As for how to make the free novel business work?
We could spend money to buy the novel adaptation rights for those comics. To lower the purchase price, we could also negotiate a revenue-sharing model with them.
Once we secured the adaptation rights, we could go all out against other novel websites, making them afraid to sign fanfiction novels based on anime for which we held the copyright.
Even works that had already been signed would have to be taken down, or else they would be infringing on our rights and would have to face us in court.
After that, we could spend money to acquire the copyrights of those anime fanfiction novels that had been forcibly removed at low prices, then upload them to our novel site and build up a massive inventory of anime fanfiction.
Of course, replenishing our novel inventory would only be the first step. What mattered next would be attracting writers and building up our own collection of novels.
My other trump card, the recommendation algorithm, could work its magic here. It could save a great deal of manpower and resources.
In theory, it could intelligently arrange recommendations automatically, pushing suitable novels to the right users without much human intervention. We would only need to handle content reviews and other tasks.
As for why we should do free novels instead of paid ones, it was because Bilibili's users were all young and generally did not have much money to spare.
It would be difficult to make them pay to read novels, so free novels were better suited to them. We could also make money from advertising fees paid by advertisers and writers.
You can take a look at the profit statistics for the online novel industry in recent years. Although those figures are for paid novels, free novels did not earn any less—in fact, they could earn even more.
In short, if we got the light novel business for anime fanfiction up and running, the profits from the free novel business alone could support Bilibili's operations and development.
And if a truly outstanding light novel emerged, we could absolutely adapt it into animation and games.
With a huge readership behind it, as long as the quality was decent, it would surely achieve good results as soon as it launched."
"That really is a good idea."
Xu Yi's eyes lit up as he spoke. He realized that this proposal was genuinely well suited to them.
Although Xu Yi disliked advertising, what he disliked was large-scale ad placement in videos and webpages. Novels were not within the scope of his personal preferences.
Hearing Lin Feng's words, he realized that Bilibili was indeed highly suited to producing anime fanfiction light novels.
And when Xu Yi looked at the profit charts of other novel websites, along with the projected profits after running their own novel site, his eyes shone even brighter.
"This truly is a good idea. Bilibili has a huge two-dimensional culture user base. If we launched a free light novel website focused on anime fanfiction, it really could become an instant hit. But..."
He Rui's gaze sharpened as he spoke.
"But we only have 2.6 million left. That is only enough to sustain our website's operations for another two or three months. If we want to purchase copyrights, we would need to set aside at least 10 million in reserve funds.
After all, buying only one or two works would not mean much. But if we wanted to buy more, we would not have the money. So right now, we simply cannot afford to do this."
At He Rui's words, everyone present except Lin Feng showed disappointment on their faces. They truly thought highly of this free novel business.
Lin Feng nodded gently, then continued.
"Money is not a problem. Although I said I would make Bilibili hugely profitable within six months, I am actually confident I can shorten that to one or two months.
Of course, let's put large-scale profitability aside for now. Let's talk about the short video business first.
As everyone knows, since Kuaishou launched its short video platform in 2012, short videos have gradually begun to rise. In the future, they will definitely affect the world."
However, He Rui shook his head slightly upon hearing Lin Feng's words.
"I am not optimistic about entering the short video field, because too many companies are already doing it.
Even Tencent Company has launched Tencent Weishi, while Sina Weibo has introduced support for short videos.
Many companies are currently developing their own short-video apps. The competitive pressure is simply too great. Although we have Bilibili as a foundation,
Bilibili mainly hosts medium-length videos, and it is not particularly suited to entering the short video field.
If we truly entered the short video market, it would only make Bilibili's positioning unclear."
Hearing He Rui's opinion, the people present nodded lightly in agreement.
That was right. Bilibili's videos were generally over three minutes long, with an average duration of around ten minutes—medium-length videos.
If they entered the short video field now and introduced a large number of clips only a dozen seconds long, flooding Bilibili with short videos would instead disrupt its rhythm and make users dislike the platform.
"The issue of unclear positioning is easy to solve. We only need to establish two video libraries and two mobile apps. Excellent videos from either library can be moved to the other and receive a certain amount of recommendations.
As for whether Bilibili is suited to entering the short video field, I can only say that we are the most suited to it, because Bilibili has a super-genius major shareholder and a ten-year license for his super recommendation algorithm."
Faced with the lack of confidence, Lin Feng instead firmly believed that Bilibili could succeed at this.
After all, he had already provided Douyin's correct development plan from his previous life, along with its recommendation algorithm. If they still could not make it work, then it would not be his fault. It would mean Adou truly could not be helped.
Why did he recommend that Bilibili enter the short video field?
It was because whether Bilibili could rise to prominence and achieve dazzling results was tied to his grand plan for algorithmic dominance, and that plan was tied to his ultimate goal: the "making the false real" plan.
On top of that, he himself owned 30% of Bilibili's shares. Supporting Bilibili now and helping it achieve even more brilliant results than in his previous life would serve his interests in both the short and long term.
That was why Lin Feng had brought out Douyin's correct development plan and algorithm from his previous life. If they still could not achieve what Douyin had achieved in his previous life, then Adou truly could not be helped.
As he thought this, Lin Feng looked at He Rui and Xu Yi, considering how to persuade them. Then an idea came to him, and he smiled.
"There is no doubt that Kuaishou currently dominates the short video field, but Kuaishou has a fatal flaw. That flaw is that mid-sized and major uploaders have almost monopolized traffic recommendation resources.
On the surface, this near-monopoly of traffic recommendation resources by mid-sized and major uploaders may not seem like a problem. After all, for Kuaishou, those uploaders were more likely to attract user tips.
In contrast, small uploaders and individual users were too numerous and difficult to manage. Not only that, their tips were extremely scarce, so there was barely any profit to squeeze out of them. They could practically be ignored.
From the perspective of long-term development, this model of promoting mid-sized and major uploaders while abandoning small uploaders and individual users was extremely unhealthy, and it carried fatal hidden dangers.
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