Seeing Yu Pingan’s extremely confused expression, Pei Qian smiled slightly.

Confused? That’s exactly right!

Your confusion means my model has a high probability of losing money!

Pei Qian had already carefully considered this issue. Currently, the models with higher chances of success were encyclopedias and Q&A platforms, both of which Thousand Degrees had already implemented.

They couldn’t be called successful, but they couldn’t be called failures either.

Although this world didn’t have Zhihu yet, Pei Qian could roughly reverse-engineer Zhihu’s model to create a less successful model.

In Pei Qian’s memory, Zhihu’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,” both equally essential.

In the early stages, Zhihu primarily used an invitation system. Two years later, they opened registration, and in less than a year, registered users climbed from 400,000 to 4 million, subsequently receiving $20 million in Series B financing a year later.

Many people believed that opening registration degraded the community atmosphere, which was an objective fact, but it was also a trade-off that this business model had to make.

The invitation system and strictly limiting the number of registered members could indeed ensure the high quality of the entire website’s content. However, any website’s development requires a large amount of traffic and users.

The invitation system and strict limits on registered members could indeed make the website’s atmosphere better, but to obtain financing, fame, and revenue, the website’s traffic had to be high.

As for creators, they also needed a large amount of traffic to gain exposure and convert this exposure into reputation and tangible benefits.

The successful model for similar platforms should be to find a perfect balance between user growth rate and Q&A quality—neither could be missing.

So, Pei Qian’s approach was not to seek any balance point, not to want any popularity or traffic, and to discourage users as much as possible!

First, all users of the Useful APP must pay, and only after purchasing a membership can they browse the content.

This alone would directly discourage more than 90% of users.

Furthermore, establishing a profit model would serve to deceive the system.

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

Without users and traffic, the Useful APP wouldn’t become popular.

Second, cracking down on reposting, theft, and copy-pasting behaviors was partly because Pei Qian detested such actions, and partly to further reduce popularity.

Although this world had a strong awareness of copyright, with minimal piracy in movies, games, novels, and other areas, plagiarism still couldn’t be completely eradicated.

After all, enforcement costs were too high, and most people wouldn’t even realize when their work was plagiarized.

What if the quality content on the Useful APP was reposted in various places, attracting users?

Pei Qian thought he might as well prepare a legal team for the Useful APP team, who would spend their days watching for anyone plagiarizing content from Useful APP.

On one hand, this would prevent the secondary spread of Useful APP content and reduce its popularity; on the other hand, it would also crack down on these parasites who stole things on the internet and worked as content movers, exacting some personal revenge!

When Pei Qian thought about the heap of repetitive web pages he found when searching for information on Thousand Degrees, he wanted to personally take a knife and follow the network cable to have a chat about life with these chronically plagiarizing self-media outlets.

Finally, there would be full real-name authentication, with strict all-around restrictions on users.

Ordinary users, that is, readers, could only view content even though they paid for membership; they couldn’t express their own opinions or even leave comments for discussion.

As for creators, they could only answer content in their professional fields, and if their answers were found to be off-topic or containing errors, they would be removed.

Of course, the painstakingly written answers would be sent to the original authors via private message; they just couldn’t be displayed on the Useful APP.

On the surface, writing answers here could bring income, with monthly membership fees distributed to creators as rewards.

But the key was that under this model, few people would pay, so creators wouldn’t receive much money.

This would create a vicious cycle of “no traffic-no money-no creators.”

Wouldn’t it be easy to successfully lose money?

The more Pei Qian thought about it, the more perfect this model seemed.

It would lose money!

Yu Pingan had realized this point as well.

He 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 Mr. Pei’s model?

But thinking about Mr. Pei’s previous series of operations, Yu Pingan suppressed his doubts.

After considering for a moment, he asked, “Then… Mr. Pei, could you explain the specific implementation?”

Pei Qian nodded: “Of course.”

“Useful APP is a combination of an encyclopedia and a Q&A model. We’ll similarly establish many entries based on keywords, with each entry including two sections: ‘Core Content’ and ‘Derivative Content’.”

“Our creators are divided into three different star levels, with corresponding question domains.”

“To become a creator, one must provide certification information to our reviewers, proving their expertise in the field.”

“One-star creators can only edit and interact in ‘Derivative Content,’ meaning they can only answer questions in their professional field or comment on other answers.”

“Two-star creators can edit ‘Core Content.’ ‘Core Content’ is equivalent to the essence and index part of the entire concept. At the same time, they have the authority to report if they believe the creative content of a one-star creator contains factual errors.”

“Three-star creators, besides having editing permissions for all content, can also view the historical versions of each entry’s edits and see the additions and deletions made by various creators. At the same time, they can handle reported content.”

“Our staff have the highest authority. If three-star creators have violations, they’ll be handled after discussion by the staff.”

Initially, all one-, two-, and three-star creators will be invited by our official personnel. Afterward, we can start the review process and decide whether creators can be upgraded based on their output quantity and quality.”

“If a creator violates our creation rules, such as being off-topic, factual errors, or answers containing malicious, misleading tendencies, they must be deleted.”

“Our APP is called ‘Useful,’ which means we must ensure all information on it is useful.”

“We might not have certain entries, but whenever we do, we must ensure their correctness.”

“For issues with extreme controversy and no conclusion, we must indicate that the issue is controversial and write out the viewpoints of both sides; for entries with too much controversy, we simply won’t include them.”

“For example, we won’t handle high-traffic emotional questions, witty questions, or questions designed to provoke arguments.”

“Real-name system, membership fee.”

“Our real-name authentication will be as strict as payment software. Each account must be bound to an ID card and facial recognition, and we only have one payment model: membership, with delayed charges.”

“Each month, we’ll charge based on the member’s usage time and views from the previous month.”

“If they haven’t used it at all, there’s no charge.”

“If they have used it, the minimum charge is 1 yuan, and the maximum is 15 yuan.”

“At the same time, we need to implement anti-theft and anti-scraping functions. For online plagiarists, we’ll prepare a legal team to sue at any time. All recovered compensation, without deduction, will go back to the creators!”

“Simultaneously, creators can receive incentives, with the value mainly depending on three aspects: the creator’s star level, the number of edits and answers, and whether there have been any violations.”

“We’ll take 90% of all monthly membership fees as incentives for creators. The remaining 10% will be used for website daily maintenance and development costs. If maintenance and development costs aren’t enough, I’ll make up the difference.”

“That’s about it, any questions?”

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

Yu Pingan was bewildered and remained silent for a long time before asking, “Then, Mr. Pei, where will the initial batch of content for our Useful APP come from? Will we cooperate with Thousand Degrees Encyclopedia or other similar websites to use their content?”

Many encyclopedia websites directly scraped existing content from the internet, which was a common phenomenon.

Pei Qian immediately shook his head: “Of course not!”

“What we want to create is original, so naturally, we need to start from ourselves! We don’t let others copy us, so we certainly can’t copy others.”

“All entries will be edited from scratch, and they must be differentiated from Thousand Degrees Encyclopedia.”

Yu Pingan was stunned: “Mr. Pei… this is a workload of mythical proportions, like the old man moving the mountain!”

“With this approach, there’s probably no possibility of profit for the next decade for this APP…”

“Forget about profit, it will probably be difficult to even generate traffic…”

Pei Qian couldn’t help but feel delighted inwardly.

Really? You think so too?

That’s great!

No profit for the next decade—you’re even more optimistic than I am!

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

Five years meant at least a dozen or so cycles, enough to lose quite a bit of money!

The prospect of no profit for the next decade was almost too good to imagine.

Pei Qian smiled slightly: “Yes, this is indeed a task of mythical proportions, like the old man moving the mountain.”

“But it’s also very meaningful. We want to create a clean space without garbage in an internet full of trash.”

“There’s a saying: the best time to plant a tree was ten years ago; the second best time is now.”

“Since the workload is so enormous, that’s why we need to start quickly, isn’t it?”