Chapter 33: Who Can Tell Me Where This Flower Sea Is?

Chapter 33: Chapter 33: Who Can Tell Me Where This Flower Sea Is?

Zhang Lin returned to the visitor center and checked the equipment again.

The ticketing, printing, and ID scanning functions at the ticket counter were all working fine. He had already printed a large batch of tickets, all priced at 50 yuan.

He had decided on this price after researching various canola Flower Seas.

There were many canola Flower Seas around, with prices varying from 9 to 50 yuan depending on the quality and size of the fields.

For those spanning only a few dozen mu, the scenery was naturally limited, so they couldn’t charge too much for admission.

Of course, some were large in area, but the flowers they grew were short, ugly, and sparse. Even if a field spanned over ten thousand mu, they would only dare to charge 20 yuan. For instance, that place down south had been featured several times in those "internet vs. reality" comparisons of the most disappointing tourist spots.

Meanwhile, the three premier tall-variety canola Flower Seas in the country all charged 50 yuan.

So, naturally, he also set his ticket price at 50 yuan.

The quality of his canola Flower Sea definitely surpassed those three locations. He could have set an even higher price.

With the +1 Attractiveness and +1 Photogenic attributes, he wasn’t worried about a lack of visitors.

However, for an agricultural tourist park, ticket revenue certainly wasn’t the main goal. Instead, it served to drive traffic. In this age of internet traffic, you could do a lot with it.

For example, with more people, the visitor center’s restaurant wouldn’t have to worry about customers.

Then there were the agricultural products. Although his farm didn’t produce much yet, there were plenty of fruit farmers in You City. He could buy their products wholesale and sell them as a cover.

With enough traffic, the fruit would definitely sell.

Once the quantity of wholesale goods from the game increased, he could also sell them to tourists.

He would sell the game-sourced products as premium goods.

In the future, whatever else he might have, as long as there was a steady stream of tourists, he wouldn’t have to worry about sales.

Zhang Lin then went to check the turnstiles at the entrance to the Flower Sea. This was where visitors would have their tickets checked before entering.

Just then, his phone chimed. It was a notification from the Tiao Yin backend: his application for an online ticketing channel had been approved.

He took out his phone and opened his Tiao Yin account, which he had already renamed to "Li Yuan Farm." Nowadays, for any business in the scenic-attraction industry, online promotion was essential. Besides on-site ticket sales, online booking was the mainstream.

That was why so many "influencer check-in spots" had appeared.

Now that his Tiao Yin online booking link was approved and the Flower Sea was about to open, it was time to start the online promotion.

He pulled up the videos and photos he had taken earlier, selected a video, paired it with some soothing music, wrote a grand-sounding title, and uploaded it.

Thanks to the +1 Photogenic attribute, the quality of the video—in terms of both its cinematic feel and artistic sense—definitely had viral potential.

If it were judged by Tiao Yin’s traffic pool promotion rules, it would have been an absolute slaughter.

Unfortunately, reality was cruel.

After half a day, the video hadn’t gone viral. Instead, it stalled at 2,000 views, just a little more than the standard 500 views for a regular video.

’This isn’t right.’

’With the +1 Photogenic attribute, the video’s quality should absolutely surpass those other viral videos online.’

However, since he had majored in internet-related studies, he immediately understood what was happening.

’A network competitor protection protocol.’

’Basically, for similar types of products, the ones that pay for promotion get ranked higher. The ones that pay the most get ranked at the very top, while those that don’t pay get their traffic throttled to protect the paying advertisers.’

Baidu was the most obvious example of this. Hadn’t someone exposed that when you search for something, the first three results are often not professional, and one might even be a scam?

The key was that Baidu recommended them in the top three simply because they had paid for promotion.

Tiao Yin had a similar system. Therefore, there must be another canola Flower Sea currently paying for promotion online.

He did a quick search and, sure enough, saw that the *zhou Flower Sea was running a campaign. A dozen of their videos had over 200,000 likes each.

Their flowers bloomed earlier, and its several-thousand-mu area made it one of the most popular canola Flower Seas in the country. So, they had definitely spent money, at least on a good amount of Dou+.

’So, for my Flower Sea to go viral without spending money now is impossible,’ he thought. ’It would undermine the interests of those who paid for ads. If that happened, who would pay to advertise in the future?’

’If my canola Flower Sea wants to get traffic on Tiao Yin, I have to pay up too. Only then can I get a fair chance to compete with the *zhou Flower Sea.’

’It’s all a capitalist playbook.’

Zhang Lin closed Tiao Yin. He wasn’t in a hurry to spend money on promoting his video yet. He planned to first attract the local You City residents. Given the quality of his canola Flower Sea, once people from You City visited, they would surely take videos and photos, and some would definitely post them on Tiao Yin.

Sometimes, quantity can lead to a qualitative change. When that happened, paying for a Tiao Yin promotion would be much more effective.

Besides, he wanted to do a soft opening first to get things up and running.

With that in mind, he left the farm and headed for Darunfa Plaza.

In You City, if you wanted to advertise, you didn’t go to the TV station. Almost nobody watched the county-level station.

Instead, you went for the advertising screen at Darunfa Plaza.

This plaza was the center of You City. It was where you went for dining, entertainment, shopping, and living essentials. Basically, most people came to the plaza every day to shop, have fun, or work out...

Therefore, if he put his Flower Sea promotional video up there, the vast majority of You City’s residents would see it.

After arriving at Darunfa and parking his scooter, Zhang Lin went straight to the plaza manager’s office.

In truth, the advertising screen was always looking for clients. After all, in a small place like You City, how many companies needed this kind of advertising? And how many would be willing to spend the money on it? The number was extremely small.

In fact, due to a lack of ads, much of the time it just displayed the plaza’s own ad seeking clients, or they would simply play a movie.

So, when the manager saw Zhang Lin, he gave him a very enthusiastic reception. "President Zhang, these are the currently available time slots on our advertising screen. The corresponding prices are listed here too!"

Zhang Lin took a look. ’Wow,’ he thought. ’Aside from a few ads during prime time at night, almost every other slot is empty.’

Even a 10-minute prime-time slot was only 2,000 yuan a month, and the other time slots were even cheaper.

For comparison, on an outdoor screen at any random plaza in the main city, an ad under two minutes would cost over 3,000 yuan a month.

Seeing this, Zhang Lin didn’t hesitate. He directly chose three time slots: one in the evening, plus the 6 PM and 8 PM slots. These were the times when Darunfa Plaza had the most foot traffic.

The total price came to only 5,000 yuan a month, with the two nighttime slots priced at 2,000 yuan each and the evening slot at 1,000. They even threw in an afternoon slot for free, which just showed how slow business was.

After signing the contract, the manager said, "President Zhang, I can have them start running the ad in your complimentary time slot right now. You’ll probably see it by the time you get downstairs."

Zhang Lin nodded, and just as he left the office and headed downstairs, he unexpectedly ran into Zhang Dong.

"Zhang Lin!" Zhang Dong was also surprised.

"Got time to be here? Did you sell out of fruit for the day?" Zhang Lin asked in surprise.

"My mom’s watching the shop," Zhang Dong said, glancing somewhat bashfully to the side. Zhang Lin followed his gaze and saw a young woman on the phone.

She looked much younger than Zhang Dong’s ex-girlfriend, Liu Rui.

"Well, well. What’s her story?" Zhang Lin understood now and gave Zhang Dong a teasing look.

He had previously thought that after the breakup with Liu Rui, Zhang Dong’s best revenge would be to find a younger girl. Then, he could make a down payment on a BMW 5 Series, the same car Liu Rui’s current boyfriend drove. That would be enough to make her furious.

No one wants to see their ex find someone better after a breakup.

He just hadn’t expected Zhang Dong to have already taken the first step.

’Men really do like them young,’ he thought.

Zhang Dong explained, "She’s a new employee I just hired to help at the shop. I have an extra 500 jin of Sunshine Rose grapes now, and a lot of customers have started placing orders on WeChat, so I need to make deliveries."

"Nice. Enjoying the perks of being the boss?" Zhang Lin teased. "Be honest, you hired her because you’re interested in her, right?"

"It’s really not like that!" Zhang Dong quickly shook his head and explained, "I actually have Yingzi to thank for this. A few days ago, I don’t know what got into her, but she suddenly showed up at my shop and was all over me. You know that feeling? It was like she was trying to hit on me. I got so freaked out that I asked Liu Li to be my ’shield.’"

"After I managed to deal with Yingzi, I had to treat her to a meal as thanks, right? One thing led to another, and I realized she’s a pretty good person. We went out a few more times after that, so we decided to give it a try."

Zhang Lin was suddenly a bit stunned.

He had deliberately told Yingzi about Zhang Dong’s situation before, but he never expected her to actually go and hit on him.

’She’s a real go-getter!’

’But I guess she ended up playing matchmaker in a way.’

"Dong, who is this?" Liu Li asked, having finished her call. She looked curiously at Zhang Lin.

"This is my brother, Zhang Lin. You can just call him Lin," Zhang Dong said with a smile.

"Lin!" Liu Li immediately said politely.

Zhang Lin nodded back at her. The girl seemed to be the sweet and well-behaved type, a good match for Zhang Dong.

"Zhang Lin, what are you doing here?" Zhang Dong asked curiously.

"I came to buy some ad time from the plaza," Zhang Lin explained.

As soon as the words left his mouth, he heard several surprised gasps from nearby:

"Quick, look at the video on that big screen! What a beautiful canola Flower Sea!"

"I wonder where that canola Flower Sea is!"

"Yeah, it’s filmed so beautifully!"

"..."

A crowd was drawn in, and more and more people turned to look. They were all momentarily stunned by the advertisement, because under the effect of the +1 Photogenic attribute, the beautiful and poetic canola Flower Sea was simply too captivating.

Liu Li was also captivated. She immediately grabbed Zhang Dong’s arm. "Dong, that canola Flower Sea is gorgeous! I really want to go see it! I just don’t know where it was filmed!"

...