Rebirth of the Entrepreneurship Era

Many people look at things in a very one-sided way.

For example, when you see a store doing well, you feel that the owner must have made a lot of money. In fact, it is very likely that the store has just managed to save its capital, or even cannot make ends meet.

For another example, if you see a purchase price of 50 cents and sell it for 1.5 yuan, you will feel that the boss has a 200% horrible profit.

In fact, all businesses have a lot of sunk costs.

Why are there not many video sites, and most of them died halfway?

It is because the bandwidth cost of video websites is almost unbelievably expensive. Bandwidth is not broadband. It is not the 100M broadband or 500M broadband opened by users at home. Bandwidth is the total amount of data transmitted by the server per unit time.

It is equivalent to the main water supply pipeline of a residential area.

If there are only 1,000 households in the community, and the peak water consumption per household is 50 milliliters per second, then the carrying capacity of the water supply pipeline should not be less than 50,000 milliliters per second, that is, 50 liters of water must be supplied per second.

If the supply capacity is higher than this number, there is no problem, but if it is lower than this number, the water consumption of all users will be affected, and there will be less water, slow water output, and unstable water output.

This is the same as the website card.

Sometimes, your own Internet speed is very fast, but when you visit a certain website or a certain APP, you will be stuck to death.

At this time, don’t think that there is a problem with your network or router. It is very likely that the water supply line over there has exceeded its carrying capacity. Even if your pipeline can enter a ton of water per second, the other party can share it with you. It's only one drop per second, so you can only watch helplessly.

Therefore, if a website wants to provide stable service and experience, it must ensure that its own bandwidth is greater than the needs of users.

If it is a bandwidth of one MB, it means that the server can transmit one MB of data per second.

If it is a novel website, when users visit text-based pages, the per capita bandwidth occupancy rate per second may be only a few KB. Therefore, 1 MB of bandwidth can carry hundreds of people to visit.

However, if it is a video website, one user may occupy 1MB per second. If there are one million people, the bandwidth requirement is about 1TB, that is, the bandwidth must support the transmission of 1024G data per second.

This fee is so high that it is beyond imagination, at least 20 to 30 million a month.

For websites like Youku and iQiyi, the cost of bandwidth is higher.

iQiyi's financial report shows that since 2018, their annual bandwidth cost has exceeded 2 billion yuan, and it is still increasing.

In addition to the bandwidth cost of 2 billion RMB, there are 40, 500, 500,000,000, or even more content procurement and production costs behind it. In addition to operating a huge team, the cost may be tens of billions a year.

Most of the tens of billions of costs are sunk costs, just like a sea-crossing bridge, with piers dozens or hundreds of meters high sinking in seawater, and most people ignore the engineering costs under the seawater.

Just like people who don’t understand the Internet, they may not be able to see the huge sunk costs behind video sites like iQiyi. Instead, they will hop around because members need to pay for content, thinking that such a company is too heartless. I was watching a drama on your platform, and you asked me to be a member.

In fact, the sunk cost of the Internet industry is far beyond the imagination of ordinary people.

Otherwise, how could Wang Sicong's Panda die?

Ordinary people look at Panda's business model, and they may not even think of how this thing can lose money?

Wang Sicong has his own traffic, so the advertising fee can save a lot of money;

The anchor's income is divided with the platform. When the anchor earns 50 cents,

The platform earns at least 50 cents;

A small number of top celebrities require high signing fees, but most of them not only bring their own traffic, but also can drive user consumption, so the platform as a whole will not lose money, or not lose much.

Then why is such a big company still cool?

It is because the cost of bandwidth is tens of millions a month, hundreds of millions a year, and it is losing money every year. The loss is so great that it needs to constantly find new capital investment to supply blood. The severe patients who have a major bleeding and live in the ICU are willing to invest once they have no capital. It is equivalent to no plasma supply, and the heart will stop beating immediately.

The reason why Xu Yiyang said so much to his roommates was to let them understand this truth.

Don't feel bad because you see website advertisements that can be sold for money, thinking that you didn't take them to play and you made a lot of money.

In fact, it’s still too early to make money with this ghost thing. In the early stage, it will continue to burn money until the scale is large enough.

Fortunately, everyone can understand this truth, and they all have a grateful heart.

Afterwards, Xu Yiyang received the restaurant address from the other party, and said to several people: "Let's go to this restaurant after class in the afternoon, have a field trip, and taste their taste by the way. If the taste is good, the ingredients It’s not bad, and the environment is not bad, so I’ll put an ad on him, if it’s not good, I won’t accept the ad, so as not to deceive users.”

Xu Yiyang felt that building a website was like doing training, and one must have a conscience.

A conscientious training institution, while making money, will definitely do everything possible to let its students learn something, but a training institution without conscience, just make money, it is best not to come to the class after you pay the money;

A conscientious website, while advertising, must also consider its own users.

Not to mention that everything is for their sake, at least not to harm them.

And a website that has no conscience, just advertises and only makes money.

Even though he knew that a private cancer hospital might not even be able to cure a cold, he would still recommend this hospital to cancer patients as long as they paid more money.

Even if he knows that a certain chess and card game is cheating money and may ruin the player's fortune, as long as he pays more money, he will still advertise the game.

But Xu Yiyang would never allow himself to follow such a path of profit-seeking.

Therefore, he felt that he must go to this restaurant to have a look and try it first, and if it is really good, he would recommend it to users on the forum.

These days, there are not many people who are willing to spend 30 yuan for a buffet. If they read the advertisement and try it, it is probably for a couple’s date, a classmate dinner, or simply wanting to have a good meal for themselves. Just find a place to cash in a meal mentality.

If the restaurant does poorly in all aspects, it will not only cause them a psychological gap, but also cause additional psychological harm.

...

After class in the afternoon, the seven of them came together to the Old John's Western-style cafeteria near Jiaotong University. Xu Yiyang also specially brought the low-resolution digital camera.

From the outside, the restaurant is indeed very large, and the decoration is relatively high-end. The scale can accommodate at least a hundred people dining at the same time.

But now it's almost six o'clock, it's time for dinner, but the business in the store is very average.

Xu Yiyang counted through the window, and there were not as many people eating as the waiters.

With this number of customers, the store will pay at least one or two thousand yuan a day including the rent, labor and equipment depreciation.

A middle-aged man who looked like a restaurant manager was overjoyed when he saw seven people who looked like college students looking in through the window at the door. He trotted out all the way and said with a smile, "Would you like to eat? You can try it." Try our family's buffet, Orleans grilled chicken wings and drumsticks, American fried chicken..."

Xu Yiyang smiled and said, "I'm sorry, we are from the New Century Forum, let's find Manager Liu."

"I am! Are you Mr. Xu?" The other party hurriedly greeted with a smile, and then he was a little disappointed, probably because he realized that the seven of them were not customers who came to eat.

Xu Yiyang smiled slightly and said, "That's right, I am the person in charge of the website."

As he said that, he added: "Actually, we came here to taste your food first. If the overall quality is good, we will accept your advertisement."

The other party immediately said: "Come, come and invite me inside, I am treating you today."

Xu Yiyang smiled and said, "No, we will pay for it at our own expense."

After entering the store, Xu Yiyang went to the bar to pay first, but Manager Liu tried to stop him, but Xu Yiyang had already handed over the exact two hundred and ten yuan to the cashier.

Manager Liu said embarrassingly: "Look at you, how can you ask you to pay for your own food when you come to the store."

Xu Yiyang smiled and said: "If we cooperate happily, it's okay for you to invite us to eat again."

As he said that, Xu Yiyang said again: "Manager Liu, go and do your work first, and leave us alone."

Then Manager Liu hurriedly said: "That's okay, the food pick-up area and the drink and fruit area are all inside, you can do what you want!"

Xu Yiyang and the others chose a big table, and then he called everyone to pick up the food. To his surprise, none of the six of them had eaten the buffet, so they didn't know how to go through the follow-up process.

So Xu Yiyang said: "The buffet is all you can eat and drink, everyone go directly over there, if you see what you want to eat, you can put it on a plate, anything is fine."

As he said that, Xu Yiyang added: "Although you can eat whatever you want, don't waste it. You can take a little less first, and then take if you don't have enough food."

Chen Meng asked: "Brother Xu, can you just take it casually?"

Xu Yiyang nodded: "Get what you eat!"

"Okay!" Several boys rushed out at once.

This restaurant is mostly American fast food, with a complete range of chicken products, as well as pork chops, American barbecue, various pizzas, sausages, bread, and desserts.

In addition, there are quite a lot of fruit types, Xu Yiyang made a little of each kind on purpose, and found that they were all quite fresh.

The beverages are all made from the beverage machine, and the taste is no different from KFC or McDonald's, but it is a little weaker than the bottled ones, which is normal.

Everyone took some food each, and it looked very rich when they were piled on the table. Xu Yiyang took a few photos on purpose, and then everyone started to whirlwind.

After tasting many kinds of food, Xu Yiyang felt that the taste of this restaurant was quite good, at least worthy of the price of 30 yuan.

As for why the business is not good, it may be because the publicity is not in place, or it may be because consumers have not seen the specific types in it, but are simply scared away by the price and feel that the price of 30 yuan is too expensive. .

Therefore, at this time, it is necessary to make a more detailed advertisement on a powerful channel. Once consumers understand what the 30 yuan can be exchanged for, they will be willing to try it.

Thinking of this, Xu Yiyang decided to take the advertisement of this restaurant and use it to try his hand, to see how strong the transformation ability of the New Century Forum is.