Chapter 156 Useful App

Pei Qian smiled slightly, seeing Yu Pingan's utterly bewildered expression.

Bewildered? That's right!

Your bewilderment shows that my model has a very high chance of losing money!

Pei Qian had already carefully considered this question. Currently, the models with a relatively high probability of success were either doing an encyclopedia or Q&A, both of which Qiandu had already done.

They couldn’t be called a success, but they weren’t a failure either.

Although this world didn't have a Bi Hu yet, Pei Qian could roughly deduce an unsuccessful model based on Bi Hu’s model in reverse.

In Pei Qian's memory, Bi Hu’s model was very successful. Its goal was to create a "high-quality social Q&A website."

There were two key words here: "high-quality" and "social," and both were indispensable.

In the initial stage, Bi Hu mainly relied on invitations. Two years later, it opened registration. In less than a year, the number of registered users soared from 400,000 to 4 million, and a year later, it obtained $20 million in Series B funding.

Many people believe that opening registration worsened the atmosphere of the entire community. This was an objective fact, but it was also a trade-off that this business model had to make.

The invitation system and strict limits on the number of registered members could indeed ensure the high quality of the entire website's content, but then again, any website that wants to develop needs a lot of traffic and users.

The invitation system and strict restrictions on the number of registered members would indeed make the website's atmosphere better, but if they wanted to obtain financing, gain popularity, and generate revenue, the website's traffic had to be high.

For creators, they also needed a lot of traffic to gain exposure and turn that exposure into fame and tangible benefits.

The successful model for similar platforms should be to find a perfect balance between user growth speed and the quality of the Q&A, both of which were indispensable.

Therefore, Pei Qian's approach was to not seek any balance at all, not want any popularity or traffic, and try to dissuade users as much as possible!

First of all, all users of Useful App must pay a fee to become members before they can browse the content on it.

This one rule alone would directly dissuade more than 90% of users.

Moreover, determining the profit model would also have the effect of fooling the system.

Pei Qian knew that even ten years later, the payment rate for similar Q&A platforms would be extremely low, because most people were unwilling to pay for knowledge. This was a matter of concept.

Without users or traffic, Useful App would not become popular.

Secondly, cracking down on plagiarism, theft, copying, and pasting was partly because Pei Qian hated this behavior, and partly to further reduce popularity.

Although this world had a strong awareness of copyright, and piracy in movies, games, and novels was extremely rare, plagiarism could still not be completely eliminated.

After all, the enforcement cost of this kind of thing was too high, and even most people who were plagiarized found it difficult to detect it themselves.

What if Useful App's high-quality content was reprinted in various ways and attracted users?

Pei Qian felt that he might as well prepare a team of lawyers for Useful App, who would spend their days monitoring the internet for anyone plagiarizing content from Useful App.

On the one hand, to prevent the secondary dissemination of Useful App’s content and increase its popularity, and on the other hand, to crack down on these internet parasites who steal and act as porters, to settle some personal scores!

Whenever Pei Qian thought about the pile of duplicate web pages that came up when he used Qiandu to search for information, he couldn't help but want to personally take a knife and talk to these self-media who were addicted to plagiarism.

Finally, all users had to be authenticated with their real names, and strict restrictions were imposed on them in all aspects.

Ordinary users, that is, readers, although you have paid money and are a member, you can only read, not express your own opinions, or even leave comments.

As for the creators, they could only answer questions in their professional fields, and once it was discovered that the topic was irrelevant or the answer contained errors, it would be deleted.

Of course, the painstakingly written answers would be sent to the original author via private message, but they could not be displayed on Useful App.

On the surface, you can earn money by writing answers here, and the monthly membership fees will be distributed to creators as rewards.

But the key is that few people will actually pay under this model, so the money creators receive will not be much.

In this way, it falls into a vicious cycle of "no traffic - no money - no creators."

Wouldn't it be easy to lose successfully?

The more Pei Qian thought about it, the more he felt that this model was just too perfect.

It would definitely lose money!

Yu Pingan obviously realized this very clearly.

He was specialized in educational projects and had a deep understanding of similar encyclopedia and Q&A products. How could he not see the fatal flaws in President Pei's model?

But thinking carefully about President Pei's previous series of operations, Yu Pingan still suppressed the doubts in his heart.

He considered for a moment and asked, "Then... President Pei, can you talk about the specific approach?"

Pei Qian nodded: "Of course."

"Useful App is a combination of encyclopedia and Q&A models. We will also establish many entries based on keywords. The entries include two sections: 'core content' and 'derivative content'."

"Our creators are divided into three different star levels and have corresponding areas of expertise."

"To become a creator, you must provide certification information to our reviewers to prove your expertise in the field."

"One-star creators can only edit and interact in the 'derivative content', that is, they can only answer questions in their professional fields or comment on other answers."

"Two-star creators can edit in the 'core content'. The 'core content' is equivalent to the essence and index of the entire concept. At the same time, they have the authority to report if they believe that a one-star creator's content contains factual errors."

"In addition to editing all content, three-star creators can also view the historical versions of each entry and view the changes made to the content by various creators. At the same time, they can handle reported content."

"Our staff have the highest authority. If a three-star creator violates the rules, the staff will discuss and handle it."

"In the early stages, all one-star, two-star, and three-star creators will be invited by our official personnel. After that, we can start the review process and decide whether they can be upgraded based on the number and quality of creators' output."

"If a creator violates our creation rules, such as irrelevant content, factual errors, or answers with malicious guidance, they will be deleted."

"Our App is called 'Useful', which means that we must ensure that all information on it is useful."

"We can not have an entry, but as long as we have it, we must ensure its correctness."

"For some highly controversial and inconclusive issues, we must indicate that the issue is controversial and write out the views of both sides of the dispute; if some entries are too controversial, we simply should not include them."

"For example, we will not do any emotional questions with high traffic, clever questions, or questions that incite war."

"Real-name system, membership fee."

"Our real-name authentication must be as strict as payment software. Each account must be bound to an ID card and facial recognition, and we only have one fee model: membership system, deferred fee."

"Every month, we will charge based on the member's usage time and page views in the previous month."

"If you have never used it, you will not be charged."

"If you have used it, the minimum charge is 1 yuan, and the maximum charge is 15 yuan."

"At the same time, we must do a good job of preventing theft and crawling. For those who plagiarize on the Internet, we will prepare a team of lawyers to file lawsuits at any time, and all the recovered compensation will be returned to the creators!"

"At the same time, creators can receive incentives. The value of the incentives mainly depends on three aspects: creator star level, the number of edited and answered questions by the creator, and whether there are any violations."

"We will take 90% of all monthly membership fees and use them as incentives for creators. The remaining 10% will be used for the daily maintenance and development of the website. If the maintenance and development costs are not enough, I will make up for it."

"That's about it. Any questions?"

Pei Qian said all his ideas in one breath and silently took a sip of tea.

Yu Pingan was lost. He was silent for a long time before asking, "Then, President Pei, where does the initial batch of content on our Useful App come from? Do we have to cooperate with Qiandu Encyclopedia or some other similar websites and use their content?"

Many websites that make encyclopedias directly copy existing content from the Internet. This phenomenon is very common.

Pei Qian immediately shook his head: "Of course not!"

"What we want to do is absolutely original, of course we must start from ourselves! We don't allow others to copy us, so naturally we can't copy others."

"All entries must be edited from scratch, and they must be clearly distinguished from Qiandu Encyclopedia."

Yu Pingan was stunned: "President Pei... this is a work load like Yugong moving mountains!" (a Chinese idiom meaning to complete a task however impossible)

"If we do it this way, I'm afraid that this App will not have any possibility of profitability in the next ten years..."

"Even if we don't talk about profitability, I'm afraid it will be difficult to get any traffic..."

Pei Qian couldn't help but feel happy.

Is that so? Do you think so too?

That's great!

You can't make a profit for the next ten years. You're more optimistic than I am!

Pei Qian felt that if this thing could guarantee no profit for five years, he would be thankful.

Five years, at least a dozen cycles, would be enough for him to lose a lot of money!

He didn't even dare to think about the good thing of not making a profit for the next ten years.

Pei Qian smiled slightly: "Yes, this is indeed a work of Yugong moving mountains."

"However, it is also very meaningful. We want to create a piece of pure land without garbage for the garbage-filled Internet."

"There is a saying that the best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, and the next best time is now."

"Since the workload is so large, we have to start quickly, don't we?"