Chapter 10: The Method of Making Money
What Ji Feng said was very simple and straightforward, without too much jargon.
Yet Dou Ding and his roughneck crew still only half-understood.
Whether they understood or not didn't matter; Ji Feng had no intention of continuing to explain it to them, especially regarding monetization.
Right now, he was just a student.
Lacking connections, resources, and money, he needed a stable cash flow channel to earn his first pot of gold.
Ideally, this money-making channel should be zero-cost.
Did such a business exist?
Yes, and quite a few of them.
Writing songs or writing books, for instance.
Writing books to make money was simply too slow, and as for book content, he could only remember the general plots.
Not to mention whether the plot would be the same once replicated, he couldn't even guarantee it would definitely be a hit.
As for writing songs... he was genuinely planning to give it a try—copying a few songs to sweet-talk girls should be alright.
But he had no intention of entering the entertainment industry.
Mostly because the entertainment industry was truly foul—full of endless catfights and petty drama, and even finding a partner meant having paparazzi dig into your life. It was annoying to death.
If he really wanted to have fun and ensure quality, once he had money, he would set up the Ji Feng Cultural and Art Troupe and keep a hundred dance students.
A cultural and art troupe with dance students—wasn't that a hundred times more satisfying than looking for someone in the entertainment industry?
A self-funded cultural and art troupe wouldn't get investigated, nor would there be any scripted romantic pairings, manufactured personas, or sudden scandals.
In his past life, people had actually done this, and the superiority of the approach was immediately obvious.
Aside from these two common money-making methods favored by time-travelers and the reborn, Ji Feng actually had another path.
Namely, the task he had given Dou Ding and the others.
Directing traffic directly, and then monetizing that traffic.
In the era of exploding mobile traffic, the mobile internet had enabled the soaring success of various mobile games and built the glory of the Alibaba Taobao Group.
In fact, there was a monetization channel that wasn't particularly secret and had always existed.
Even up to the year 2023 of his previous life, this monetization channel still retained massive traffic and revenue.
It was hidden right around the public; many people had used it, but many hadn't realized it.
That was Alimama, the promotional platform hidden behind the Alibaba Taobao Group.
In other words, Taobao Affiliates.
Taitai, Zhebabai, PianyiBang—these were actually third-party Taobao Affiliate platforms born out of Alimama.
The discount coupons and discount groups that many ordinary people had used were actually Taobao Affiliate promotions.
Items bought using Taobao Affiliate coupons were truly very cheap.
For example, one-yuan socks, underwear, facial tissues, towels, and even one-yuan mooncake gift boxes.
Twenty-nine or thirty-nine-yuan sneakers, clothes, and pants.
This model wasn't a scam or anything of the sort; it was a marketing tactic used by Taobao merchants to promote their products.
They selected a quality product and used commissions to attract Taobao Affiliates to promote it.
Then the affiliates used discount coupons to attract traffic, allowing customers to buy the items at extremely low prices.
Customers got a good bargain, and the promoters earned commissions.
As for the merchants, it might look like a massive loss, but actually it wasn't.
They earned what Taobao needed most: traffic and sales volume.
For many years, Taobao's rankings were based on sales volume and reviews.
Traffic and sales volume would bring their shops more customers, greater traffic, and higher revenue.
Buyers didn't need to worry about the quality of Taobao Affiliate goods either, because the quality of these promotional items in the early days was genuinely solid; poor-quality goods couldn't attract customers.
In the early days of Alimama, this was a win-win-win setup.
For promoters, the biggest advantage of this playstyle was that it required zero cost.
The costs were borne by the merchants; you just had to seriously play the traffic game.
Of course, telling Dou Ding and the others about all this was pretty much like talking to them in a heavenly language.
He didn't need Dou Ding and the gang to understand too much, nor did he intend to have them do this forever, as working with traffic was actually extremely tedious.
Dou Ding and his friends had personalities that couldn't sit still.
People who liked excitement were truly unsuited for this line of work.
Besides, he was just starting out himself, and getting his bros to do this relied entirely on emotional ties.
Once real money came into view, inevitably some people would start having other ideas.
His ambitions lay elsewhere; doing this was purely to quickly generate cash flow.
"I see. So people who look at lewd accounts generally don't have much money, right?"
"Damn it, I've explained so much, and you're still stuck on the lewd stuff? Can you have some ambition? Let's eat."
"Oh."
After finishing the meal with his little crew, Ji Feng didn't have any further intersection with Wunnuan sitting across the room.
Stepping out of the cafeteria, a few punks gathered in a corner of the playground to walk off their food.
This could be considered the exclusive territory of these delinquent youths; no one dared to come over and mess with them.
Ji Feng rather liked it this way—at least no one would disturb him while he was giving out orders at a time like this.
"Emotional intelligence, relationships, chicken soup—these are the mainstream. You can also crib some adjusted copywriting.
Remember to keep a certain distance from your fans; you aren't actually wise older sisters, and chatting with young moms will likely blow up in your faces.
If the results are decent, you'll see money within a week at the fastest, or a month at the slowest."
"Got it."
"We'll listen to Feng-ge."
"Alright, time's about up. Head back to class, all of you.
Take what I've assigned seriously. As long as you put your heart into it, I guarantee you won't be disappointed."
"We're heading out, Feng-ge."
Bidding farewell to his underlings, Ji Feng massaged his temples, feeling a bit overwhelmed.
"Sigh, back to prison I go. Seeing books gives me a headache."
Despite saying that, once Ji Feng went back, he would still study diligently.
It wasn't that he loved studying, nor did he possess some extraordinary trick.
It was just that years of life experience and hindsight made him understand that the payoff from grinding for these three-plus months would be absolutely massive.
What drove him was reason, experience, and profit.
Passion? Studying was the very thing he found most annoying.
...
Back in the classroom, Ji Feng entered serious mode once more.
His past self had been pretty lousy, though not completely hopeless. Since he had managed to get into Key High School, he still had some foundation.
Some vocabulary he once remembered could be recalled with just a brief review.
That feeling of seizing back what was once lost was, to be fair, quite satisfying.
This serious studying attitude naturally caught the attention of certain people—like Liu Wei, who kept staring at Ji Feng, and class monitor Li Long, who was looking for a handle on him.
Yet Ji Feng had zero time to pay attention to them.
High school study material was just too difficult!
When afternoon classes ended, Ji Feng slung his backpack over his shoulder and walked straight out of the classroom, clearly looking like he had no intention of attending evening self-study.
"Ji Feng, what are you doing?" Class monitor Li Long blocked his path.
"Going to the internet cafe, what else?" Ji Feng answered matter-of-factly.
Though this wasn't his first time doing such a thing, contrasted with his serious studying earlier in the day, he looked like a completely different person.
As for Li Long in front of him, he wore a "just as I expected" expression.
"There are only 100 days left until the college entrance exams, and you're still going to the internet cafe at a time like this?
Ji Feng, have you really decided to give up on yourself?"
"What the hell is it to you?"
"You..."
"If you point that finger at me again, I'll snap it off.
I know you were the one who snitched. Stop putting on a good-guy act here and get lost."