Pei Qian smiled slightly seeing Yu Pingan’s extremely lost expression.
Feeling lost? You’re on the right track!
If you are lost, it would mean my chances of losing money would be very big!
Pei Qian had carefully considered this question. The current models with a relatively high probability of success were wikis and Q&A; both of which had been done by Qiandu search engine.
They could not be considered successful; neither could they be counted as failures.
This world did not have Bihu for the time being, but Pei Qian could roughly base it on Bihu’s model to come out with a less successful model.
In Pei Qian’s memory, the Bihu mode was very successful, and its goal is to create a ‘high-quality social Q&A website’.
There were two keywords here—’high quality’ and ‘social’; both of which were indispensable.
In the beginning, it was based on the invitation system, and registration was opened after two years. In less than a year, the registered users climbed from 400,000 to 4 million, and a year later, it received 20 million US dollars in Series B financing.
Many people thought that open registration would make the atmosphere of the entire community worse. This was an objective fact, but it was also a trade-off that this business model has to make.
The invitation system and strict restrictions on the number of registered members could indeed guarantee the high quality of the entire website, but then again, any website would need a lot of traffic and users to develop.
The invitation system and strict restrictions on the number of registered members would indeed make the atmosphere of the website better, but to obtain financing, visibility, revenue, and the website traffic must be high.
The creators would also need a lot of traffic to gain exposure and turn this exposure into popularity and tangible benefits.
The successful model of a similar platform should be a perfect balance between the user growth rate and the quality of the question and answer, and neither of which was dispensable.
Therefore, Pei Qian’s approach was about not seeking any balance, not having any heat and traffic, and dissuading users as much as possible!
First of all, all users of useful apps must pay before they could browse the contents.
This would directly dissuade more than 90% of users.
Moreover, determining the profit model also played a role in fooling the system.
Pei Qian knew that, even after ten years, the payment rate of similar Q&A platforms was extremely low because most people were unwilling to pay for knowledge. This was a matter of perception.
Without users and traffic, Useful App would not become popular.
Secondly, cracking down on the behavior of reprinting, stealing, copying, and pasting… on the one hand, Pei Qian hated such behavior; on the other hand, it was also to further reduce its popularity.
There might be a strong sense of copyright in this world, and piracy in movies, games, and novels has been extremely rare. However, there was still no way to completely prohibit such things as manuscript washing.
After all, the cost of law enforcement for it would be too high. Even most people would not have found out even if their manuscripts were pirated.
What if high-quality content on the Useful app was reposted in various ways and attracted users?
Pei Qian felt that he should simply prepare a team of lawyers for the Useful App team and stare at whether there is anyone on the Internet pirating the content in the Useful App.
On the one hand, it would prevent the secondary spread of the contents on Useful App and its popularity. On the other hand, it would also crack down on the pirates who steal things and work as porters on the Internet—sweet revenge!
When Pei Qian thought of the large number of repetitive web pages he found when he used Qiandu to check the information, he wanted to personally hold a knife to the throat of these plagiarizers and discuss life.
Finally, all real-name authentications and strictly restrict users in all directions…
Ordinary users—that was the readers—might have paid membership fees but could only read; they could not express their opinions or even leave a message for discussion.
As for those creators, they could only answer the content of their professional field, and once they found that the text was wrong or the answer was wrong, they would be deleted.
Of course, the hard-written answers would be sent to the original author through private messages, but they could not be displayed on the Useful App.
On the surface, writing the answer here could result in income, and the monthly membership fee would be distributed to the creator as a reward.
However, the point was that few people would actually be paid under this model so the creators won’t get much money.
As a result, they would be caught in a vicious circle of ‘no traffic-no money-no creators’.
Wouldn’t it be easy to succeed at making losses?
The more Pei Qian thought about it, the more he felt that this model was really perfect.
Absolutely possible to make a loss!
Yu Pingan was clearly aware of this.
He was originally specialized in educational projects, and he also had a deep understanding of similar wiki and Q&A products. How could he not see the fatal flaw in Boss Pei’s model?
Yu Pingan suppressed the doubts in his heart after thinking about the series of successful operations by Boss Pei.
He considered for a moment and asked, “Then… Boss Pei, can you talk about the specific approach?”
Pei Qian nodded. “Of course!
“The Useful App is a synthesis of wiki and question-and-answer mode. We will also create many entries based on keywords. The entries include two sections of ‘core content’ and ‘derivative content’.
“Our creators are divided into three star categories, and there are corresponding problem areas.
“If you want to become a creator, you must provide certification information to our reviewers to prove your professionalism in the field.
“One-star creators can only edit and interact in the ‘derivative content’—that is, they can only answer questions in their own field of expertise or comment on other answers.”
“Two-star creators can edit the ‘core content’. The ‘core content’ is equivalent to the essence of the whole concept and the index part. At the same time, they have authority. If they think that there is a factual error in the content of a one-star creator, they can report the content.
“Three-star creators, in addition to the editing rights for all content, can also view the historical version of each entry and view the additions and deletions of content by various creators. At the same time, they can handle the reported content.
“Our staff will have the highest authority. If the three-star creators violated the rules, they will be dealt with after a discussion with our staff.
“All one-, two-, and three-star creators would be invited by our staff in the initial phase. The vetting can be initiated and decide whether something could be upgraded based on their output or not.
“If a certain creator violates our creative regulations—such as incorrect text, incorrect facts, maliciously inducing answers, etc.; they must be deleted.
“Our app is called ‘Useful’, which means that all the information above must be guaranteed to be useful.
“We may not have an entry for everything, but we must ensure the correctness of all our entries.
“For some highly controversial and inconclusive issues, we must indicate that the issue is controversial and write down the opinions of both parties in the dispute; if it is too controversial, we simply don’t include it.
“For example, we will not deal with emotional problems with high traffic, trembling and spiritual problems, and warfare problems.
“Real-name system, membership system fees…
“Our real-name authentication system must be as strict as the payment software. Each account must be bound to an ID card and face recognition, and we only have one charging model: membership, delayed charging.
“Every month, we will charge based on the usage time and page views of the member in the previous month.
“There would be no charge if it was not used at all.
“If it was used, the minimum charge is one yuan and the maximum charge is 15 yuan.
“At the same time, we must do a good job of anti-theft and anti-crawl functions. For online manuscripts, we prepare a team of lawyers to go to court at any time, and all the compensations recovered will be returned to the creators!
“At the same time, creators can get incentives, and the value of incentives mainly depends on three aspects: the star of the creator, the number of edits and answers of the creator, and whether there is any violation or none.
“We will spend 90% of all monthly membership fees as incentives for creators. The remaining 10% will be used for daily maintenance and development of the website. If the maintenance and development costs are not enough, I will make up for them.
“That’s about it. Is there any question?”
Pei Qian said all his ideas in one breath and took a sip of tea in silence.
Yu Pingan was at a loss. He was silent for a long time before asking: “Then, Boss Pei where will the first batch of content on the app come from? We need to cooperate with Qiandu wiki or some other similar websites to use their content?”
Many websites that made wikis got their contents directly from the Internet. This phenomenon was very common.
Pei Qian shook his head immediately: “Of course not!
“What we have to do is to have absolutely original content and should, of course, be started by ourselves! We do not let others copy us, and we naturally cannot copy others.
“All entries will be made from scratch and must be clearly different from Qiandu wiki.”
Yu Pingan was stunned: “Boss Pei… the workload would be of a similar level with Yu Gong moving away two high mountains!
“I am afraid that this app will not be profitable in the next 10 years according to this approach…
“Don’t even talk about profitability—even traffic may be difficult to get…”
Pei Qian could not help but be delighted.
Really? You think so too?
Great!
You are more optimistic than me, thinking there would be no profit in the next 10 years!
Pei Qian felt that he would have to thank God if this thing could guarantee that it would not be profitable for the next five years.
There were at least a dozen cycles in five years, enough to lose money!
He could not even begin to phantom something as good as not being profitable for 10 years.
Pei Qian smiled slightly: “Yes, this is indeed a job with a huge workload.
“However, it is also very meaningful. We have to create a pure land without rubbish for the Internet which is already full of it.
“There is a saying that the best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, the next best time is now.
“We have to start quickly since the workload is so heavy, right?”
