Chapter 274: The Short Play Goes Online
Time flies.
In the blink of an eye, the day had come for the short drama invested in by Tengying Group to go online.
The massive Penguin Video platform was plastered with ads for the short drama.
In the countryside, Sir Zhang, bored, squatted at his doorstep, idly scrolling through dramas on his phone.
Suddenly, he saw a title, "War God's Daughter Lives in a Dog Kennel."
When the War God gets angry, blood splatters for thousands of miles.
What kind of bullshit title is this? Nowadays, these clickbait creators are getting more and more outrageous.
Sir Zhang, after all, was one of the few in the village who received a pension, a minor official, and he couldn't help but swear at the beginning.
He clicked to watch.
It was about a little girl who looked like a beggar, locked up in a dog kennel. Each episode was only five minutes long, pitifully short.
In the end, she made a phone call to her dad, "Daddy, come and save Little An'an."
Then in the next episode, her daddy came back.
Bringing along a hundred thousand soldiers (four extras), they all promptly arrived in Cloud City.
And then they furiously took down Cloud City's four major clans one by one.
They even planned to drive a nuclear submarine into Yunpu River.
To tell the truth, the plot is really damn stupid.
It's so addictive to watch, and before you know it, you need to pay to continue.
It's just a few bucks anyway, so Sir Zhang casually recharged his account.
Watch and curse, curse and spend money.
And that wasn't the end of it; there was an even more exaggerated one to follow.
"War God Becomes a Son-in-law," abiding by a five-year agreement without revealing his astounding martial prowess.
The incognito War God, carrying water for his wife's foot bath, serving her diligently every day.
Only to receive a green hat from his wife in return, who also declares she wants a divorce.
And breaks his leg.
Who could stand this? You simply have to continue watching.
Before he knew it, Sir Zhang began to spend more money.
As night fell, he had almost spent a hundred bucks.
This is too f***ing addictive, and looking at the comments below, they were unanimously filled with curses.
But while everyone cursed, they were still hooked.
"Damn it, who the hell made this crap?"
"Shit, now Ultraman is becoming a son-in-law too, can it get any more ridiculous?"
"That's nothing, I'm watching an Immortal Emperor coming down to be a son-in-law."
"Editor, come the f*** out, I promise I won't kill you, watching Little An'an is infuriating."
A chorus of curses that did not affect Tengying Group in the slightest.
Five new short dramas were released in one day, all in collaboration with the three major platforms.
They were promoted on video websites and short video platforms, bringing in viewers.
One would've thought that with such plots, normal people wouldn't pay to watch.
But that underestimated the stress of modern life.
If there was not some pressure, why would anyone watch such stupid plots?
Even the inside staff couldn't believe it when they first saw it—unbelievable that such idiotic stories actually came from their own company.
The only requirement the director, who was paid, had was not to credit his name.
He couldn't afford to lose face like that.
There's really no one else like this.
Zhang Wanyi stared at the backend real-time data, and on the first day of the entire network's influx, the Yateng Short Drama APP downloads had exceeded 500,000.
Looking at the conversion data, over half the viewers had spent no less than twenty bucks.
In one day, tens of millions had been charged to accounts.
Keep in mind this was just the testing phase; the main goal was to see if short dramas could really make money!
And the results were explosive.
Far stronger than anyone had imagined.
Considering the production costs for these five short dramas combined were less than a million yuan,
and the shooting time was less than half a month—not for one, but for all of them.
The key selling point of these short dramas was the plot; everything else was negligible.
Yet with such roughshod production, they could slash tens of millions in revenue in just one day.
You have to say, these stupid short dramas really do have a future.
With the boss away, Zhang Wanyi decided to increase the ad budget for the second day based on the data.
From one million, they directly bumped the investment up to two million.
The result was that the next day's trading volume soared to over twenty million, with more than five hundred thousand people willing to pay for the drama.
Such figures obviously exceeded everyone's expectations.
And in the process of refreshing the number of people who paid to watch the short drama, it was found that most of them were middle-aged and elderly people from rural areas.
Not only was there a promising future for short dramas, but it was also super profitable.
In the following days, Zhang Wanyi continued to increase advertising investment, going from two million and simply increasing it to six million in ad spending a day.
She urged the Yateng Short Drama team in Guangzhou to expedite the filming process.
This stuff doesn't need to be reviewed; as soon as it's finished, it can go up.
It was basically wild growth; in less than a week, they could produce a series with two hundred episodes.
Their directorial resources were so abundant that it was a breeze to produce fifty series a month.
This was simply making money lying down.
When the trend hit, it was beyond anyone's imagination.
Short dramas appeared out of the blue and even managed to outdo the three major platforms in terms of the number of paying viewers.
It turns out that escapist, addictive viewing was the favorite way for the rural middle-aged and elderly to watch dramas.
The newly established Yateng Short Drama under the Tengying Group was initially thought to be a minor endeavor.
Yet the outcome was beyond imagination.
Looking at these figures, it was undeniable that Tengying Group was on the rise again with another cash cow.
Chen Pingsheng's shrewd maneuvers were becoming increasingly frequent.
Already an undisputed giant in the entertainment industry, the group had now turned to producing these low-quality short dramas.
You say you're just making it, but then it turns out to be so profitable.
This left many entertainment industry moguls dumbfounded.
Too bad, he hardly ever paid much attention to these details.
Just as he himself said, investments below two hundred million could be decided by the vice-presidents within the group.
They didn't need his signature at all.
On the ninth, he rushed to Xiangjiang to attend an executive class.
Tong Zelan, who often traveled globally, was the first to seek out a collaboration with him.
"Old Chen, this Yateng Short Drama of yours is something else!"
"It's okay, I guess, making tens of millions a day is just a trifle."
"I'll put in three hundred million for a 30% stake, and I'll help you package it for an IPO within a year, how about that?"
Zelan was well aware of the profitability of short dramas.
Discover more stories at empire
It was mainly the data that said it all. If this data hadn't come out, and you showed her such plots as the warrior daughter living in a dog kennel and told her it could make money,
she would have cursed back at you asking if you think she's a fool?
This had nothing to do with her capabilities but everything to do with personal perception.
None of these executive class attendees could believe that making silly short dramas was more profitable than making TV dramas.
Chen Pingsheng thought about it and agreed; mainly because his Golden Finger needed to rely on being listed to maximize its profits.
The IPO process is super complicated, with countless approval procedures.
Wanting to get a short drama company, established for less than three years, listed within a year,
the difficulty was extremely high.
"Alright, if you say it's OK, then it's OK."
The two chatted for a while, and they had to return to Magic City to sign the actual contract; right now, they were just confirming the basic intent to cooperate.
Guo Ziyi came to find them after a while, inquiring if they wanted to attend a manipulator's gathering in the evening.
A manipulator's gathering, as the name suggests, is about being a market maker in the stock market.
By manipulating stock prices, they achieve significant profits, and at their level,
the earnings from a manipulator's gathering start at tens of billions.
Chen Pingsheng was quite curious about these stock market manipulators and thought it would be okay to check it out in the evening.
Zelan, who often attended such gatherings overseas, clearly understood what exactly these so-called manipulators relied on to make money.
If you consider the best manipulator's play of the last ten years, it had to be Bitcoin.
They inflated the value of Bitcoin, which was once worth next to nothing, to tens of thousands of US Dollars per coin.
The strength of the manipulators was evident; they were unfathomably deep.
As for the manipulators behind Bitcoin, Zelan knew of entities like Small Day's Mitsui & Co.
Mitsui was the acknowledged leading conglomerate in Asia and even the world during the 1990s.
Its assets exceeded outsiders' imagination.
Beyond Mitsui, there was also Samsung from Kimchi Country.
Additionally, several other top-tier conglomerates join hands through Bitcoin to harvest global wealth extensively.
This was globally recognized as the strongest manipulator's gathering.