2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 317 Initial Success of Marketing
Liu Jiwen spent an entire afternoon on this research, during which time all the friends he requested to add, including FlashTech, accepted his friend requests.

The game I played the most was the "Friends Trading" mini-game.

It's a very novel gameplay where you can buy and sell your friends as "slaves" to earn more and more in-game currency.

Moreover, with enough game currency, you can buy any friend as a "slave," even if that friend is currently someone else's slave, you can forcibly purchase them.

Having your friends work for you to earn money, and even being forced to hire them, this "friend trading" feature perfectly captures human psychology. In addition, Kaixin.com targets white-collar workers, who have work experience and therefore have a deeper understanding of the concept of earning money through work.

"I still don't have enough friends, it's not fun. I need to get more friends."

Liu Jiwen got a little addicted after playing for half a day, but unfortunately he had too few friends, so he didn't feel very happy.

Orange Technology employees shouldn't add too many fake accounts, as that would be too obvious. Besides, Kaixin.com focuses on social networking among acquaintances, and it's more fun to play with familiar friends.

Kaixin.com has a built-in feature that allows users to send emails to their friends to invite them to register. After playing the parking space game for a while, Liu Jiwen decided to send emails to his friends to invite them to play together.

"Kaixin001 is so much fun! Several of my friends have already registered on it."

The dialogue was designed by Kaixin.com, and the emails were generated with one click. You only need to fill in the recipient's email address. It supports mass sending, which is very convenient.

Register by clicking the invitation email and you'll also receive free game currency.

To obtain these game coins, Liu Jiwen notified each of his friends who had sent him invitation emails, asking them to register on Kaixin001.

Inviting friends from friends eliminates the invitee's wariness of the invitation email and can also stimulate interest in social networking. Relying on the spread of popularity, this type of marketing is actually very low-cost.

All Orange Technology has to do is give the inviters some game currency, which is more effective than spending a lot of money on advertising.

Pinduoduo's "cut a discount" campaign in its previous life can be considered a form of viral marketing, and it pushed viral marketing to its limits. Although it was disliked by many users, it did gain a large number of users through this "cut a discount" method.

"Almost all internet websites initially resort to any means to acquire users, without caring about reputation. Reputation is useful when it's needed, but completely useless when it's not. Once the service catches up, people won't care at all."

"Pony Ma of Tencent has even dressed up as a woman to fool netizens. The NetEase you used to work for didn't exactly have a glorious history in the beginning when they were trying to gain users, so you don't need to care too much about this."

Faced with a group of tech guys questioning her marketing methods, Gu Qingqing spoke eloquently, explaining that these were all things Tan Jincheng had taught her.

A group of tech guys, seeing that the product they had worked on for months of sleepless nights had users, and that those users had accepted this harassing method of acquiring new users, suddenly felt a bit anxious and uncertain.

Actually, it's not just tech guys who can't accept this shameless marketing approach; Gu Qingqing, who is still quite sensitive about her first startup, also doesn't quite understand it.

Knowing the benefits of this marketing method is one thing, but accepting it is another; after all, she is still a student.

Tan Jincheng understands that tech guys these days are still quite naive. In their eyes, products are still relatively "sacred," and they are worried about being criticized for using this method to acquire users.

The technical staff in Flash Technology's R&D department are the same. Don't be fooled by their usual grumbling; when it comes to product design, they are quite serious. If Tan Jincheng's requirements are unreasonable or technically impossible to meet, they will still criticize him.

Gu Qingqing was the same. Having never actually run a business, she couldn't understand the real business world. If you want to put money from users' pockets into your own pocket without them knowing whether your product is good or bad, you have to use some tricks.

Everyone at Orange Technology, including Gu Qingqing, felt that developing the Kaixin.com project was not easy and wanted to take good care of it. However, in Tan Jincheng's opinion, this thing was really not a big deal. The technical requirements were not high, and there were many similar competing products on the market.

There are no technological barriers, no protective walls; its only purpose is to collect user data, make money, or see if it can incubate other projects later.

Therefore, in Tan Jincheng's view, marketing is the key to Kaixin001's success.
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Kaixin001's user base grew very rapidly. Starting with Liu Jiwen, the number of users exceeded 500 on the first day of its official launch.

These 500 people are all real user data, and they are all users with nepotism relationships. The user stickiness is very high. The shill accounts controlled by Orange Technology employees no longer need to add friends one by one. They only need to do the daily user guidance.

Internet users are divided into real users and potential users. For example, the users who were forced to register through the "cut a price" feature shared by friends in the early stages of Pinduoduo can only be considered potential users.

Kaixin.com users, on the other hand, are a real user group; once registered, they can play games and share photos and their feelings.

This meant that although only 500 users were accumulated on the first day, the activity level was not low. People like Liu Jiwen and his invited friends had a high online time after entering the game.

Gu Qingqing was quite happy. The first day Kaixin.com went online was July 7th, a day she had specially chosen. Qixi Festival was Tan Jincheng's birthday. Although July 7th was still more than 20 days away from Tan Jincheng's actual birthday, the numbers were always close, and besides, Tan Jincheng had said that he preferred odd numbers.

The website performed well on its first day of launch, and its growth rate was even faster on the second day, jumping directly from 500 users to 4000, an increase of up to 8 times.

By the third day, after two days of spread, and on Sunday, Kaixin001's registered users had surged to 40,000, all based on users' spontaneous invitations.

Cheng Hao's negotiations with MSN are still ongoing, so at this time, Kaixin001's promotion is limited to advertisements on internet forums and other social platforms. While these advertisements generate considerable buzz, they are not very effective at attracting users.

Not many netizens would click to try it out after seeing it's an advertisement. If they don't curse you, they're already considered high-quality netizens.

The fact that 4 real users could be accumulated in just three days has excited the entire Orange Technology team!

"Holy crap, this is going to be amazing! I feel like our website is going to be a hit. This growth rate is absolutely incredible!"

"This system of sending registration invitations and giving away game coins is like a drug; the 4 registered users actually spread from the 500 people on the first day."

"A 10-fold increase in a single day is truly terrifying. Is this what the boss meant by 'one person tells ten, ten tell a hundred'?"

"I will never dare to question the boss's marketing plan again. I admit that I was shallow."

"He truly deserves to be recognized as a marketing guru in the electric vehicle industry; his marketing prowess on the internet is equally explosive."

Gu Qingqing was also very happy: "Now we don't have to worry about the boss's marketing methods affecting the reputation of your products?"

"What reputation? What is reputation? All I see now is piles of cash bonuses!"

"Yes, yes, all I want to say right now is 'Long live the boss!'"

"Boss Cheng needs to hurry up. If we can't reach a cooperation agreement with MSN soon, we'll have to abandon him."

The expectation that Kaixin001 will become popular means that they will receive large bonuses and stock options. In the face of real benefits, reputation is irrelevant.

Once Kaixin001 succeeds, they'll have everything, and at that point, no one can stop them!

"Alright, stop being so happy. Keep the website in good condition, check for bugs, collect user feedback, and keep an eye on the server as the number of registered users grows rapidly."

Setting up a website requires a significant amount of money, time, and effort, including domain name, server, and maintenance. Having been CEO for a few months, Gu Qingqing already had a basic understanding of these intricacies.

Currently, Kaixin001 has no monetization channels or external financing; it's all burning through its own money. Now that it has the potential to become popular, it means that the money spent is worthwhile, and we can't afford to have any problems at this time.

"Understood, boss, don't worry, nothing will go wrong!"

Cheng Hao brought an entire team with him, from development to post-maintenance, and even marketing personnel. This is the advantage of recruiting outstanding talent; they are not independent individuals, and often recruiting one person means recruiting an entire team.

You only need to explain your general ideas, the desired effect, and future market expectations to them; they will handle the specific operational details.

The Kaixin.com project team was happy, and the Happy Farm project team was equally happy, but they were somewhat disappointed compared to the Kaixin.com project team, as their project was not launched at the same time as Kaixin.com.

"Don't rush, just refine the details. When the time comes, it will be your turn to shine. Also, you can study the new game project that Boss Tan assigned you."

With the project completed, the farm project team had a relatively relaxed time. Suddenly not having to work overtime, they were a little unaccustomed to it for a while. So, Tan Jincheng proposed a few more projects for the Kaixin.com mini-games and asked them to brainstorm on their own.

Mini-games typically have short lifecycles, and there's no guarantee that every game will be accepted by the market. If Kaixin.com wants to maintain its popularity, it must continuously introduce new games and develop more mini-games.

The initial launch of friend trading and parking space grabbing was intended to accumulate users. Once there are enough users and experienced players have accumulated a certain amount of in-game currency, the game will lose its novelty.

Now it's time for Happy Farm to take center stage.

Young people's emotions come and go quickly. After being comforted by Gu Qingqing, the farm project team felt much better.

Cheer up and keep working!
(End of this chapter)