Chapter 15

Before Li Mu became the dominant force in the Stone Age game, he already had a well-thought-out business operation plan.

Given that the Stone Age's popularity wouldn't last much longer, and by the end of the year, the entire online game market would have to make way for the super beast of the online gaming world, Legend, Li Mu was well aware that the profit potential of Stone Age Dominator was already limited for him.

Without an online payment channel, he could only sell offline and would need to build a sales network from scratch. It was uncertain how long it would take to reach a scale of selling 20,000 to 30,000 copies a month. Therefore, from now until the end of the year, the revenue that Stone Age Dominator could generate under his management was estimated to be no more than one million yuan.

One million yuan was indeed a lot, but the entire Abe cheat had been running for so long, and its industrial chain value was only at the ten million level. The so-called industrial chain meant that the value it created had to support an entire chain of interests.

From development and testing to channel distribution and terminal sales, every link in the chain had to make money. Not to mention that Li Mu had no ability to establish a channel network capable of selling tens of thousands of copies a month, even if there was an existing network, the profit distribution would be such that selling 300,000 to 400,000 yuan a month, he might only get 30% to 40% of that, which would be quite impressive.

The payment methods of this era were very limited. Online payments had not yet truly taken off. Even in Hangzhou, Ma had not yet started Taobao, let alone Alipay. Therefore, the bottleneck in internet payments was significant. Even games like Stone Age and Legend had to rely on countless internet cafes across the country for offline distribution, unable to achieve online transactions.

Currently, most cheats were sold on a monthly subscription basis, and the sales terminals, like game cards, had also sunk to internet cafes. Cheat distributors would develop cooperation with internet cafes across the country, entrusting them to sell monthly subscription codes for the cheats. In a year or two, many monthly subscription codes for cheats could be directly purchased at internet cafes.

However, for the current Li Mu, with only himself and Zhao Kang, and a few hundred yuan in capital, how could he possibly establish a network capable of selling tens of thousands of copies a month? It was a pipe dream.

Therefore, Li Mu had long made plans and prepared two strategies for himself.

After the development of Stone Age Dominator was completed, he would first open a 15-day free trial period. This was also the reason why he had Zhao Kang familiarize himself with various online promotional methods.

Although online payments were not yet available, the speed of online dissemination was extremely fast. His Stone Age Dominator, with its player assistance functions, was several times more powerful than the current Abe cheat and other Stone Age cheats. Not only was it powerful in functionality, but it also considered smoothness and user experience, making its overall usage effect far superior to similar products.

As a result, once the free trial version was launched, it would quickly generate a word-of-mouth effect. Being free and highly functional, there was no reason for users to reject it. This approach would greatly impact the Abe cheat and other paid Stone Age cheats.

Li Mu's method was quite ruthless, aiming to thoroughly disrupt the market from the start, directly cutting off the income of the Abe cheat and other cheat development teams, much like how 360 Antivirus's free service had crushed countless antivirus software companies in the past.

Once the Abe cheat, which already had a business model, suffered a devastating blow, they would not sit idly by. They would have only two choices: immediately develop a more powerful cheat than Stone Age Dominator, or find the creator of Stone Age Dominator to collaborate.

The former was impossible. Li Mu's programming skills were far beyond what these cheat developers could match. They could only choose the latter.

This was Li Mu's first strategy: waiting for other cheat studios to contact him, especially the Abe cheat. If they contacted him, he would directly sell Stone Age Dominator. The Stone Age was still very popular, and selling it for a few hundred thousand yuan would not be a problem.

If the first strategy of selling the package was unsuccessful, there would only be the second strategy left: self-promotion.

Self-promotion would be much more difficult. Even if Li Mu and Zhao Kang ran themselves ragged during the summer, they might not sell many copies. However, it was better than nothing. With hard work, they could still earn a few tens of thousands of yuan over the summer. If they could find some local agents among the players and users, the promotion might proceed faster.

However, Li Mu did not favor the second strategy, as it was too slow. He needed quick money. After Legend was launched, the second strategy would be more suitable for a long-term approach.

Therefore, he hoped that everything would depend on how much impact Stone Age Dominator would have on the commercial cheats of the Stone Age after its launch!

...

On the night of July 11th, Li Mu finally completed the full development of Stone Age Dominator on the second floor of the Big Spider.

The free trial version of Stone Age Dominator was officially launched on several game forums.

Zhao Kang's efforts over the past few days immediately paid off. Because he had been seeking free Stone Age cheats in various Stone Age forums and chat rooms under Li Mu's instructions, he had already built a certain "popular base."

For example, a post on a certain Stone Age forum that had been bumped hundreds of times was posted by Zhao Kang, under the username "Standing Pig," with a simple content: "High school student has no money to buy cheats, kneeling to ask seniors for a free Stone Age cheat!"

At first, Zhao Kang was reluctant to add the "kneeling" part, thinking it was too embarrassing. Li Mu rolled his eyes, clearly not understanding internet thinking. In the future, when he used screenshots from action movies to seek guidance from experienced users, he would be even more lowbrow. Why be so concerned about face in online virtual communities?

Reluctantly, Zhao Kang followed Li Mu's instructions and posted it.

Unexpectedly, the "kneeling" part did attract a lot of attention. Internet users at that time were very enthusiastic, and many replied, saying that free cheats had only a fraction of the functionality of paid cheats, and using only free cheats in the Stone Age would make it almost impossible to progress.

Some also advised Zhao Kang to stop playing and focus on his studies.

In short, the replies were all positive.

Two days later, on the same night, "Standing Pig" posted another thread: "Seniors, I have finally found a free Stone Age cheat that outperforms all other cheats, and I'm here to share it with everyone!"

At that time, forums already had the function to upload attachments. Li Mu's cheat was only 5.6MB in size, but most forums limited attachment sizes to no more than 1MB. Therefore, Li Mu had to compress the cheat into six separate zip files and have Zhao Kang upload them all.

Just having attachments was not enough. Li Mu also prepared a large number of screenshots, including the cheat interface, function options, and actual usage effects in the game.

Even with a fixed template, this purely manual posting took half a night.

While Zhao Kang was constantly posting on various forums, Li Mu was constantly refreshing these threads.

At that time, there were many internet users and little content. Even a simple Hao123 could have millions of daily visitors, showing how scarce internet content was. Therefore, any forum had a large number of active users.

By 1:00 AM on July 12th, one hour after the first post, the download count reached 638, and the number of comments reached 56, mostly expressing curiosity and a willingness to try it out.

Li Mu was not in a hurry. He knew that a good product needed time for users to experience it.

So, Li Mu stopped paying attention to these threads.

After posting enough threads, Zhao Kang moved on to in-game promotion, shouting that he had found a free cheat and sharing the forum link with players, encouraging them to download and try it out.

Then, Zhao Kang used his registered alternate accounts to reply to his own posts, lavishly praising the free trial cheat for its unprecedented power.

Zhao Kang single-handedly did the work of both a water army and a shill.

Li Mu understood that the next step was to wait for the word-of-mouth effect to form. One person would tell ten, and ten would tell a hundred. In today's internet world, pure and enthusiastic netizens would definitely become the "volunteer army" of Stone Age Dominator, spreading it spontaneously!