Chapter 1200 Especially Train You

Upon hearing Floyd's words, Charles asked with a smile, "Do you mean building an online community like your forum, SoLong?"

Charles had hit the bull's eye with his question. Floyd instantly turned red with embarrassment and stammered while replying to Charles, "Ur... Yes."

Seeing Charles display a faint smile, he worried that Charles might have misunderstood him, so he explained in a hurry, "It is not because I am managing an online forum that I've suggested building a similar community. Actually, I really think that online communities are the most effective means of retaining users."

Lost in thought, Charles stayed silent. Tentatively, Floyd continued, "The combined use of search, content and community features can yield desirable results to the portal. We can attract new users through the search feature, satisfy regular users with good content and please old and new users alike with an online community. If search and content will be the bone and flesh of the portal, then, community will definitely be its soul. I believe that the portal will be able to attract a large amount of users over a short period if we use search, content and community features in combination."

Floyd had just finished his long spiel when Charles reacted. He could not help applauding, as he could not agree with Floyd more.

Feeling encouraged by Charles' positive reaction, Floyd added, "In addition, it doesn't cost much to build a community. However, it is relatively expensive to rent server space from a large tech company. In my experience, I had spent 50, 000 dollars in renting the server space for my forum SoLong in less than three months."

Charles was not surprised by the amount mentioned by Floyd. Truth be told, he did not mind how much money he would have to invest in the early stages of development of this portal. He casually replied, "You don't need to worry about money. I plan to create our own server and submit a bandwidth request."

Surprised, Floyd stared at Charles with his mouth agape. He could not even fathom how much it would cost to create a server and use an independent bandwidth.

He was plagued with many questions that he wanted to ask Charles. He cautiously raised one of the burning questions in his mind. "Mr. Mu, may I know how much you plan to invest in this portal? Based on your statement just now, I have roughly estimated that the portal operations would cost more than one million dollars per year at minimum. One more thing to consider is that it will be impossible for the company to make profits from the portal within a short period."

After hearing Floyd's inquiry, Charles remained unfazed and responded, "I will approximately invest five million dollars for the commencement of the portal operations. The total amount of the initial investment has been already transferred to the bank account especially created for Info Newspaper to build the portal. Afterwards, the rest of the investment funds amounting to more than twenty million dollars will be transferred to the account in installments. For the meantime, I have no way of determining the upper limit of my investment in the portal in the future throughout its development. But one thing is for sure, I will keep on investing in the portal to ensure that it will develop well in the future. In addition..."

Charles paused for a while to organize his thoughts. A few seconds later, he continued, "In the early stage, our main objective is to attract as many users as possible for the portal. I hope to make

for a period, it was far from enough for him to bottle up his emotions and maintain his composure all the time. Hence, he was so excited to hear about his position from Charles that his face even turned red. "Mr. Mu, it's all good with me. I will follow all your arrangements. But I am afraid..."

Discerning Floyd's hesitant look, Charles responded with a grim expression, "Don't worry. At present, you are an well-known expert in the local internet industry. I wanted to put you in this position because I know that you are qualified for it and I believe that you can achieve outstanding results in this position. However, I would like to make something clear here. That is, if you are incompetent or irresponsible at work that you fail to meet my requirements for the position, the only choice for you is to leave the company."

Floyd kept nodding as he replied, "Of course. I can understand that. It is normal for you to fire me if I prove to be incompetent or unqualified for the position." After finishing his words, he looked at Charles hopefully and asked, "Then, Mr. Mu, where will I work and how much will you pay me?"

"I've heard that Mountain City is your hometown, so I am sure that you are familiar with the southwest area of that city. In the meantime, you will have to work in Mountain City because the resources of Info Newspaper will be necessary for us to build the portal website. As to your pay, please rest assured. On top of your salary, our company will either rent a house for you in Mountain City or provide you 3, 000 dollars per month as housing allowance. Your monthly salary will be 20, 000 dollars. At the end of each year, you will be granted a bonus, which won't be higher than the amount of your 10 months' salary, dependent upon your job performances."

"Performances? Haven't you said that our company has no profitability requirement?" Floyd asked out of curiosity.

Charles responded with a smile, "Yes, there is no profitability requirement in our company. In addition, our company doesn't specify any particular evaluation requirement. We will establish a brand new evaluation system to assess your performances. The evaluation methods will be same as those adopted by the Mu's Group. I will tell the human resources department to especially train you regarding the evaluation system when appropriate."