I was alone in the center of a small Chinese town, the weakly glowing streetlights hardly illuminating the streets. The silence was heavy and absolute. It was different from the eternal light and sound of Shenzhen, and the high elevation gave the air an unusual taste. Things were not the same up here in the mountains, and this strangeness seemed a bit menacing. The roads had been tarred, courtesy of the rich central government who gave special attention to the Chinese minorities, but the villages up here in the mountains of Yunnan province did not have many cars to wear down the roads. So they felt incomplete, and leaves lay about, their crushing beneath my feet giving my walk a strange soundtrack.
A group of men sat in a doorway smoking tobacco from a big bong, watching me walk past with impassive faces. I hurried a bit. What I was looking for was near, I knew. I turned a corner into a small side street, and saw it – the red and blue glow of the humming fluorescent lights, the pictures of the scantily clad lady with big breasts. I had found the local internet cafe.
I walked in through the narrow doorway, squeezing past a young teenage couple holding hands and staring out of the door. The guy had a scar across his forehead, I wondered idly what their story was, it may have been an amazing love story, it could have been endlessly tragic, perhaps they were completely boring. I’ll never know, because I walked into that room and was hit by the combined glow of hundreds of computer screens, different figures danced across many screens in some dance dance revolution clone, colourful websites reflected off the eyes of engrossed guys, smoking men scrolled through the news, cliques of teens starred together at a screen and shouted and laughed. The room was huge and it was filled with people surfing the internet and playing games. The internet cafe, long thought to be dead, had simply retreated here into the mountains, and it fed the local population with all the entertainment they could not afford to have at home.
After the necessary registration with my passport at the counter, I bought an entire night of internet surfing, starting off by checking what was new at techcrunch. I went through the usual schedule of websites I read, skipping only facebook and twitter, as they don’t work here.
Being the only foreigner in there, I was getting a lot of looks, giggles and yelled out “HELLOs” from the kids around. I expected them to come talk to me at some point, so when someone tapped my shoulder, I was suprised that rather than some spiky haired teenager, it was a somewhat middle-aged smiling man with a cigarette dangling from his lip. He introduced himself with the sentence: “TechCrunch is my favorite website, too”. His english was heavily accented, but good.
I simply looked up at him, unsure what to reply. I didn’t need to say anything, because he started talking to me about the last few articles he had read on TechCrunch. I got only a few sentences in, mostly in agreement with his somewhat unusual but pretty insightful opinions about what they wrote. He spoke as if he had never spoken to anyone about TechCrunch, and needed to get all his thoughts out.
After 30 minutes of mostly listening, he invited me out to have a drink with him and his friends. He excitedly made phone calls in the local dialect and we went out. We walked over to some local food place, and sat outside on plastic chairs, several beers quickly appearing on the table. Soon, several of his friends popped in a shinily new BYD car, and they joined me.
He told me what he does: he sells software. And he sells a lot of software. Every month, he makes more than $5000, which is more than 50 times the average salary where he lives. He told me how he does it, and it’s a bit unusual.
He had learnt how to program from a friend of his. They had both moved to Kunming and started working, but when his dad got sick, he had to go home and farm to keep the family alive. His dad was sick for close to a year, and they needed money. Unable to travel, he had started looking for jobs on Odesk, Rentacoder and such sites based on recommendation from his friend. After writing some software for a client, he noticed something important:
- If he simply looked at the list of software projects available for jobs, he would have ideas on what software to develop.
He did this, and rather than making software for clients, he created his own software products, which he put on the internet. He said that 3 days after he copied a simple idea from the rentacoder list on his website, he was making 2 sales a day. $20 per day, which basically doubled his monthly earnings as a farmer. He continued working on more products and copying more ideas, and soon he had 10 different software that he was selling. Sales were low at the start, but even then for him it was a lot of money.
He kept doing this, cloning software he found that people wanted by looking at open projects on rentacoder, most of his software being related to video encoding. Additionally, he would take open source software, change the way it looked and sell it online. He said he’d get a few refunds, but most people would purchase it without complaining. He said he tried selling Firefox for a while, but sales were very low due to the free competition.
At the moment he’s making more than $5000 a month, and he’s been making it for more than 4 years already. He’s one of the bigger players in the video encoding software market.
As I left, he dropped me off at the local hotel where my friends were. He shook my hand enthusiastically and said he would email me, but that he had to sleep now, because he had to go to the farm early the next morning. Surprised, I asked him why he still farmed. He shrugged and lifted his palms in that typical smiling manner that the villagers there have. “No why!” he said. “I enjoy farming”.
If you're interested in technology & startups, then follow me on my low volume twitter account
I love your tales, Max. Thanks for living the life where they happen, then taking the time to write them down for the rest of us.
WOW! That's such a terrific story Max. PLEASE keep them rolling.!!
Nice story! It's a really smart way to check what's wanted on the marked.
That's an amazing story. Kudos for moving to China to do a startup.
Where's a picture of the internet cafe? Sounds crazy. But good story, thanks.
it's not crazy,,, it can be found in any where of china.
Maybe somedays, when I free, I can photo you a pic.
great story, further prove of underutilized human engineering
Woah. 1.8 million dollars a year.
wait… in the first part you said $5000 a month, then near the end you say $5000 a day. I'm thinking you meant $5000 a month, because at $5000 a day this guy would pretty much own the entire village after 4 years.
Last lines says he's making 5000$ per day, but in the middle of the story, we get a 5000$ per month figure; could you clarify which is right ?
Sorry, it's a MONTH of course, not 5000 a DAY. I'll edit the post now
really a good story presented in a good way…!
grt…thnkx MAX.
after all a person shud do something that he likes the most…!
As long as he produces the source code for GPL licensed stuff he sells, it's all legit.
I'm Chinese and I don't believe it. I need more evidence.
so do i
I can't believe that could happen in my hometown.
Who the hell would buy an unknown web-browser? This sounds more like a fictional story.
Sure, dad
Amazing….
Nice story, thanks Max.
I'm thinking about selling my software now.
中国农民的智慧之无穷的
哈哈 你好
你个笨蛋 他骗你呢
fuck it.
What are you saying, guy?
There is no such peasant, understand?
He just made a story for you, but you believe it.
If the story is true,I think the gay must has read this article already.
天朝网民观光团
i am chinese too, i believe it. one of my colleague sell his software (developed in parttime) and earn so much too. and he is farmer's son too.
Farmer's son of cause is very different from a farmer
yeah, big brother Hu is farmer's son too.
woo….
have you thought you would have many "Visit" comes from Chinese Ip, ,we call it "围观".
yes，we knew your log from http://www.csdn.net
響應ls，前來圍觀
most of the developer is poor and hardworking.
我的天哪，你说的不是真的吧
Nice blog. Your article was translated and being seen in the Chinese shareware community.
Good writing.
This is a joke! sell pirate soft
i m from china
It is unbelievable, As a Chinese, I am extremely surprised of this story. Thanks for sharing.
Oh my god !I cann't believe it .
nice story,max.
Do you really run into such a peasant?
$5000 a month is very rich in china. I'am engineer in chengdu of china.
I only have 4300rmb per month. 4300rmb = $600
I think that probably should be $500 but 5k
6500rmb per month in shenzhen。。。
it's hard to live
Hi I like your story. I have been to Yun Nan may times. Middle-aged smiling man is so interesting.
A lots of people in China know this sotry now. Many blog have translated into chinese and share with others. You are popular and also the man.
unpredictible, as a native Chinese, 500$ per month is much enough for a farmer ,if he has so many as u say, why he still do it (farmer`s wrok)
he like do it,do you just do something that you have to do?
Cool! That is so call crossover! , I was programer, want to be fashion desinger now
Very cool, i'm chinese ,but i never heared such unbelievable story.
GOD, I'm a chinese programer.But i cannot bleave this thread.worked 2 years. my wages only hava 600$/m
Max
You are a very talented writer.
I was aware of this previously, but nevertheless there were a few useful pieces that concluded the picture for me personally, thanks!
hello :
this my phone:13323339086
Hi, I couldn’t find a contact form and it’s really important that I reach you so I hope you don’t mind me posting here. WOW, what an interesting little blog you have here
! I also run one similar to A chinese villager who sells more software daily than you do Max Klein, I guess great haha. I’ve been following your site for a while now and I’ve got some bad news – you’re wasting your time if you’re only making a couple hundred bucks or even a few thousand a month. You can be doing SO much more. There are a lot of tips and tricks that will help you improve your google and yahoo ranking, just some stuff I’ve learned over the ages. It’s easy! It shouldn’t take you more than 5-10 minutes. Please reach me today at BigBloggerJake [at] gmail.com. I’ll check my spam folder and you should too, I know email filters are crazy these days. Looking forward to boucing ideas with you!
楼主蛋疼吧
hahaha , u a right , if he can earn $5k/M, I believe that he don't have time to netbar ~~~