The Traffic Bubble Burst: Why I Advise Against Becoming a Small-Town Influencer.

If you are that entrepreneur watching “Ergou” from the village get rich through livestreaming, contemplating mortgaging your family land to build a studio, please put out your cigarette and listen. The words I am about to say may feel like a bucket of ice water, but they might save your life savings and the livelihood of your entire family. I am a veteran of the financial world with finsages, having spent thirty years in banking and risk management. I have reviewed the ledgers of tens of thousands of enterprises—essentially the books of life and death—and I have seen far too many people bleed out because they failed to see the traps beneath their feet. Today, let us skip the pleasantries and discuss the “Small-Town Livestreaming Dream” that lures countless people in, only to leave them bankrupt.

Ask yourself: is Ergou really that easy to imitate? You see him shout a few slogans on camera, sell out his cherries, ship his mountain goods, and pocket the cash. What you do not see is that he likely possesses the most powerful social network in the village, or perhaps he spent three years in obscurity grinding down the local fruit supply chain until he owned every link. And you? What do you have? A few smartphones? A decent ring light? Or simply a surge of “I can do it too” enthusiasm? In the logic of business, passion is the cheapest form of capital; the supply chain is the only thing that can actually save your life.

Let us be blunt. What is the essence of small-town livestreaming? It is not about acting cute or calling your viewers “family.” It boils down to one word: cost. Think about it. Where does your merchandise come from? Do you buy it from the local market? Ergou is a major player; he drives a truck directly to the fields, squeezes prices at the source, or provides advance payments to farmers to lock in supply. You, however, buy from middlemen. Your costs spike immediately. Then calculate your traffic: do you have to pay for ads? Hire staff? Rent a venue? By the time you finish, your profit margin is so thin a needle couldn’t fit through it. This is the first brutal truth: livestreaming without a vertical supply chain is a source without water; it is destined to wither on the beach.

We must apply basic economic common sense. No amount of superficial prosperity can override the iron law of supply and demand. Current small-town livestreaming is like ten thousand soldiers fighting for a single-plank bridge. You see streamers everywhere, but behind them are countless anxious eyes staring at a very small cake. This is a classic case of “expansionary drive.” When people see others making money, human greed and hope drive them to rush in, believing that hard work alone guarantees a slice of the pie. Consequently, the crowd grows, costs rise, pricing becomes chaotic, and eventually, no one survives. This is the “fallacy of composition”: everyone believes they are acting rationally to maximize profit, yet collectively, they plunge into a mire of loss.

You might argue that you can differentiate your product. Can you sell something else? Sure, you can. But have you considered who your audience is in a small town? They are locals just as frugal as you are. They are hyper-sensitive to price; if you are two dollars more expensive, they will scour five different streams to compare prices. And your upstream suppliers? They are farmers or small workshops who hold the resources. They have no sentimentality; it is cash on delivery, no exceptions. Squeezed in the middle, you are like a rat in a bellows, pressured from both sides. Your so-called “differentiation” is often powerless against the absolute gravity of low prices.

This reminds me of an incident from twenty years ago in the bank’s credit department. There was a business owner who saw others getting rich speculating on steel. Driven by envy, he mortgaged the restaurant he had run for ten years to hoard steel. I looked at his reports; he knew how to cook, but he knew nothing about steel. I asked him, “How many steel mills do you know upstream? Who is paying the bills at the construction sites downstream?” He beat his chest and said, “Everyone is doing it; I can too.” Six months later, steel prices crashed, his capital chain snapped, the restaurant vanished, and his family fell apart. The confusion and despair in his eyes back then still make me tighten my chest. I realized then a fundamental truth: the most dangerous thing in life is gambling on a game you do not understand, outside your circle of competence. For most grassroots entrepreneurs without a supply chain foundation, small-town livestreaming is exactly that kind of gamble.

Let us widen the lens and look at this so-called “traffic.” Do you believe traffic is fair? Do you think the platform will reward you simply because you work hard? Do not be naive. Platform algorithms are cold; they recognize only data and conversion rates. Big-city streamers are backed by professional MCNs, specialized operations teams, and mature traffic-buying strategies. They are a regular army fighting your guerrilla squad. In your town, your signal might be unstable, your logistics take two extra days, and you handle your own after-sales service. How do you compete? This is the “Matthew Effect”: the strong get stronger, and the weak get weaker. You think you are dreaming, but in reality, your ticket to the dream has already been torn up by someone else.

This is the “traffic bubble” I am warning you about. This bubble bursts the moment it is pricked, and when it does, it splashes mud all over you. You think you are chasing a trend; in reality, you are just holding the bag. When everyone is talking about the “wind,” the wind has usually stopped blowing. Those without deep internal strength or core competitiveness are the first to fall. As the old saying goes, “trying to draw a tiger but ending up with a dog”—you see the majesty of the tiger and try to mimic it, but you produce a grotesque hybrid, losing your own identity in the process.

Does this mean there is no opportunity for small-town entrepreneurs? Must you simply watch others get rich? Of course not. I do not believe in fatalism; I believe in the breakthrough of cognition. Since internal competition in small towns is inevitable and supply chain gaps cannot be filled overnight, where is the exit? The answer is clear: escape this narrow physical space and seek a broader dimension.

Current technology, particularly the evolution of AI, provides an opportunity to overtake on the curve. Since the local market is saturated, why stay fixated on your own backyard? If your English is poor and you cannot face a global audience, why not let AI help you? AI translation, digital humans, and real-time speech-to-text have matured. You can stay in your small town, leverage your low-cost advantages, and build a livestreaming operation facing the global market.

For example, if you are in Yunnan and have exceptional mushrooms, or near Yiwu in Zhejiang with incredibly cheap commodities, you do not need to scream into a camera. You can use AI to generate a perfect “virtual anchor” speaking fluent English, Spanish, or Arabic, selling your products to the world. This is “dimensional reduction strike”—combining first-tier technology with small-town costs to attack a market you never imagined. Alternatively, you can act as a “vertical proxy,” becoming the expert who handles overseas output for factories that have the goods but lack the broadcasting skill.

This model avoids the low-dimensional price wars of domestic rural streams and enters a value war. While global audiences are becoming more price-sensitive, their interest in quality and unique culture remains profound. An obscure heirloom from your hometown might be a treasure on the other side of the planet. This is no longer about who can shout the loudest, but about who can tell the best story behind the product and who can use tools more efficiently to connect supply and demand.

This brings me to the concept of “evolutionary power.” When internal competition within a system reaches its limit, the only way out is to evolve outward and carve out a new ecological niche. This is not just business logic; it is the law of biological evolution. If you truly want to survive in commerce, you must learn to look up. Do not just stare at the mud at your feet; look at the sea of stars in the distance. Your competitor should not be Ergou from the village, but the people who master tools and think globally.

This is also a choice of the “human prism.” Blindly following the crowd under the drive of expansion is instinct; choosing a harder but wider path through cold, rational scrutiny is wisdom. You can continue splashing in the red ocean of your town, gambling on the next trend, or you can settle down and learn to use AI to leverage overseas markets. These are two entirely different life strategies: one is speculation, the other is investment. Investment in what? In your own cognition, your tool-based capabilities, and your understanding of this complex world.

I often say that many failures in life occur not because you didn’t work hard, but because you worked too hard in the wrong direction. Sprinting down the wrong road does not bring you to the finish line; it takes you further from the truth. This “pit” of small-town livestreaming is actually a test of human weakness. It tests whether you can resist immediate temptation for long-term gain and whether you can break free from the cage of inertial thinking to see the wider world.

Let us dig deeper. Why do so many people keep jumping into this pit? Beyond the greed for fast money, there is a craving for “certainty.” In small towns, job opportunities are limited and upward mobility is narrow. When you see someone nearby get rich overnight via livestreaming, the anxiety over “certain wealth” instantly crushes reason. But you must realize that in the business world, there is no such thing as guaranteed windfall profit—only the precise calculation of risk and return. When you see someone counting money until their hands cramp, ask yourself: what is their cost structure? Where is their moat? How high is their ceiling?

If you can quiet your mind and do the math, you may find that instead of being a mediocre streamer, it is better to be the strategist behind the scenes. Use your familiarity with local products to connect with larger external markets; use your understanding of local culture to build a unique brand story. This is the path suited for most: a slower road, but a steadier one.

In the AI era, tools are the new leverage. Previously, doing international business required multilingual skills and a global logistics team—the barrier to entry was terrifying. Now, AI has leveled those barriers. With a phone, an idea, and the courage to learn, you can connect with buyers worldwide. This is not just a business innovation; it is a reshaping of existence. You can live in a small town while being globally connected; you can stay in your hometown while earning the world’s money. Is that not far cooler than screaming “click the link, family!” in a livestream?

So, stop staring blankly at that village livestream. The reflection in that screen is not necessarily your future; it is more likely your grave. True opportunity is hidden where you cannot see, in the tools you disdain to learn, and in the distances you dare not imagine. Be the person holding the torch, not the clown being illuminated by others in the dark.

The Records of the Grand Historian suggests that victory is decided thousands of miles away by those who strategize within the tent. The real winners are never those engaging in hand-to-hand combat on the front lines, but those who arrange the pieces and control the situation from the back. Today’s small-town livestreaming chaos is nothing more than a grand “amateur theater” production. If you cannot see through it, you will easily become an actor on stage, played like a fiddle. But if you can quiet your heart, see the essence through the lens of risk control, and arm yourself with AI, you can move from being an actor to an audience member, or even the director behind the scenes.

Life is a game of chess. It is not about how you start, but whether you can see the board three moves ahead. Your small town may be your starting point, but it should never be your finish line, and certainly not your cage. Do not let the warning of “drawing a tiger only to produce a dog” become the epitaph of your entrepreneurial journey.

Finally, I want to leave you with a thought, the deepest realization from my years on the front lines of risk management: stay fearful when others are greedy, and stay hopeful when others are fearful. But more importantly, stay sober when others are blindly following the crowd. Do not let your ambition outpace your ability, and do not let your dreams become a castle in the air without a foundation.

The world is magnificent. I will see you at the summit.