Bai Lu got scammed, but I became a superstar through e-commerce.

Filming wrapped up on a very ordinary afternoon.

After Chen Yu shouted "Cut!" one last time, the stagehands started dismantling the lighting fixtures. Bai Lu squatted next to the monitor and watched the last playback, with Qing Xiao standing behind her.

The crew was busy packing up equipment, and no one noticed that Bai Lu quietly slipped the prop diary into her bag.

On the plane back to Hangzhou, Qingxiao leaned back in his seat with his eyes closed, while Bailu tilted his head and looked out the window at the city of Beijing, which was slowly shrinking.

She recalled that when the short film wrapped up, he stood next to the monitor with tear stains still wet on his fingers. She said, "This is the best gift I have ever received."

At that time, she was not quite sure if she could become a real actress.

"What are you thinking about?" Qingxiao asked with his eyes closed.

"I was thinking about the day the short film wrapped up," Bai Lu said, resting her face against the cool sunshade. "Back then, I felt like finishing a film was a huge deal. It hasn't been that long, and I'm already off to a new film set. And you? You must have a ton of work piling up at the company."

Qingxiao opened his eyes and looked at her profile reflected on the sunshade.

He recalled that Bai Lu's first role in her previous life also started around this time. It was a period drama where she played the third female lead, with few scenes, and the entire series was filmed in Hengdian.

At that time, he was still squatting on the floor packing packages in his rented room in Hangzhou, while she carried her luggage to Hengdian alone.

This time it's different.

"SUNSA's fall release schedule has been sitting in my inbox for days. Afei from the operations department sends me three messages every day asking when I'm coming back."

Bai Lu laughed: "Can't you put the express train on hold for now?"

"We're not releasing it this time. After the online movie is released, we need to use e-commerce channels for joint promotion. Have you forgotten how we promoted the micro-movie last time? We put movie cards in the packages and put trailers on the store homepage. Now SUNSA is shipping over a thousand orders a day. It would be a waste not to use this promotional resource."

"That's your business in e-commerce." Bai Lu pushed up the sunshade, turned to look at him, and her voice suddenly became serious. "Qingxiao, it might not be convenient for me to call you every day after I get to the film set. Don't push yourself too hard. I don't want to see you stay up until 4 a.m. and drink coffee like water during the last short film shoot."

Qingxiao remained silent for a while.

"Okay. But make sure you eat well when you get to the film set."

Bai Lu didn't reply. She leaned her head back against the sunshade, looking at the city of Hangzhou, faintly visible beneath the clouds outside the window, and softly hummed a tune.

On the day Bai Lu went to report to the film crew, Qing Xiao drove her to the airport.

Bai Lu turned around in front of the security checkpoint, wearing the khaki trench coat she wore when filming Lin Xiao, the hem swaying gently in the airport's air conditioning.

"Alright, don't bother seeing me off. After I go in, you go back to your meeting." She paused for a moment, "Remember to send me a message when that online movie is released."

"must."

Bai Lu turned and walked into the security checkpoint, glancing back halfway through.

Qingxiao remained standing there, his hands in his coat pockets, and nodded to her.

As Qingxiao was leaving the airport, he received a call from Afei: the sample garments for SUNSA's autumn collection had arrived.

He started his car and drove back to Jiubao. He turned onto Hanghai Road from the airport expressway and saw that the entrance of Sijiqing was still full of tricycles, just like a few years ago.

A little over a month later, the online movie was released.

The film will be exclusively streamed on Youku Tudou.

Director Sun of Mango TV kept his promise and gave the homepage banner a featured spot for three consecutive days.

On the day of the launch, the entire Tianmen Film and Television office stayed open, with everyone crammed into the conference room with chairs.

Xiao Geng was sitting at the front, casting his phone screen. The screen was still stuck on the intro and hadn't loaded. He poked the screen hard and said, "Don't let me freeze. I just paid for the membership at noon as Brother Qing told me to."

The moment the opening credits finished loading, a deep blue lake appeared on the screen, and Bai Lu's voice came from the laptop's speakers: "In your life, have you ever risked your life for someone else?" Xiao Geng held his breath, and the barrage of comments was already flooding the screen.

Qingxiao sat in the corner, his laptop in front of him displaying the real-time data panel of Youku's backend.

This is another window into the revenue-sharing model pioneered by iQiyi's "Sharing the Sweetness" program in the south. Youku also adopts a mechanism for online movies that uses revenue sharing during the paid period and revenue sharing based on GGCPM during the free period.

During the paid viewing window, revenue sharing is determined by the number of views. After the window ends, viewing becomes free, and the revenue is shared with users on Google Play for life.

The number of effective views exceeded 10,000 in the first hour.

Chen Yu called from Beijing, and Qingxiao answered: "Check the backstage yourself."

There was a moment of silence on Chen Yu's end, then he lowered his voice and said, "Over 10,000 in the first hour. That's already among the top few."

On the third day after its launch, the featured spot on Youku's homepage was extended, and the platform proactively added promotional resources—in-site pop-ups, search page banners, and weighted related recommendations.

In its first week online, the number of effective views exceeded 300,000.

According to industry practice, the normal investment cost of a micro-film is around tens of thousands of yuan, but the total investment of Qingxiao is 600 million yuan. The cast, from Bai Lu to Kou Shixun, are all professional actors. The visual quality and publicity resources are unmatched by other works of the same level.

The combined revenue from platform revenue sharing and sales generated through SUNSA e-commerce channels has already exceeded one million in the first week.

On its tenth day of release, the number of effective views exceeded 700,000.

At this point, based on its performance in the first week, the platform upgraded the film from an A- rating to an A-level promotional resource package, opened up the site's bandwidth acceleration weight and the first screen entry of the network special zone, and also put the revenue sharing into the platform's recommended soaring list.

Two weeks after its release, the topic of "the original cast returning" appeared on Weibo.

Some viewers spontaneously posted comparison screenshots of the short film and the online film, with the caption: "The scene where they were pushed into the water, the short film was like a concrete dam, while the online film was like the deep blue waters of Qin Lake. One was a poor production team, while the other was a real money-burner."

This post was forwarded thousands of times.

For the next few days, the effective number of views for online movies remained around 50,000, and the revenue sharing curve entered a stable period.

By the end of the platform's window period, the cumulative box office revenue exceeded 2.8 million, ranking among the top three in the 2013 online movie box office chart.

Director Sun obtained a set of industry data from within the Mango sub-platform and sent it to Yu Zheng, who then forwarded it to Qing Xiao.

Data shows that the current top-ranked film is a short film called "Rise to Power". The film adopts the "online payment + GG product placement" model. It received 70 million views on the first day of its release, and exceeded 120 million views three days later. Within five days, one million netizens paid to watch it, generating more than three million in revenue.

Another film directed by Guan Xiaojie garnered an astonishing 500 million views within 25 days of its release, with a net profit of nearly 3 million yuan.

Within two weeks of its release, the drama "Qing Xiao" accumulated over two million views. Combined with box office revenue and sales of co-branded products through e-commerce channels, it brought in nearly four million yuan, not only recovering the investment cost of 6 million yuan but also achieving a cost recovery of almost 80%.

Of the total revenue, more than one-third came from e-commerce co-branded products. This was extra income exclusively for Qingxiao, meaning his personal investment return was about to break even.

In the conference room, when Afei calculated the number, Xiao Geng was the first to jump up from his chair.

"We've broken even! We broke even in just two weeks!" Afei poked him with his pen. "It's not just breaking even, it's a recovery rate of nearly 80%. At this rate, we can start making a profit during the paid subscription period."

Everyone started clapping, and Xiao Lin from the operations department typed away on her keyboard, saying she was going to send the data to the company group chat.

Qingxiao sat in the corner watching them, then picked up his phone and sent a message to Bailu.

"The film's stats are out. The platform gave it an A-level recommendation, and the revenue sharing figures are pretty good. Are you done filming?"

Bai Lu replied instantly.

"No, I'm filming late tonight. I just sat down in the dressing room when I received your message. What does 'A-level recommendation' mean? Is it impressive?"

"It ranks among the top three in the industry in terms of revenue sharing."

Bai Lu was silent for a few seconds, then replied.

"It's ranked in the top three among online movies?"

"right."

Bai Lu sent a whole row of exclamation marks.

"—I knew the scene where Lin Xiao pushes you into the water would be a hit! The river in the last short film version was so shallow, there was more mud on your pants than water. When I filmed the panoramic view of Qin Lake this time, I knew it was going to be a hit." After posting this, she added, "But the one that will definitely be even more explosive is the line, 'Have you ever risked your life for someone else in your life?'"

"Do you know what the comments say?" Qingxiao typed, leaning back in his chair.

"What did you say?"

"After asking that question, I searched for the answer in the comments from beginning to end. When I saw the part where he jumped into the water, I typed 'Yes' once. When I saw the part where he fought, I typed 'Yes' three times. When I saw the part where he eloped, the comments went crazy, the screen was full of 'Yes'."

Bai Lu didn't reply immediately. After a long while, she sent a message.

"I'll try one too, yes."

The office staff were still celebrating. Xiao Geng and A Fei were arguing about their profit-sharing figures, while the operations department was discussing whether to launch another wave of SUNSA collaboration products tomorrow.

Qingxiao didn't join them; he simply put his phone face down on the table and leaned back in his chair.

The night outside the window in Jiubao is very deep, and rows of lights are lit in the direction of Sijiqing, blending into the skyline of Hangzhou in the distance.

Breaking even is never the goal.

In his past life, Bai Lu stood on the mountaintop while he stood at the foot of the mountain packing packages. In this life, he started by packing packages, accompanied her to film a short film, and wrote himself into the role of Gu Nian.