Chapter 50
Chapter 50
The day after Kakayan twisted her ankle and spent it laid out like a corpse on the couch, Jiang Li finally uploaded the museum travel vlog he'd shot earlier.
To survive solely on the income of a creator, he needed to release at least four substantial long-form videos every month.
In other words, one upload per week.
Each episode should also stay at least five days apart.
Bilibili's algorithm only granted maximum push-traffic to the newest upload on an account.
If the gap between videos was too short, the new one would cannibalize the previous video's traffic—an unnecessary loss.
Weekly uploads were the perfect rhythm.
Because Jiang Li's channel was still a rising star, he'd signed a one-year view-based contract with the platform.
If his monthly new views reached five hundred thousand, he'd receive an extra one-thousand-five-hundred-yuan bonus.
Doing the math, Jiang Li still had two videos left to release this month.
One would feature Kakayan learning to ride a bicycle.
The other was a promised restaurant-tour vlog for a hotpot place downtown.
If each episode hit one-hundred-twenty-thousand views, Jiang Li could pull in roughly four thousand yuan from videos alone.
And once his follower count climbed, countless sponsorships would be waiting in line.
Jiang Li felt his career was on an upward rocket.
Being a creator was like rolling a gacha banner:
one video might suddenly go viral—an SSR pull—
and that single hit would drag the rest of his backlog upward in a surge of traffic.
The underlying strategy was simple: keep a consistent style, wait for that jackpot, then ride the explosion straight to the top.
Lost in the daydream, Jiang Li's lips curved into a grin.
"What are you smiling about?"
From the other end of the sofa, Kakayan fixed him with a puzzled stare.
"Nothing..." Jiang Li coughed theatrically and reset his expression. "Come here. Let's check how the new video is doing."
Twenty-four hours had passed since release; a responsible creator had to monitor the numbers and adjust on the fly.
"Okay." Kakayan crawled over like a cat, head first and paws out.
Jiang Li took a steadying breath and opened the back-end dashboard.
His heart gave a hard thud.
The twenty-four-hour data read:
Views: 5,421
Audience retention: 21 %
Non-follower views: 10 %
Follower view-rate: 45 %
"How is it?" Kakayan tilted her head, looking up at him.
She couldn't decipher the metrics, but Jiang Li's face told her the news wasn't great.
"This one's a flop," he said, scratching his cheek. "Numbers are ugly."
In twenty-four hours the new video had reached only half the previous episode's performance. Jiang Li guessed it had been shoved into the ordinary traffic pool; after the push-traffic ran dry, maybe fifty- or sixty-thousand views total—if he was lucky.
"Is it my fault?" Kakayan blinked. In her worldview, if a dish tasted bad, the ingredients were usually to blame.
"Dunno." Jiang Li shook his head gently, signaling she shouldn't worry. "Let me dig into the details."
A video's success hinged on many factors—
maybe the topic was weak, maybe the thumbnail or title hadn't hooked viewers, maybe plain bad luck.
Jiang Li skimmed the barrage comments and reviews.
Because the video hadn't been pushed, most messages were from loyal fans, mostly spamming "the young lady is so pretty," which carried zero actionable insight.
In the comment section, however, some viewers noted that Kakayan spoke too little and asked to hear more from her.
Jiang Li rewatched the video at double speed.
During editing he'd seen every clip a dozen times; by export he was numb and could no longer judge the final product objectively.
Watching again after a break, he too felt Kakayan's on-screen interaction was lacking.
Her looks translated well on camera, but expressions alone conveyed too little information.
Every breakout creator was, without exception, a smooth talker who could pull the audience close.
That was an area they needed to improve.
Jiang Li made a mental note.
He opened the retention curve and saw that the vast majority of viewers closed the video halfway through Kakayan's museum tour.
Bizarrely, retention spiked during the later McDonald's segment—evidence that some viewers had skipped ahead.
Perhaps the travel-vlog format simply didn't suit Kakayan.
Chin in hand, Jiang Li analyzed further and reached three conclusions.
First, his shooting style was off: he should have kept the camera glued to Kakayan's face.
Second, the theme was too loose; an unfocused outing scattered viewer attention.
Third, Kakayan's interaction was too sparse—she needed to speak more.
After jotting the points down, Jiang Li turned to Kakayan. "You should study other creators' videos."
"..." Kakayan said nothing, frowning at him for a long moment.
Peers... what are peers?
"Are there mages on Earth?" she asked, tilting her head.
"Other creators," Jiang Li said. He opened the search bar and pulled up several high-view food-channel videos. Sliding the laptop toward her, he hit the spacebar. "Come on, watch these from start to finish."
"Jiang Li, what are they eating—giant spiders?"
"King crab."
"Looks delicious. When can we go?"
"As soon as we're rolling in cash," Jiang Li promised, drawing another imaginary cookie.
After four viral videos, Jiang Li asked, "So, any takeaways?"
"Yes."
Kakayan nodded solemnly, her clear amethyst eyes blinking as if a light bulb had switched on.
Jiang Li was pleased; the girl was finally catching on. With her learning speed, mimicking the top creators should be child's play.
"What did you learn?" he asked.
Kakayan stared at the screen a moment longer, then lifted her head and announced in perfect seriousness,
"I'm hungry."