Rebirth of Hong Kong's tycoons, shorting Eagle Sauce

In October 2004, Chen, the richest man who had just successfully listed in the United States, announced a piece of news.

Shanda acquired the largest paid reading platform, Dianchi Novel Network, for 2 million US dollars!

The predecessor of Dianchi Novel Network was an original literary association. After it was transformed into a personal website, it began to try the paid VIP model.

Before it adopted the charging model, Huanjian Bookstore was the real overlord of the novel website.

After Dianchi Novel adopted the charging system and achieved great success, countless great writers flocked to Dianchi Novel Network to start updating.

Among them were Tang Jia San Shao and others who were well-known to the public.

Because great writers also need to support their families, great writers with an annual income of tens of millions are no different from ordinary people at this time, and a monthly income of over ten thousand is very tempting for them.

With the addition of many great writers, coupled with the dividends brought by the charging system, Dianchi Novel Network has developed rapidly and achieved a series of impressive results.

But at this time, the founding team did not know how much energy Dianchi Novel Network would explode in the future.

Faced with the temptation of money from capital, they sold the End Novel Network for 15 million yuan, making it a wholly-owned subsidiary of Shanda.

Shanda retained their positions, and the former boss Mr. Wu still served as the president of Shanda Literature.

Mr. Wu was also nervous at this time, because the richest man Chen promised him that he would acquire many novel websites in the future and build Shanda Literature into an unprecedented Internet novel platform.

The goal is to go public on the US stock market!

Now both Net Art and Shanda have achieved considerable results in the US stock market, and Shanda's momentum is even more prosperous and has no rivals. The US stock market listing has great appeal to the founding team.

At this time, Mr. Hou, who despised online literature as street literature, was still wasting time, so Mr. Wu and the founding team were extremely supportive of the big boss.

In particular, the richest man Chen's advanced ideal of building an Oriental Disney is enough to make all cultural people work hard for him.

Looking at the End Novel Network moving into the new building, the richest man Chen, who had just recovered from a serious illness, also smiled happily.

"Boss Wu, Editor-in-Chief Bao, I want to talk to you about something."

Seeing the big boss so serious, Boss Wu and Editor-in-Chief Bao hurriedly followed.

They found a meeting room and talked about future development.

"What, boss, you want us to make all novels free?"

"Then how can we keep the authors?"

Both of them strongly resisted the free system. They defeated the big brother Huanjian Bookstore by relying on the charging system. Why do they want to go back to the old way?

"I understand your ideas, but I think users have the right to choose to pay or read with ads. There is no conflict between the two, and our free is not completely free. Advertisements will be inserted in the text, and the author will get a share of the advertising revenue!"

Hearing this, the firm look on the faces of the two began to waver. The model of attracting new readers with free and obtaining considerable income through advertising does sound more attractive than paying.

You have to know that it costs hundreds of yuan to read a genuine book of one million words. At this time, the average monthly salary is only 700 yuan, which means that paid reading is destined to be an entertainment activity that only a few people can enjoy.

The public read their novels through pirated websites or pirated physical books under the brand of Huang Yi and Jin Yong.

The publishing business that Huanjian Bookstore relied on was greatly impacted.

At this time, piracy in Longguo was rampant, and domestic stand-alone games were wiped out due to pirated discs. They were forced to think of the VIP charging system.

But if they added an advertising model and let pirated users become genuine users, the daily and monthly active users of their website, as well as user stickiness, would naturally rise sharply.

Not only did the website have considerable advertising income, but the great authors could also get higher profits by relying on the influx of pirated readers.

Thinking of this, they couldn't help but start to waver.

Seeing this, Chen, the richest man, continued to persuade:

"We will also attract traffic to the novel website through games. I promise you that the number of users of End Novel will exceed 20 million in two years, and the monthly active users will exceed 2 million!"

"Think about how much advertising fees a website with 2 million monthly active users can get. Do you still need to mortgage your house to pay the author's royalties?"

Selling houses to raise royalties for authors was the most difficult time for End Novel before it was acquired. Naturally, they don't want this to happen again.

"The most important thing is the reader stickiness. You should know that many readers will immediately search for the title of the book to find pirated copies after finding a good book on End, and then start reading.

After we are free, they can get a better reading experience than pirated copies, and they can also support their favorite great authors. They will naturally choose to stay on the genuine website where they can interact with the author."

Speaking of this, the two foundersThey began to think that if Shanda helped promote and attract traffic, their website could reach a higher level with the excellent quality of the works.

Speaking of this, Chen, the richest man, also revealed an insider information to them.