Chapter 271 - Ma Yiqun’s Suggestion (1/2)

After sending Teacher Qiao off, Pei Qian returned to Shenhua View. First, he went to Zhongdian Chinese Network—a level above Tengda-to walk around.

At the moment, Zhongdian Chinese Network was quite stable. Most people were just spending time entertaining themselves.

Traffic on the website was slowly increasing, but on the whole, the website was still doing miserably. What’s more, it showed no signs of improvement in the short-term.

Zhongdian Chinese Network still had a bad reputation on many online literature forums. Most authors saw the website as a scam and strongly dissuaded new writers from working full-time for it.

Only authors with zero ambition would make Zhongdian Chinese Network their first choice and consider working full-time there for the sake of that bit of remuneration.

Thus, the editors normally only had two things to do.

Either vet manuscripts or entertain themselves by writing books or playing games.

Of course, some people—including Zhu Xingan-saw writing the official plot for Repent and be Saved as a form of entertainment.

However, Repent and be Saved’s official novel was placed on the homepage of the website. This caused readers to curse it non-stop. If Zhu Xingan did not have such high tolerance for pressure and a strong mindset, he might have been critically hurt a long time ago.

The readers were cursing the novel for simple reasons: its plot was complicated and messy, and nothing was satisfying about the story. Everyone felt lost after reading the uploaded chapters. This thing was probably better off being referred to as a game plot design series as opposed to a novel. It didn’t meet the expectations of most readers on the internet.

Everyone had gotten used to this. Most of them had a ‘curse it if you want’ approach to the matter. In any case, the plot was meant to serve the game.

Apart from managing Zhongdian Chinese Network’s matters, Ma Yiqun was also managing TPDb’s website. At the moment, he was beginning to see results.

When he saw Boss Pei, Ma Yiqun quickly got someone to serve drinks before personally reporting his recent progress to the former.

Five minutes later…

Although Ma Yiqun was trying his best to beautify his achievements with respect to Zhongdian Chinese Network, Pei Qian could accurately tell that the website was still a failure.

“Excellent. Zhongdian Chinese Network is showing signs of improvement, and you’re doing a good job with TPDb’s website, too.

“Don’t be too preoccupied with results. Just maintain the status quo.”

Pei Qian was very satisfied with Ma Yiqun as an employee.

Although Ma Yiqun had a very strong work ethic, Pei Qian was ensuring that he could not reach his maximum potential by allocating him to the right places. Pei Qian had to give himself credit where it was due—Ma Yiqun was one of his greatest successes.

Ever since he took over Zhongdian Chinese Network, the website had been consistently incurring losses. There were few readers and even fewer reliable authors. All of these showed Ma Yiqun’s outstanding capabilities.

Pei Qian felt moved. Ma Yiqun was one of the rare talents whom he really did not need to worry about!

Noticing that Boss Pei was in quite a good mood, Ma Yiqun hesitated. He wondered if he should talk about what had been on his mind for a long time.

After some consideration, he decided to speak up.

“Boss Pei, I have a thought-or rather, suggestion-for Zhongdian Chinese Network.”

“Oh? Let me hear it.” Pei Qian was slightly surprised, but he did not overreact.

Ma Yiqun gravely misunderstood online novels, but he was quite an intelligent man. He had been the CEO of Zhongdian Chinese Network for a long time. Pei Qian expected him to develop his own ideas for the future of the website.

Ma Yiqun said, “Boss Pei, I’ve given it some thought. At the moment, Zhongdian Chinese Network’s biggest problem is that we can’t increase our mid-tier writers’ income.

“Low-tier writers have a sense of security thanks to the basic remuneration.

“However, it’s almost impossible for these low-tier writers to try to move upwards to the middle tier and hope to support their families or earn their living solely from subscriptions.

“Our website has too few readers. We can’t generate enough subscriptions. Even if an author manages to produce a good book, he will be limited by the website’s number of visitors. There’s a low chance that his book would become popular.”

Pei Qian nodded.

That’s right. I thought about this problem earlier. I just had to act like I didn’t know about it so that the website would continue incurring losses…

Yet, now that Ma Yiqun had mentioned it, Pei Qian could no longer act unaware. He could only nod along and express his agreement.

After all, it would seem too fake if the intelligent Boss Pei did not understand this problem.

Ma Yiqun continued, “So I thought of a way to resolve this.

“We should artificially give mid-tier writers a boost until they reach the possible income that top-tier writers could earn. If there aren’t enough subscriptions, we will fork out the rest of the money to supplement their income.

“Imagine if a good book appears on our website. If its quality is as good as the elite books on Infinite Chinese Network, we can fork out money to supplement the author’s subscription earnings.

“This way, low-tier writers do not have to worry about being buried in our website.

Pei Qian fell silent for a moment. “That sounds reasonable, but how do we judge whether a book has achieved top-tier standard?”