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Zhihu Salt Selected Short Stories Signing + Tomato Novel Long-Form Serialization Dual-Platform AI Web Novel IP Compounding, Monthly Royalties 30,000+ RMB

Workflow: First input the trending topic selection pool and platform banned-word list daily, use DeepSeek to generate the daily up

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Key Fields

FIELD STAMPS

IndustryMarketing / Advertising

RegionChina

ScaleSME

ChannelOnline

🔧 Workflow

First input the trending topic selection pool and platform banned-word list daily, use DeepSeek to generate the daily updated Tomato long-form chapter outline (4,000 words/chapter), then call Claude to expand it to an 8,000-word first draft; simultaneously filter plot nodes suitable for adaptation into Zhihu Salt Selected short stories, and use Zhipu Qingyan to generate a 30,000-50,000-word short story first draft. Daily manual editing stages include: pruning AI-sounding expressions, adjusting the pacing to fit platform tones, and filtering prohibited content. Finally, Tomato schedules timed releases and Salt Selected submits full-text entries, forming a stable daily-update and weekly-update rhythm.

🛠 Setup Requirements

Requires registering Zhihu Salt Selected creator accounts and Tomato Novel creator accounts in advance, familiarizing with the content review rules and user preference differences of both platforms, and mastering basic API invocation or low-code workflow building capabilities. Coze or Dify can be selected to build an automated writing pipeline. The setup cycle takes about 1-2 weeks. The core challenges are training prompt templates adapted to the web novel context and establishing a standardized manual polishing process, without requiring professional programming backgrounds, allowing ordinary people to get started quickly.

🧰 Toolchain

🔧 DeepSeek API
🔧 Claude API
🔧 Coze
🔧 Zhipu Qingyan
🔧 Zhihu Salt Selected Creator Backend
🔧 Tomato Novel Creator Center

💰 Revenue

① Zhihu Salt Selected Short Story Signing Bonus (Main Revenue): The platform pays signing bonuses per piece. 300-500 RMB per thousand words × 30,000-50,000 word short story = 9,000-25,000 RMB per piece. The card mentions a guaranteed signing bonus of 10,000-20,000 RMB per piece, though the specific proportion is not given (case description, pending independent verification); ② Tomato Novel Long-Form Ad Revenue Share: The platform shares ad revenue based on readership. The card mentions a monthly ad share of 10,000-20,000 RMB, and over 20,000 RMB for top works (case description, unverified independently), and the exact share proportion of this track is unstated; ③ Multi-IP Matrix Compounding: Operating 2-3 long-form IPs simultaneously on the same account. The card states monthly revenue can exceed 50,000 RMB, and dual-platform matrix cases show cumulative monthly royalties exceeding 30,000 RMB (case source, unverified independently), with the proportion of this track also missing; ④ Opportunity Item — Monthly subscription licensing of the Seven-Dimensional Narrative Method and De-AI-flavored template library to other creators, with subscription pricing and proportions undisclosed.

💸 Cost

API calls for large models like DeepSeek and Claude cost 300-1000 RMB per month. The basic version of Coze or Dify is free, and the professional version subscription fee is about 200-500 RMB per month. Platform onboarding has zero fees. Total operating costs can be controlled within 1,500 RMB per month, with extremely low marginal costs.

⏱ Time Investment

Invest 4-6 hours daily, of which 2 hours are spent on AI generation and content screening, 2 hours on manual polishing and banned-word review, and 1 hour on dual-platform publishing and data retrospection. As the template library matures, this can be gradually compressed to under 3 hours per day.

🚀 Getting Started

Step one: Register Zhihu Salt Selected and Tomato creator accounts, study the themes, pacing, and user comments of the top 100 works on both platforms over the past 3 months, and compile a topic selection pool adapted to both platforms; Step two: Use AI tools to complete a 3,000-word short story trial write, submit it to Salt Selected after manual polishing to test the signing pass rate, and simultaneously launch a 100,000-word long-form work with daily updates to test Tomato's revenue-sharing earnings. Once the single-IP monetization process is validated, batch-replicate the content matrix.

🔑 Keys to Success

✅ Topic selection must simultaneously adapt to Salt Selected short story twist structures (30,000-50,000 words) and Tomato long-form satisfying pacing (500,000+ words). The same IP splits short stories for traffic acquisition and long-form for retention to achieve compounding
✅ Manual polishing to remove the AI flavor is key to passing Salt Selected signing. Platform editors focus on detecting templated expressions and logical loopholes
✅ Dual-platform staggered updates: Salt Selected short stories updated weekly, Tomato long-form novels updated daily, forming a stable production rhythm to enhance user retention
✅ Establish a personal web novel prompt template library, training exclusive models for different genres (toxic romance, suspense, face-slapping tropes) to improve matching accuracy and pass rates of AI-generated content
✅ Regularly review data across platforms, rapidly iterate topic selection directions, and closely follow trending themes to increase blockbuster probability

⚠️ 风险

⚠️ Salt Selected signing reviews are tightening, and the pass rate for AI-generated drafts is unstable. A single piece may be rejected 2-3 times, requiring continuous content quality optimization
⚠️ Tomato platform's detection of AI-generated content is strengthening. Purely AI-generated content without manual modifications may face traffic suppression or downranking, and severe cases may result in account bans
⚠️ Long-term batch production of low-quality AI content may lead to being placed on the platform's credit blacklist, restricting submission and update permissions, and affecting the rights of all subsequent creative accounts

📌 Real Cases

📌 Tixiaolu's published practical combat case of AI web novel writing in 2026: Creators operated a dual-platform matrix, with cumulative monthly royalty revenue exceeding 30,000 RMB (Source: Tixiaolu Website)
📌 CSDN blog's published Seven Realms Narrative Method + Zhimu Engine multi-platform IP compounding system: Hundreds of creators have implemented it according to the manual, achieving an average monthly return of 28,000 RMB across the Salt Selected and Tomato platforms (Source: CSDN Blog)
📌 Juejin actual test cases show that creators batch-generate content using DeepSeek for multi-platform distribution, yielding monthly returns of over 15,000 RMB per single account, and exceeding 80,000 RMB per month after matrix-operating 3 accounts (Source: Juejin)
📌 GitHub open-source project novel-creation-omnibus has included complete AI web novel creation pipeline scripts supporting one-click multi-platform adaptation and generation, with over 2,000 creators using the tool to improve production efficiency (Source: GitHub Project Page)

Sources