Learn to harness the power of the masses

Back at his seat, Guo Shuai still looked utterly baffled.

"Hey, what exactly are you trying to do?"

"Why give that guy money for nothing?"

Chen Fan did not answer. Instead, he looked straight at Guo Shuai.

"How much money do you have on you?"

"Huh?"

Guo Shuai rummaged through his pockets.

He pulled out a wad of small bills.

"A little over a hundred and twenty yuan."

"Give it to me for now."

Chen Fan took it and stuffed it into his pocket without even counting it.

"Including what you lent me before, I'll pay you back ten thousand next time."

Guo Shuai shook his head.

"You still haven't answered my question."

Chen Fan opened the webpage and pointed out the comments on the forum.

"What does this mean? Your competitor is behind this?"

Chen Fan nodded. "Most likely."

"So what are you planning? You want to hire people to smear their website?"

Chen Fan shook his head.

"There's more to it than that."

Chen Fan then explained his plan to Guo Shuai in detail.

He could not possibly compete with them by throwing money into promotion.

Since that was the case, he had to change his approach and find another way.

His competitor already had a clear advantage, yet still hired people to smear the Domain Name Network.

What did that tell them?

Guo Shuai immediately said, "It means he's scared."

"He knows his website isn't as good as yours, so he's worried yours will become a threat in the future."

Chen Fan snapped his fingers.

"Since they've made their move, there's no reason for us to hold back."

Guo Shuai scratched his head, puzzled.

"But... can you really beat them with a bunch of strangers you found online? Is that going to work?"

"Don't end up losing even more than you stand to gain."

Chen Fan laughed.

It seemed Guo Shuai still had no idea how powerful a paid online army could be.

Chen Fan went on to explain exactly what a paid online army was.

Guo Shuai listened, only half understanding.

"But even if you're right, there's no need to pay him that much."

"Fifty cents a head? I think ten cents would be enough."

Chen Fan did not know whether to laugh or cry.

"We're running out of time."

"And if we want to build an online army fast, we have to spend heavily at the start."

"Trust me. Working the front desk at an internet café, he meets more people every day than anyone else. The rate I offered isn't high at all."

Seeing that Guo Shuai still did not quite understand, Chen Fan had to elaborate.

"Don't think of the people we're recruiting as temporary workers."

"Bring everyone together in QQ groups, and think of them as teammates in your gaming guild."

"After that, you can post bounties in the groups whenever you want and really put them to work for you."

"Trust me. In this day and age, if you have an online army that follows your orders, you can wield some serious power on the internet."

Guo Shuai only vaguely understood what he was hearing.

"Whatever the case, I'll follow your lead. If you say we do it, we do it."

That was what a good friend did: supported you unconditionally, even when he did not understand.

Next, Chen Fan took Guo Shuai to several other internet cafés.

He made the same arrangements with their attendants or front-desk staff, then gave each of them a QQ group.

To avoid trouble, Chen Fan had picked this QQ account from the new accounts he had registered earlier.

No one knew the account belonged to him.

And he gave the front-desk staff at each internet café a different QQ group.

In a single day, Chen Fan handed out more than twenty QQ groups.

Guo Shuai accompanied him the whole way. Honestly, he still could not make sense of what Chen Fan was trying to do.

He also felt the approach was far too amateurish and might not bring in many people.

If he worked the front desk at an internet café, he could simply arrange for a few dozen friends and classmates to join the group, collect the money, then leave and disappear. What could Chen Fan do about it?

Of course, Guo Shuai did not voice these concerns. He simply accompanied Chen Fan in silence as they went from one café to the next.

By dusk, Chen Fan had handed out twenty-four QQ groups.

"That should do it. Let's see how things look tomorrow morning."

"If these attendants come through and get me two hundred people within three days, that should just about be enough."

That was what Chen Fan thought, but he had completely underestimated the power of those attendants and front-desk staff.

Over the course of the day, requests to join the twenty-four QQ groups never stopped coming.

Some of the front-desk staff were clever. They had joined plenty of QQ groups while gaming and simply blasted the advertisement into every gaming group, earnestly inviting everyone to join and pick up some easy money.

Some people joined purely out of curiosity.

So when Chen Fan returned to the White Birch Grove the next day, he was stunned the moment he logged in by the constantly flashing messages in the QQ groups.

Originally, Chen Fan had thought getting one or two hundred people across all twenty-four QQ groups would be a good result.

Yet in just one night, the largest group had grown to over two hundred members, and even the smallest had more than eighty.

The young man at the White Birch Grove's front desk approached with a conspiratorial air.

"Did you see? I brought in over a hundred and fifty people for you."

Chen Fan smiled. "Impressive. Very impressive."

Seeing him hesitate as if he wanted to say something, Chen Fan smiled and took eighty yuan out of his pocket.

"Here's eighty."

The young man's eyes lit up. He seemed not to have expected Chen Fan to actually pay him.

He eagerly took the money, then looked at Chen Fan expectantly before leaving.

"If I bring in more people later, can I still get paid?"

Chen Fan smiled.

"Of course. Until the end of this month, my offer stands as long as you bring people in."

The young man's eyes brightened.

"All right, it's a deal."

Once he left, Chen Fan disabled chatting in all the groups, his hands moving so quickly that Guo Shuai could barely follow.

Then he sent a message to each group.

"In half an hour, this group will post a paid bounty task."

"Before the task begins, please nominate three members to manage the group."

After saying that, Chen Fan lifted the chat restrictions.

In an instant, messages came flooding in.

"What's going on?"

"A paid bounty task? What task? What money?"

"Isn't this a gaming group?"

"We can actually make money here?"

"Where's the group owner? Explain it to us."

Chen Fan quietly watched their conversations.

Sure enough, eager to find out what the mysterious group owner was up to, they wanted to get to the bottom of it.

The members of every group actually nominated three people to lead them.

Chen Fan gave administrator privileges to the three people nominated in each group.

He checked carefully. Almost every internet café's front-desk worker or attendant had become a group administrator.

Chen Fan did not care who became an administrator.

He simply invited them into a group for administrators.

Next, Guo Shuai watched firsthand as Chen Fan managed the entire operation.

First, Chen Fan held a meeting with the dozens of group administrators.

He briefly explained how the bounty task would work.

The task was actually very simple. It could be summed up in one phrase.

Post comments.

Anyone who could use the internet and type could easily participate.

And Chen Fan's requirements were simple.

All comments should say as many good things about the Domain Name Network as possible.

Worried that they might not understand, Chen Fan even took the initiative to write more than a dozen sample comments.

He specifically told them that if they really could not write their own, they should copy the templates and post those.

Just as Guo Shuai sat there bewildered, thinking Chen Fan was being far too casual about this...

Chen Fan suddenly addressed the administrators in their group.

"Tell every member of your groups that the harder they work posting comments, the more money they can make."

"Each comment must contain at least ten characters."

"Five cents per comment. No upper limit!"

"As administrators, your pay goes up a tier. You'll get ten cents for every comment you post."

"All right. Go back to your groups, explain everything clearly to the members, and post the task."

Sitting beside him, Guo Shuai stared at Chen Fan, dumbfounded.

"Isn't this... a little too amateurish?"

But Chen Fan smiled, stretched, and patted Guo Shuai on the shoulder.

"Young man, remember this! You have to learn to harness the power of the masses."