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1k True Fans? Try 100 (2020)

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Re: 1k True Fans? Try 100 (2020)

#101

Post by rchaud »

altdataseller wrote: post #93
newaccount74 wrote: post #63

What the article is describing isn't "fans" as much as plain old "customers". Almost all the examples given in the article are people doing courses. If you sell a course for $1000, then the person buying it isn't a "fan" who just gives you money, the buyer is just a customer who buys a service. The only thing new about this is that it's happening online; offering courses for $1000 is not exactly a new thing, it's a b…

But it's the VC world. They need to come up with new, innovative concepts so they can be seen as a thought leader! /s

The original essay that this pulls its title from from was written in 2008, and used examples of self-published authors and musicians - purely creative works. None of the startup-bubble, hustle-culture fueled BS that infected the following decade.

VCs are only interested monetizing the "product" aspect of creative ventures so they rephrase the key concepts in MBA blandspeak.

Re: 1k True Fans? Try 100 (2020)

#102

Post by rchaud »

dubswithus wrote: post #69
armchairhacker wrote: post #67

Yeah, in an ideal world content creators could make an entire salary off of donations and offering simple perks and exclusive access. But actually this is a terrible career advice and relatively few people actually end up making anywhere close to $100k on Twitch or Patreon. For each example the author mentions there are 100s if not 1,000s more who are wasting their time. We just aren’t a society where most people don…

Cum Town makes close to 100k per month on Patreon. Proof that you can make a lot of money by just fucking around.

Wasn't this a spinoff of an existing successful podcast made by the same people? They might already have had a built-in audience who'd be willing to pay.

Re: 1k True Fans? Try 100 (2020)

#103

Post by stakkur »

Maybe. Sort of. What I'd really like to see is some sort of data on long-term income from these sorts of models. Yes, I know there are some--but I haven't seen it widely successful over several years or more for more than the '1%'.

Re: 1k True Fans? Try 100 (2020)

#104

Post by Existenceblinks »

0des wrote: post #88
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of Twitter is just people signaling to one another that they are relevant in what they say and how they say it. It is a tax on your brain for which you get little in return.

Much of life is social signaling in general.

Sadly true, tons of people wouldn't care less if it isn't opportunity involves. Because social animal is mostly passive. You don't show up? We don't look for you even if you have some potentials.

Re: 1k True Fans? Try 100 (2020)

#105

Post by rchaud »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #28
Existenceblinks wrote: post #12

Newcomers started doing this on twitter for a while and turn social media from platform ads to federation ads network .. it's getting worse, like everybody is literally selling to each other. Remember old "long time no see" friends shown up trying to sell you something? Aghh now everyone pretends to be friend and sell you something.

The key to enjoying Twitter is to unfollow anyone who is clearly only Tweeting engagement and follow bait all day. It’s easy to spot. They all seem to follow the same pattern du jour, such as posting threads that feel like mad libs (“I talked to people who are passionate about . What I learned was surprising! Here are the top five takeaways. 1/6” is popular right now)

These days anytime I see the "finger pointing down" emoji that tells me that there's a thread below, I unfollow. Straight away.

Re: 1k True Fans? Try 100 (2020)

#106

Post by paulpauper »

Why stop at 100 fans when you can have one winning lottery ticket or one sugar daddy. "100/1000 true fans theory" ignores the difficulty and luck required in getting those 100-1000 paying fans. It's a nice story or idea, but impractical for the vast majority of people. Getting even a handful of fans is probably very hard for most people unless you are lucky or famous.

Re: 1k True Fans? Try 100 (2020)

#107

Post by mjr00 »

bryans wrote: post #100
oceanplexian wrote: post #90

Obviously this is HN and not r/Livestreamfail, but the vast majority of Super Fans are not buying courses or supporting the development of content. The real Super Fans have an unhealthy obsession with an online personality and think they are going to buy a friendship, or a girlfriend, or some other reciprocity. I worked in this industry for a bit. A lot of times big donors will dump their life savings or steal a fami…

I've consulted with several hundred live streamers, and none of what you're saying is reflective of their experiences. It is outrageously false and disparaging to claim that the vast majority (or even a significant portion) of large contributors are somehow dysfunctional and that content creators are exploiting them. Some people build cars for fun and spend their disposable income on that experience. Other people enj…

> "The companies" aren't marketing high-cost options in any way. Twitch's highest subscription tier is $25/mo. Patreon suggests a higher tier of $30. Those are not "ruin mom's credit" or "dump your life savings" prices, so it's disingenuous (at best) to suggest that something nefarious and exploitative is happening in regards to platforms' marketing efforts.

You're ignoring superchats and tips which is where most of the money comes from. Watch any fairly popular livestream, especially during the "just chatting" style periods, and you'll see $500, $1000 or higher superchats getting dumped in every few minutes.

I mainly watch VTubers (never paid one money, for the record...) and the so-called "Girlfriend Experience" (or Boyfriend Experience, to a much lesser extent) is a real thing. Look at what happened to Uruha Rushia -- she accidentally leaked that she was dating someone and that caused her entire contract to get terminated.[0] Her "GFE" style made her the top Hololive earner in 2021, making $1.6 million from superchats alone.[1]

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/t06ryl/what_i...

[1] https://animecorner.me/hololive-vtubers-dominate-top-10-list...

Re: 1k True Fans? Try 100 (2020)

#108

Post by localhost »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #37

I work for a company that's very much like Patreon for podcasters (Supercast). The people who will pay $1K a year to support a creator absolutely exist, but they are a small subset of the people who will pay $100 / year, which is itself a very small subset of the people who will listen to your podcast. Some rough numbers: - A podcast with an engaged fan base can usually get about 5% of their listeners to support them…

I just started a podcast a few weeks ago [1] where I interview other folks who work at Microsoft to answer the question that I often had back when we had company meetings: what do all of these people do? I was surprised that I hadn't heard of Supercast before. At what point does it make sense for me to start thinking about services like Supercast? Is there a threshold of # subscribers, downloads, some other metric that makes sense?

[1] https://john-lam-podcast.simplecast.com/

Re: 1k True Fans? Try 100 (2020)

#109

Post by rapind »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #81
rapind wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Podcast pricing is in it’s wildly crazy phase. As an example, Sam Harris is charging $15 / month. Good for him that he’s able to pull it off, but man, that’s more than most streaming services. Your supercast is charging $0.59 / month per sub going through your platform on top of stripe fees. So if you had a niche but interesting podcast you can’t just charge $1.00 / month and generate any revenue. These fees are a ma…

Yeah, $5 a month is really the minimum where it starts to make sense with Supercast. I haven't run the numbers, but my gut tells me that supporters really aren't as price sensitive as you think. The conversion rates on a $5 / month podcast and a $10 / month one aren't all that different. Again, for a lot of podcasts, it's less about purchasing a product and more about supporting a creator. Supporting super niche podc…

> The conversion rates on a $5 / month podcast and a $10 / month one aren't all that different.

IMO $5.00 is still beyond the price anchoring in most people's minds. You're getting close to the range of Apple TV premium, Youtube premium, Disney plus, Prime, and other bundled content services. Competing as a single content producer is going to be tough. It's natural you get mostly consumers that want to support you, instead of just people who are selfishly interested in the content, of which there are likely a lot more.

Re: 1k True Fans? Try 100 (2020)

#110

Post by meheleventyone »

burnished wrote: post #96
gwd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So sure, you can be self-sufficient on 100 $1K a year fans, but to get there, you need 5,000 $100 / year fans (which needs 100,000 listeners), and not doing anything for them is leaving money on the table. And probably more importantly, losing people out of the funnel: after all, most people don't go from 0 to $1k/year fan in an instant; they'll try out the free service, upgrade to being a $100/year fan, and from t…

>most people don't go from 0 to $1k/year fan in an instant; they'll try out the free service, upgrade to being a $100/year fan, and from there upgrade to being a $1k/year fan How do you know this? I'm mentally contrasting with monetization in games which I don't think follows that model, I think it is more like; if you are spending over 100$ its by repeating some smaller behavior (microtransactions), as opposed to de…

For games it can be frequency of transaction as well as amount that increases over time. I don't think either case is about being particularly thoughtful though. More a sign of that thing becoming more important in your life.
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