and couldn't help but laugh and cry: "Uh, don't worry, Manager Bi, I definitely won't send you any strange photos, because my phone doesn't even have the function of sending MMS messages."

As he spoke, Shen Kang took out his phone and showed it to Bi Xiangyu.

When Bi Xiangyu took a look, sure enough, it was a very old-fashioned Nokia candybar phone, the kind without even a camera. It seemed unlikely to have MMS functionality, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

But I was also a little curious: "Boss Shen, you use this kind of phone?"

After all, even Zhu Jingdong's phone is much better than Shen Kang's.

"A cell phone is fine as long as it works," Shen Kang said casually.

Actually, he's been using this phone for a while, partly because it holds sentimental value, and partly because the smartphone era is just a year away. Changing phones at this crucial juncture always makes him feel like he's being ripped off. So, since the phone is still usable, he'll just keep using it for now.

Then Shen Kang said, "Leaving a phone number is also a way of making friends. If one day Manager Bi doesn't want to stay at Wonka Milk Tea anymore and wants to change environments, we welcome her."

Bi Xiangyu smiled, not caring that Yiyanyu Tea House was just a small stall in a university, currently only offering one type of milk tea, a far cry from Wonka Milk Tea. He didn't think he would ever leave Wonka Milk Tea to join Yiyanyu Tea House.

But since Boss Shen had shown such an open and friendly attitude towards making friends, he naturally felt it wouldn't be polite to refuse and wanted to give him face, so he said, "Okay."

Meanwhile, in a girls' dormitory at Yangko University of Science and Technology, Ye Jintong sat at her desk with two web pages open on her laptop. One page was the web page that normal users could see, and the other was the web page that her administrator account could see.

From the perspective of a normal user looking at the Xianyu.com page, the number of products on Xianyu.com has been drastically reduced; "halved" is not even an accurate description of the extent of the reduction.

The accurate figures seen from the backend further illustrate this point.

Ye Jintong was not surprised by this situation. Shen Kang had already told her about it before the official pricing of Room 302 was announced.

With the official pricing of the 302 Study Room announced, and the discontinuation of the trading of trial vouchers—which can no longer be used directly but must first be converted into points on the Beiming Community—the cessation of these voucher transactions was inevitable. As for Xianyu.com, where most transactions involve trial vouchers, the sharp reduction in available product listings was also inevitable.

What they need to do is to quickly establish and roll out the new "points trading" system.

Ye Jintong thought for a moment and then began to operate.

In this regard, Shen Kang only gave her a general direction, while leaving the specific details to her to decide.

So Ye Jintong picked up the calculator and did some calculations for a while before using her own account to accurately release new product information to lead the new system.

However, Ye Jintong began to ponder when writing the specific product information.

"Just writing 'selling Beiming Forum points' seems a bit too bland, lacking any topicality or interest—so what should we do? —Beiming Forum points—"

Just as she was pondering this, someone returned to the dormitory. It was Duan Tingting, a pretty girl who was on good terms with Ye Jintong.

"Tongtong, Lao Bai called roll today. I answered for you, but I couldn't fool him; he saw through my lie."

Duan Tingting put the books on her own desk, then walked over with a pitying look on her face: "So, good luck with your final exams."

The "Old Bai" she mentioned is one of the "Four Great Detectives" of the School of Economics and Management, notorious for his high failure rate, wiping out many students every semester. He is especially strict about attendance, and some students are even punished simply for not meeting the attendance requirements, demonstrating his extreme strictness.

Holy crap!

Upon hearing this sad news, Yip Kam-tung was immediately depressed.

Duan Tingting placed her hands on her shoulders and asked curiously, "You knew it was Lao Bai's class today, why didn't you go?"

"It's all because of my boss. There's an important event on the website, and he wants me to keep an eye on it and react immediately—" Ye Jintong briefly explained the situation.

Duan Tingting also knew that Ye Jintong was managing Xianyu.com. After listening to Ye Jintong's explanation, she said, "So now you're thinking about how to make your product information interesting, topical, and shareable?"

"Um."

Ye Jintong nodded, wanting to continue pondering the question, but the matter of Lao Bai calling her name kept replaying in her mind, disturbing her thoughts and making her extremely frustrated—it was all Shen Kang's fault; if he hadn't insisted on her doing this today, she wouldn't have...

Old Bai caught him.

However, considering his "tacit approval" of my selling the notebooks, I decided not to hold it against him. Otherwise, I would have burned paper money for him and cursed him with evil spirits.

"?"

Suddenly, a brilliant idea flashed in Ye Jintong's mind.

"Tell me what you think? I'll help you think of something too. Two heads are better than one, right?" Duan Tingting was saying when she saw Ye Jintong suddenly fly her hands across the keyboard, composing the product information and then listing it.

Upon seeing the title of this product information, Duan Tingting burst out laughing, "Hahaha, what is this?!"

98% off recharge with ghost money

This is the title that Yip Kam Tong edited for this product information.

Ye Jintong was very satisfied with her idea. "Since QQ's currency can be called QQ Coins, then Beiming Community's points currency can naturally be called Ghost Coins."

Then, using her administrator account privileges, she pinned her product information to the top of the homepage and the ticket section in a hidden manner, without any pinning mark.

Duan Tingting laughed for a while and said, "From a marketing point of view, your ghost money is indeed quite good, and..."

Like the coins issued by QQ, they all have a dual meaning.

Ye Jintong chuckled and turned to look at her: "Why don't you explain it to me in detail?"

Duan Tingting rolled her eyes at her. "We're all seasoned foxes, why are you pretending to be some kind of ghost story?"

They've long since outgrown their freshman year. They might put on an act in front of guys, but what's the point of pretending in a girls' dorm? Their late-night chats are far more juicy than that.

But after a short while of playful banter, someone sent a message to Ye Jintong's online account, inquiring about the purchase of ghost money.

"Stop fooling around, I'm going to get down to business."

Ye Jintong, panting, released his clutches from Duan Tingting's chest, straightened his clothes, and sat back down at his desk to begin processing the transaction.

As a former reviewer of Xianyu.com, she naturally participated in the hoarding and speculation of trial vouchers, and had dozens of trial vouchers on hand, which have now been converted into account points on Beiming Community.

Shen Kang also gave her another 5,000 points as operating funds to facilitate her marketing campaign.

At the same time, in a boys' dormitory, Wu Chenhui finished processing his Beiming campus card, returned to his room, walked to his desk, and plopped down, feeling quite depressed.

He originally wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to make a fortune, but unexpectedly, Room 302 pulled this stunt, ending the competition directly.

Kong Lin was also sitting at his desk: he had already returned after getting his Beiming All-in-One Card, and was now typing in one experience voucher after another on his computer, converting them into points.

Seeing Wu Chenhui like this, Kong Lin comforted him, "Actually, this is a good thing. You don't know, I was already selling trial vouchers before the 302 Study Room announced the news, but the price kept falling, it looked like it was going to collapse! Luckily they released this news in time, giving us a safety net—"

After listening for a while, Wu Chenhui thought about it and realized it made sense. He was finally less depressed and accepted the reality.

He processed his emotions quickly, and after accepting the reality, he began to think about new things—how to sell points.

Wu Chenhui has more than 400 experience vouchers in his hand.

He originally planned to sell these trial vouchers at a higher price, but now that they've been converted into points, he can't possibly use them all himself; he still needs to sell them to cash out. After all, he went all in before and is completely broke. If he doesn't sell some points, he won't even be able to afford food this month.

Moreover, who knows, there might be new arbitrage opportunities in buying and selling points under this new points system?

Upon realizing this, Wu Chenhui's eyes lit up, and he immediately asked, "Kong Lin, have you researched how points are bought and sold under this new points system?"

Kong Lin kept his head down, typing in the anti-counterfeiting numbers on the experience voucher, without looking up: "It's in the points introduction. It says that you can only trade through the Beiming One-Card. You need to bind your account to your Beiming One-Card first."

Wu Chenhui then opened the Beiming Community, logged into his account, and followed the instructions to link his Beiming Community account to the Beiming prepaid card he had just obtained. After reading the instructions for a while, he understood how to trade points.

It's actually quite simple. Once your account is linked to a Beiming Yikatong card, you can send points to other Beiming Yikatong card accounts.

However, if you don't have a Beiming One-Card and only have a Beiming Community account, even if you have 10,000 points in your Beiming Community account, you cannot give away even one point to someone else.

"In other words, creating alternate accounts is pointless."

Wu Chenhui seemed to be deep in thought.

He was quick-witted. After thinking about the points arbitrage in the Beiming Community, he came up with a way to make money: according to the rule of "points are added for logging in and posting every day", he could create countless small accounts, log in and post with these small accounts every day, and then transfer the points of these small accounts to one or a few accounts, so that he could get a lot of points for free!

These points can be used for real offline purchases and are equivalent to real money.

This way, you can use a large number of alternate accounts to directly earn a lot of real cash, ruthlessly exploiting the resources of this Beiming community.

They'll pluck all the hair out!

However, if a Beiming One-Card is required to trade points, then the idea of ​​"starting a business with a secondary account" cannot be realized, because when applying for a Beiming One-Card, the other party needs real student ID and ID card information, which means one card per person—is that right?

Wu Chenhui suddenly had another idea and immediately put it into action. He applied for a new account on the Beiming Community, obtained a trial voucher, converted it into 55 points in this account, and then used this account to try to apply for a Beiming prepaid card before finally submitting the application.

The submission failed, and the system indicated that the student ID and national ID card were already linked to another Beiming prepaid card.

"Looks like it really is one card per person."

Wu Chenhui sighed.

He had enjoyed the arbitrage opportunity from the previous trial voucher deal so much that he subconsciously developed a path dependency and wanted to find another arbitrage opportunity.

However, it now seems that the idea of ​​"arbitrage with smaller accounts" is no longer feasible.

"Let's be honest and sell some of our points first to get some cash back."

Thinking this, Wu Chenhui opened the Xianyu website, while also pondering how to conduct this new type of points trading.

Then he saw the first and most eye-catching item in the two rows of product information at the bottom of the Xianyu.com homepage: "98% off on recharge of ghost money".

"Ghost money—"

Upon seeing this title for the first time, Wu Chenhui was speechless and also wanted to laugh. This shouldn't be real ghost money, but rather points from the Beiming Forum. This guy is quite the genius to come up with such a name.

Wu Chenhui clicked in and looked at the specific product information. Sure enough, just as he thought, it was selling points from the Beiming Forum.

Wu Chenhui wanted to see how this person sold it, so he pretended to be a customer and chatted with the other party for a while: "98"

What does "折" mean?

The other party replied: "What I mean is, I'll give you a thousand points from the Beiming Community. You would normally have to give me a hundred yuan, but now you only need to give me ninety-eight yuan."

"The discount seems pretty small."

"It's still more cost-effective than buying it offline."

"How do we make the transaction? We'll agree on a place, both of us bring our laptops, and I'll pay you in person, and you'll give me the points in return?"

"No need. Xianyu.com now has online banking payment functionality. Just give me your Beiming IC card account number and pay online on the purchase page. After you pay, I'll transfer the points to you."

Online banking payment?

Wu Chenhui paused for a moment, then carefully examined the webpage on Xianyu.com, only to discover that Xianyu.com now indeed had an online banking payment function.

"It should have been launched today. I was so focused on the trial vouchers that I didn't even notice," Wu Chenhui thought to himself.

Then I sent another message to the seller: "How do I know if you'll send me points after I transfer the money? If you don't, then I've just given you my money for nothing?"

The other party replied: "Take a close look. There's an explanation of this online banking payment function on the Xianyu website. After you transfer the money, it doesn't go directly into my account, but into a custodian account at the bank. I can only receive the money after I give you points and you confirm receipt, just like Alipay."

Wu Chenhui took a look and studied the new online banking payment function on Xianyu.com for a while. Sure enough, he found the corresponding instructions on it.

Wu Chenhui had online banking and had used Alipay before, so he understood the concepts quite well. After thinking about it, he decided to try it out with this person and see how the whole process worked.

"Give me 100 points."

Following this person's instructions, Wu Chenhui sent his Beiming prepaid card information and then made a payment of 9.8 yuan via online banking.

A short while later, the other party sent him a message saying that the points had been credited to his account and asking him to confirm receipt.

Then Wu Chenhui obediently clicked "confirm receipt," and the entire transaction process was completely completed.

"So that's how transactions are done. It's quite convenient—"

Wu Chenhui started thinking silently.

Unlike the previous offline transactions for buying and selling trial vouchers, this online transaction is so much faster. If it had been this efficient when he bought and sold the vouchers, he would probably have thousands of vouchers by now, not just four hundred!

Unfortunately, this feature wasn't available at the time. Thinking about this, Wu Chenhui felt a pang of regret, then continued to ponder whether there was any arbitrage opportunity involved. He couldn't think of anything for the time being, so he simply stopped thinking about it and, like that other person, created a product listing.

However, regarding the pricing, Wu Chenhui thought for a moment, then opened the calculator on his computer and started calculating:

Theoretically, the exchange rate between ghost money and RMB is 10 to 1. One RMB is equal to 10 points.

However, since each trial voucher can be converted into 55 points, the points converted from the trial voucher are discounted.

Simply put, if all of Wu Chenhui's points were converted from trial vouchers, then at a 91% discount, it's equivalent to him selling these trial vouchers for five yuan each.

That person was selling points at a 98% discount, which is equivalent to selling trial vouchers for 5.39 yuan each.

After figuring out the proportions, Wu Chenhui finally set the price and posted his product information.

97% off recharge with ghost money

And in just a short time, the number of product listings on the internet gradually increased again.

"Recharge with Ghost Money at a 97% Discount", "Recharge with Ghost Money at a 98% Discount", "Recharge with Ghost Money at a 96% Discount" —

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