The United States adjusted its strategy, shifting its focus to counter-terrorism, and in return, China gained at least a decade of development opportunities.

Sometimes, the concept of fate is hard not to believe.

“Today is a good day, everything you wish for will come true…”

William Clark hummed a tune as he walked to his seat. Next to him was still Emily Turner. The girl, feeling quite familiar with him by now, said, “Yo, did the crash of the American building make you this happy?”

“Of course I’m happy, why wouldn’t I be? Life is short, you have to enjoy it when you can.”

“You talk nonsense all day, I never know what you’re saying. Make your calls already!”

“Making calls, making calls!”

William Clark turned on the computer and pulled up the database. All the clients for the newspaper’s 600,000 circulation were in there. Of course, there couldn’t be 600,000 clients—some were individual subscribers, some were government agencies.

“People’s Government of Haidian District, contact person XXX, phone number XXXX”

“Youth League Committee of Chaoyang District, contact person XXX, phone number XXXX”

“Room 202, No. 18 Yangliu Beili, XC District, Mr. Jia, phone number XXX”

Some were landlines, some were mobile phones, each record was clear, and all had subscription dates. William Clark’s job was to call those whose subscriptions were about to expire and ask if they wanted to renew.

“What a great resource, just exposed to outsiders like this, really shouldn’t be…”

Muttering to himself, William Clark carelessly bundled up the data and sent it to Brian Clark’s email. Even if these materials weren’t useful now, they definitely would be in the future.

Actually, he wanted even more to go to the advertising department and get some perks, but unfortunately, there were no internships arranged there.

In the past, Chinese newspapers were all party papers, government papers, or industry papers. After the reform and opening up, things gradually loosened, and by the 1990s, a new type of newspaper emerged: the metropolitan daily.

As the name suggests, it targeted ordinary citizens, was close to daily life, popular and entertaining, and highly commercial.

Starting from the late 1990s, metropolitan dailies entered a golden decade. When the average monthly salary was just over a thousand yuan, top reporters could make over ten thousand a month, and big newspapers could easily rake in hundreds of millions in ad revenue each year.

The biggest advertisers for “Beijing Youth Daily” were: real estate, IT, and automobiles.

These three were also the fastest-growing industries as society developed. People always talk about the characteristics of the times—what does that mean? It’s never a solo act; everything is interconnected.

Later, when print media declined and suffered losses year after year, a major reason was that real estate also stagnated. Without ad money, they could only go into debt, and then the newspaper owed others money too, turning into a vicious cycle.

But back to the story.

William Clark slacked off for a while longer, then took the afternoon off and rushed to the internet café. Brian Clark was already frantic: “Why are you so slow? You little bastard!”

“Watch your mouth, curse again and I’ll smack you!”

“If you don’t hurry, everyone will be off work.”

“Stop nagging, I’m contacting them now.”

William Clark once again reached out to the contact QQ for the TOM SMS Alliance. He didn’t mention he’d chatted before—no one would remember anyway—and went straight to the point: “I’ve set up a website and want to join the SMS Alliance.”

Soon, the other side replied: “Sure, send it over and I’ll review it.”

The review was just a formality; SPs relied on the alliance to make money!

How low were the standards? As long as your homepage didn’t have pornographic images, you’d pass.

Sure enough, in less than two minutes, the reply came: “Your website meets the standards. I’ll send you an email with detailed instructions. Just reply and the agreement is done.”

William Clark received the email and looked it over carefully.

TOM currently had two mobile Monternet services: one was news and information, 5 yuan per month; the other was ringtone and image downloads, 10 yuan per month.

Ringtones weren’t caller tunes—those would come in a couple of years.

These ringtones were monophonic, just beeps and tones. Anything with more than three notes was called polyphonic—you’ve probably heard the term. Back then, phones used polyphonic ringtones as a selling point.

As for images, they were black and white. To call them images was generous—they were more like emoji: a smiley face, a rose, that sort of thing, very crude.

This was mobile phone technology in 2001.

Of course, William Clark chose the 10-yuan monthly package. China Mobile took 15%, he got 30% of the remainder, which was 2.55 yuan.

In other words: by putting TOM’s ad on his website, as long as a user clicked the ad and subscribed, he’d get 2.55 yuan.

“Are there any requirements for going live?”

“No, you can go live anytime.”

“Then let’s do it today. Today is a good day. Also, can the revenue be settled daily?”

“You must be joking. If we settled daily, our finance team would die of exhaustion. But don’t worry, I’ll send you a daily income report so you can keep track.

This is all about making money together. SPs rely on credibility—if we didn’t have that, who would work with us, right?”

“That makes sense. By the way, you’re sure you don’t prohibit us from joining other alliances?”

“Could we even if we wanted to?”

“Heh, true enough.”

Right after, William Clark went through the same process with NetEase. The prices were the same; for now, only these two had SMS alliances.

……

On the other side.

Brian Clark was so anxious he was growing white hairs, wanting to ask but afraid to bother William Clark, fidgeting like a restless monkey. Finally, he saw William Clark’s avatar start flashing, hurriedly clicked it open, and saw three words:

“It’s done!”

“It’s done?”