A 25-year-old young man from Henan province, China, started his e-commerce business and achieved an annual income of 20 million yuan (approximately 3.1 million USD). You might find it unbelievable, just like I did when I first saw a video about him. However, there are always individuals with sharp minds and strong execution capabilities who can stand out.

This person's name is Yu Wen. I came across his story while scrolling through videos on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok). At first, I thought it was unreal and fake. But as I listened to this young man's speech, I realized that he had a clear mindset and logical expression. Despite not having a university education, his cognitive abilities were no less than those who had formal education.

In my opinion, e-commerce is no longer an untapped market. So how did Yu Wen achieve such remarkable results? Let's delve deeper into his story.

In 2014, Yu Wen entered the e-commerce industry (early birds always catch the worm, as they say) and partnered with someone to open a store on a popular online platform in China. However, at that time, they lacked experience in store operations, and the financial records didn't match the store's expenses and income. Soon, they had to close the store.

Afterward, Yu Wen ventured out on his own and started his own business. His entrepreneurial direction was quite interesting as he focused on exploiting information asymmetry to make money. For example, if a heated blanket was being sold for 19.9 yuan on another platform, he would use technical means to copy all the product details and images from that platform and list it on his own store for 59.9 yuan.

Before you start questioning the viability and success of this approach, it's important to note that Yu Wen earned his first pot of gold through this method. In less than a year, he achieved financial freedom. Like many of you, I also found it hard to believe. Why would anyone buy the same item for 59.9 yuan when it's available for 19.9 yuan elsewhere?

That's where information asymmetry comes into play. Some people only use the e-commerce platform where Yu Wen had his store. They might never come across the 19.9 yuan heated blanket on other platforms. This is the information gap. People who need to buy a heated blanket won't compare prices across different platforms before making a decision. Firstly, the item is not expensive, and secondly, it's a household item, and one might feel uneasy using something too cheap.

Another crucial factor was the "thousand people, thousand faces" mechanism implemented by the platform. What does it mean? It means that when different individuals search for the same product, they would see different results. Why is that? For instance, if someone's usual spending level is between 300-500 yuan, the platform won't recommend products priced around 100 yuan. Similarly, someone with a spending level of 500-1000 yuan wouldn't see products priced around 300 yuan. The platform adjusts its recommendations based on users' average spending habits.

Due to this "thousand people, thousand faces" mechanism (although it has been discontinued now, so don't expect to replicate this operation), a significant number of people with purchasing power could see Yu Wen's higher-priced heated blankets.

Yu Wen claimed that while the store selling the blankets for 19.9 yuan sold around 30,000 units per month, his store could sell over 10,000 units at a price more than twice as high.

Furthermore, this method didn't require a warehouse or incur costs for physical space. In fact, the profit margin was even higher than that of the original store. When a customer placed an order