Chapter 187: Find Another Way to Make Money
After the pain came reflection—Pei Qian decided it was time to learn from experience and look to the future.
For the sake of that "mysterious surprise within system rules," he still had to strive to lose money in the next cycle.
But as the saying goes, "a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit"—Pei Qian had indeed grown more cautious and experienced.
This time, he had to truly learn from past mistakes and definitely not repeat them!
First of all, he absolutely couldn't put all his hopes of making money on the so-called wealth conversion!
In the past, Pei Qian had always looked down on small earnings—figuring that losing just a little could let him convert tens of thousands. That line of thinking was clearly flawed.
The last two settlement cycles? One earned a bit over 30,000, the other just over 20,000. If you average that out monthly, it's barely over ten grand.
Way too little!
Pei Qian decided he needed to find another way to make money.
Back when he acted in "President Pei's Daily Life", he directly made 30,000 yuan—that was way more reliable than counting on the system!
Seems like in this day and age, honest work just can't support you. When it comes down to it, you need a side hustle.
He hadn't completely figured out what to do yet, but he already had a rough idea.
Basically, as long as it's within the rules of the system, and he does some labor in exchange for income—without going overboard—it should be fine.
He'd still need to probe the system further to see exactly what would work.
Next, was the matter of how to properly lose money.
Pei Qian had now more or less figured out the system's quirks.
There were many restrictions: you couldn't sell subpar products as if they were premium, couldn't force overpriced trash onto people, and couldn't dump high-quality goods at bargain-basement prices either. In short, prices could vary, but only within a reasonable range.
This one rule alone pretty much shut down any idea of maliciously losing money.
If the investment is low, you can only sell at a low price—poor people love it.
If the investment is high, you can only sell at a high price—rich people flock to it once the reputation builds.
So, all the shady methods he tried that didn't work out—those were already factored into the system's calculations.
But through this process, Pei Qian discovered something interesting: when evaluating a product's quality, the system looked at both revenue and reputation.
In other words, it was possible to burn money in exchange for reputation.
If you want to earn less money, you need to maximize reputation.
That was the lesson learned from the documentary "Breaking the Cocoon."
As long as the response is big enough and the impact wide enough, even if the film has no monetization and earns zero profit—the system won't intervene.
Of course, because of the documentary, Li Zhengwei hyped up Ocean Fortress, which led to an increase in player numbers and revenue. That was a small flaw in the plan.
But the pros outweighed the cons—making documentaries was still a great strategy.
And this lesson wasn't limited to documentaries. The same logic could apply to making games.
If you invest heavily in a niche game—one that gets tons of praise but hardly anyone pays for…
Wouldn't that be perfect?
Pei Qian felt this should be the new direction for Tengda Games.
Last cycle, Tengda updated the DLC for all its games. If they didn't release a new one soon, it would look like they were just coasting along.
Fortunately, although he had been lost before, now he'd found a new path.
If this direction worked, it wouldn't be hard for a single game to lose a few million!
As for Shangyang Games…
So far, it was still running at a loss, which meant his plan was working—so he didn't need to worry about it for now.
And if he came across more "goldmine" companies that consistently lost money, he wouldn't mind acquiring a few more.
Besides that, it was time to explore some new industries as well.
Moyu Delivery had been a relatively successful attempt—but unfortunately, the scale of losses wasn't quite large enough.
As for the Moyu Internet Café...
Strictly speaking, the flagship store becoming popular because of Chen Lei's fame was just ridiculous—Pei Qian still hadn't fully accepted that fact.
But for now, only the flagship store has become a sort of tourist attraction. The rest of the branches were still operating at a slight loss.
So, the general direction of opening brick-and-mortar stores didn't seem to be a problem. The issues lay more in the execution details... and in his consistently bad luck.
Therefore, physical stores were still worth pursuing.
In addition to the high-end restaurant he had long planned to open for the purpose of rapidly burning money, he was also considering expanding into logistics and warehousing—that is, the express delivery business.
If he could manage to lose money year after year like JD.com, Pei Qian would be laughing in his dreams.
What's more, labor-intensive industries like these offered a huge advantage during rapid spending phases—since more employees meant more benefits to give out, and more ways to spend money fast.
…
Pei Qian went over everything again and realized—maybe generating some losses next cycle wouldn't be so hard after all!
So, first things first—find a side hustle!
Reality had proven that relying solely on the system to make money was unrealistic. Pei Qian exchanged his own labor for income—so long as he didn't go overboard or attempt to extract system funds maliciously—wouldn't be blocked by the system.
As for what kind of salary counted as "abusing system funds"...
He needed to ask the system for clarification.
Pei Qian silently asked in his heart:
'If I invest in starting a company and work there for a reasonable salary, what's the maximum amount I can legally pay myself?'
[That depends on the host's actual skills and working hours.]
Pei Qian: "…"
That didn't sound very promising.
His actual business abilities… were basically nonexistent.
Even though he felt being a boss wasn't that hard, if he were asked to take on a specific role with actual responsibilities… yeah, he probably couldn't do it.
This could essentially be interpreted as:
If Pei Qian dropped all his titles and identities and applied for a job like any other person, what's the highest salary he could get?
And he'd also have to work a standard number of hours to earn it.
For example, if he went to wash dishes in a restaurant right now, he'd probably make 2–3,000 yuan a month—only if he worked over 8 hours a day, no slacking.
That's way too unreliable!
The whole reason he counts on the system is because he doesn't have any professional skills!
As expected, the system showed no mercy on this front.
But then, he had a thought—maybe there was a loophole in this rule.
For some simple jobs, skill levels were easy to measure. Dishwashing, being a waiter, and so on—they all had standard wage brackets.
But what about abstract, complex jobs?
Like... acting, for instance.
An award-winning actor and a background extra could have a pay gap of tens of thousands of times. And even actors of similar skill might earn very different amounts depending on the production.
So how would the system judge that?
Soon, a subtitle from the system appeared:
[The host's current maximum acting fee is 1,500 yuan per day. This can increase as acting ability and fame improve.]
[If the hiring company has no connection to system funds, and no one suspects foul play, the system will not intervene.]
Pei Qian was stunned.
Why was there a double standard here?
But upon reflection, it made sense.
This was a safeguard the system had implemented to prevent Pei Qian from cashing out system funds through loopholes.
For example, if Pei Qian bought a film company with system money, then paid himself 1 million yuan to act in a movie—that would count as maliciously siphoning off system funds. Not allowed.
If he was using his own investments, then his acting fee was capped at 1,500 yuan per day. When he acted in President Pei's Daily Life before, the rate was 1,000 yuan per episode, and it was filmed one episode per day—so it stayed within bounds.
Doing the math, if he filmed for 10 days in a month, he could make 15,000 yuan.
That wasn't bad, considering his current income situation… but it wasn't great either.
On the other hand, if an outside company—one that had no link to system funds—hired him to act, then they could pay him whatever they wanted, and the system wouldn't care.
After all, there would be no suspicious conversion of system funds in that case.