Li Mu is well aware of the charm of operating interactive social games. No matter whether Chinese or Americans, it is impossible to resist the attraction of this kind of game. Therefore, as long as this game is promoted well, users will definitely come here. Li Mu is trying his best to accumulate connections in this game. In Li Mu's opinion, this stage is just planting leeks. When the leeks grow up, they can be harvested with a knife. At that time, whether these leeks will be used to sell money, stir-fry or make steamed buns depends on his mood. .
In Li Mu's strategic plan, the first overseas battlefield for "Paradise Town" is universities. As long as this game can penetrate universities first, it will open a huge hole in the US market.
At the meeting, Li Mu requested that "Paradise Town" immediately enter the preparation process for overseas promotion. For the overseas promotion of "Paradise Town", a dedicated operation and promotion team must also be quickly dispatched to the United States to assume necessary roles. Li Mu requested that at this stage Chen Wenfeng, the operations director of the "Happy Farm" project team, coordinates and organizes the team to prepare for work in the United States. At the same time, he also needs to understand the student organizations of well-known American universities in advance and establish contacts in advance.
However, Li Mu also attaches great importance to the way "Paradise Town" is played in the US market. He made a request to the operation team: "Paradise Town" will be placed under the shell of a company previously registered in the United States for game promotion. During the first phase, officials are not allowed to tie this game to YY in any form, and try not to let users know that this game has any connection with YY, so as to avoid users’ resistance; as for whether the American media will pick up on it, then That's not the scope of Li Mu's consideration.
After Li Mu finished talking about the related matters of "Paradise Town", he shifted the topic of discussion to payment channels: "At present, the willingness of American elite users to pay is very high, but the biggest problem is that we have not yet provided a payment channel for American users. Direct and convenient payment channels.”
Lin Qingya asked: "Is it possible for our Alipay to land in the US market or connect to the US bank transaction system?"
Li Mu said: "Theoretically it is possible, but it will be very difficult to operate and it will be difficult to solve it in a short while."
After a pause, Li Mu added: "We should not distract our energy in the short term and not consider building a payment platform in the United States or connecting Alipay to the US market. We will first cooperate with Paypal and then launch a new membership system in the US market. "
"New membership system?" Everyone was a little surprised for a moment, but they soon recovered and asked Li Mu: "Are we going to implement a specific membership system in the United States?"
Li Mu nodded: "Our current membership system is too simple. Users in the U.S. market have a high willingness to pay and a strong ability to pay. It is difficult for this monthly membership system of US$1.2 to meet their needs."
Currently, there is only one level of YY membership. After becoming a YY member, users can create a YY group of 100 people and a YY group of 200 people, with 128MB of network hard drive space, 1024MB of offline file transfer space every day, and free offline file storage of 72 hours, and comes with 10 people’s chat records for permanent roaming. As for other functions, even free users can experience it.
Li Mu expressed his thoughts to everyone: "First of all, we must include group video calls as a chargeable item. Only members can initiate multi-person video calls, and the call duration must be clearly limited."
"For example: the free multi-person video call duration for an ordinary user is 5 hours per month, and the monthly multi-person video call duration for an ordinary VIP is 30 hours. If one member has a video call with multiple members, the time will be deducted simultaneously for all five members. If you video together for one hour, one hour will be deducted for each person;”
"If a member has a video call with multiple ordinary users, after the ordinary user's video time is used up, the VIP initiator's time can be deducted together. A member has a video call with three ordinary users who have used up the time, provided that it must be This member initiates the call, and the duration of the other three ordinary users is all deducted from his account. In this case, if the video is one hour, the VIP will deduct four hours."
"If you don't have enough time, you can purchase the duration package separately. It's one dollar for every ten hours. This price should be very cost-effective."
One director raised concerns: “If we start charging for video calls, will it cause some harm to users?”
Li Mu asked him with a smile: "China Mobile and China Unicom will charge you two-way charges for your mobile phone. When you make calls in other places, you will be charged roaming fees. It will definitely hurt you, but do you have a way to refuse?"
The other party scratched his head: "Even if you can't refuse, the user will still be very disgusted."
Li Mu said with a smile: "First of all, we have provided American users with a video conferencing solution that is more convenient and better to use than video conferencing terminals. Originally, their annual investment in this solution was very high, and we as The only alternative solution provider that provides service support at extremely low prices. I believe that the US market will definitely accept it. Don’t forget that the US Internet market is extremely different from China’s Internet market. The overall payment ratio of the US Internet market , willingness to pay is much higher than in China;
Secondly, we have given ordinary users 5 hours of multi-person video call time per month, and also given them a bug to exploit. If they are really unwilling to pay such a small amount of money, they can also get more time by registering a new account. , if it can’t bring us any income, then you can contribute a few registered users to us. This is already very kind;
Thirdly, what we really want to provide American users is deeply customized membership services, which are completely in line with mainstream American values: the more you spend, the more you will enjoy, and there will be no advantage. "
At this point, Li Mu wrote down several of his membership service levels on the whiteboard and said: "First of all, we need to add a login IP identification mechanism, and charge a unified monthly fee of US$2 for all YY members who are not in China, Taiwan, Taiwan, Taiwan, etc. Basic membership fee, on this basis, we will add several more levels, namely: intermediate VIP, advanced VIP and super VIP, as well as various value-added services."
"Intermediate VIP, the monthly basic membership fee is US$5, you can create two YY groups of 100 people, two YY groups of 200 people, 256MB of network hard disk space, 2048MB of offline file transfer space per day, and free storage of offline files for 72 hours and 60 hours The duration of multi-person video calls comes with permanent roaming of 20 people’s chat records.”
"Advanced VIP, the monthly basic membership fee is US$8, you can create three YY groups of 100 people, two YY groups of 200 people, one YY group of 500 people, 512MB of network hard disk space, 3072MB of offline file transfer space per day, and offline files are free 72 hours of storage, 90 hours of multi-person video call time, and 30 people’s chat records for permanent roaming.”
"Super VIP, the monthly basic membership fee is 15 US dollars, you can create three YY groups of 100 people, three YY groups of 200 people, two YY groups of 500 people, and one YY group of 1,000 people, 2048MB network hard disk space, and 4096MB offline per day File transfer space, free offline file storage for 72 hours, 120 hours of multi-person video call time, and permanent roaming of chat records for 50 people.”
Kong Lingyu said: "Boss, can we implement a hierarchical membership system like this in China?"
Li Mu nodded and said: "Yes, but we must not promote it too much. Most of our users do not need more advanced membership services. If we promote more advanced membership services, it will be a blow to their enthusiasm for paying." "
"Understood."
Li Mu said: “I continue to say that there are also some ideas for value-added services, such as:
We can launch a network hard drive upgrade package. For each additional 128MB of network hard drive space, you need to pay US$0.5/month, which can be added unlimitedly;
You can also launch YY group value-added services. For each additional YY group created with 200 people, you need to pay $0.5/month; for an additional group with 500 people, you need to pay $1/month; for a YY group with 1,000 people, you need to pay $3/month. moon;
For daily offline file transfer space, you need to pay US$1/month for each additional 1024MB; unlimited stacking is available;
Free storage time for offline files, you need to pay US$0.5/month for every additional 24 hours, which can be infinitely stacked; you can also purchase delayed service for an offline file at a time, and you need to pay US$0.1 for every additional 24 hours;
In the multi-person video call market, you need to pay US$1/month for every additional 30 hours, and you can add them unlimitedly... "
Li Mu's set of customized membership services is actually to better serve the elite class of business applications. They have different needs for various membership functions. What I have to do is to give them space to freely mix and match. Let them freely choose and add freely according to their actual needs, so that on the one hand, they can better serve them, and on the other hand, it can earn more value-added service fees.
After Kong Lingyu and other technical supervisors understood Li Mu's plan, they marveled at Li Mu's detailed and in-depth consideration of the problem, recorded Li Mu's requirements, and prepared to start development.
After the meeting, Li Mu asked his employees to perform their respective duties and quickly promoted all of his subsequent strategies:
Ding Zhenglin is ready to use all the advantages of Makino Technology to obtain the best conditions for Makino Technology’s Series C financing in front of capital;
Kong Lingyu and Fang Xudong led the technical team to launch the reform of the hierarchical membership system and customized membership services;
The business department is preparing to connect to Paypal and access U.S. payment channels as soon as possible; the server team and operations promotion team are beginning to prepare to go to the United States;
Lin Qingya is also preparing to go to Silicon Valley in person to establish a branch of Makino Technology in Silicon Valley. At the same time, she is recruiting talents for Makino Technology and Li Mu's entire Internet strategy system in Silicon Valley.
After finishing the work, everyone left the conference room in an orderly manner. Li Mu left Lin Qingya alone and asked her to help him apply for a business visa to the United States. It is best to apply for a U.S. green card for himself. He will definitely travel to the United States frequently in the future. Visa This problem will greatly restrict the excitement and flexibility at the business level. If you can obtain a U.S. green card as an investor or a famous businessman, you can fly to the United States from home at any time in the future.
After explaining this matter, Li Mu returned to his office. As soon as the door was closed, he lay half-ly in his boss chair, crossed his legs on the table, and repeatedly thought about the upcoming overseas war in his mind.
Li Mu is not worried about the development space of "Paradise Town" in the United States and the entire overseas market, because there is currently no social game similar to "Paradise Town" in the overseas market. Li Mu wants to take the opportunity to promote "Paradise Town" in overseas markets. Town", and we are not worried that competing products will appear in a short period of time.
"Paradise Town" is the overseas version of "Happy Farm". "Happy Farm" has been revised so many times and designed such a huge game structure, which includes the planting and breeding industry, manufacturing industry, building construction system, and tasks. System and player interaction system, in fact, the structure and logic of the entire game have been accumulated no less than that of a serious online game. It is not easy to catch up. No matter how fast it is, it will take several months to achieve it, and a few months Time is long enough for a hit game to become popular all over the country.
"Paradise Town" can at least be several months ahead of its opponents, which is enough for a game, but for Makino Technology's core product YY, only a few months of technological leadership does not make Li Mu feel confident.
In YY's product system, all technologies that can be patented have already been protected by patents. However, once YY provides a solution to a certain demand, other competitors will definitely bypass YY's patents and use another method. To solve the needs caused by YY, as the saying goes, all roads lead to Rome. YY's patent barriers are far from enough to defend it from all foreign enemies. What's more, for the sake of further interests and development, many companies will infringe on each other's patents. No matter what.
In the development process of the Internet and various electronic products, there are countless examples of companies using competitors' patents to defeat each other and then losing money to the other party. The latter seems to have received tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, but in the development of the market The losses on a large scale go far beyond compensation.
Therefore, it is conceivable that with the continuous development of YY, it will definitely stimulate the competitive awareness of overseas competing products. It is better for small companies. Once a company like Microsoft regards YY as a competitor, it will fully upgrade MSN to compete with YY. , then the problem is somewhat serious.
What Li Mu was thinking deep down in his heart at this time was how to make users in overseas markets regard YY as an indispensable "mattress" in Internet life as soon as possible. "Paradise Town" is a good help, but In the U.S. market, where there are many and powerful competitors, one "Paradise Town" seems not enough.
In other words, the U.S. market is large and the defense force is strong. Li Mu’s strategy of frontal attack + side detours, in Li Mu’s view, is somewhat difficult to capture the U.S. market.
Li Mu began to think seriously in his mind, thinking about what other ways could be used to increase the strength of the frontal attack while also increasing the strength of the flanking troops. There were only two ideas for the solution: either increase the strength of the two group armies, or simply Pull another group army to fight.
However, how can I still have a product in my hand that can stand alone? It is difficult to develop Taobao's model in the United States, and if you want to start Taobao in the United States, the cost is simply unimaginable. Today, Taobao itself has not perfected its own system. And the ability to bring it to the United States.
3321's model should be more marketable in the United States, which has a higher education level, but Li Mu also knows very well that what he wants now is a product that can directly help YY and "Paradise Town". 3321 cannot play this role. So I can only PASS.
After much deliberation, Li Mu could not think of a suitable product or strategic plan.
Just when Li Mu was feeling anxious, a cute and miserable cartoon image suddenly appeared in his mind.
The image is that of a huge nut. It looks cute when it is intact, but after half of its head is bitten off, it looks miserable...
Li Mu stood up from his chair in an instant, pounded the table with his fists excitedly, and muttered: "I almost forgot about the artifact "Plants vs. Zombies"!"
(End of chapter)