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1k True Fans (2008)

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Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#51

Post by exit »

grepLeigh wrote: post #16

1,000 true fans is an essay about a thousand die-hard fans paying a content creator $100/year, which comes out to 100k before taxes and expenses. I'd argue that if you're smart enough to be reading this website, you're smart enough to create and sell a piece of software to 10 businesses. If you can add 2% of revenue/quarter or save 5-10% of an expense, you can name your price (as long as it's below the amount of reve…

> I'd argue that if you're smart enough to be reading this website, you're smart enough to create and sell a piece of software to 10 businesses.

it's both fascinating and horrifying to think through reasons this doesn't happen, the many complications that get between raw ability/acumen/interest and such straightforward outcomes!

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#52

Post by sokoloff »

grepLeigh wrote: post #16

1,000 true fans is an essay about a thousand die-hard fans paying a content creator $100/year, which comes out to 100k before taxes and expenses. I'd argue that if you're smart enough to be reading this website, you're smart enough to create and sell a piece of software to 10 businesses. If you can add 2% of revenue/quarter or save 5-10% of an expense, you can name your price (as long as it's below the amount of reve…

> you can name your price (as long as it's below the amount of revenue you generated or money you saved).

Incremental gross profit, not incremental revenue, would be a better reference as the ceiling (and even that’s high for a stable business, who might use net profit as the reference figure for their reservation price).

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#53

Post by intelVISA »

rafale wrote: post #17
grepLeigh wrote: post #16

1,000 true fans is an essay about a thousand die-hard fans paying a content creator $100/year, which comes out to 100k before taxes and expenses. I'd argue that if you're smart enough to be reading this website, you're smart enough to create and sell a piece of software to 10 businesses. If you can add 2% of revenue/quarter or save 5-10% of an expense, you can name your price (as long as it's below the amount of reve…

> I'd argue that if you're smart enough to be reading this website... I would agree that the average IQ (or potential in general) of the HN readers is more than that of the general population, but I disagree there is any minimum threshold here in any capacity that warrant your statement. Many readers here can't code at all, or couldn't learn to well enough to build and market software.

I wouldn't say being able to code is a requirement to build and market software these days. You could get decently far just glueing together libs in Js/Py until VC funding.

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#54

Post by slater- »

MrLeap wrote: post #14

Does anyone have any suggestions where I could go looking for fans? I'm making a text editor/game where you write text documents with tentacle arms. Learn ritual magic based on what you write / activate machines by writing. I've got about 1400 followers on twitter, had a few semi-successful posts on reddit. Tiktok did less well. My weathervane is currently pointed towards doing more on YouTube. Enough people have dow…

dude, what?! i am immediately a fan.

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#55

Post by swyx »

grepLeigh wrote: post #16

1,000 true fans is an essay about a thousand die-hard fans paying a content creator $100/year, which comes out to 100k before taxes and expenses. I'd argue that if you're smart enough to be reading this website, you're smart enough to create and sell a piece of software to 10 businesses. If you can add 2% of revenue/quarter or save 5-10% of an expense, you can name your price (as long as it's below the amount of reve…

> If you can add 2% of revenue/quarter or save 5-10% of an expense, you can name your price (as long as it's below the amount of revenue you generated or money you saved)

this is fantasyland pricing. the reality is that

1) its often very hard to know how much revenue or expense improvement was directly attributable to your thing and people will err against you. you often need to be in the ballpark of 10x better than the “hire someone to do it in house” option.

2) people will look at comparables for pricing and it is very hard (not impossible) to charge above your peers no matter what business value you provide. if you have the audacity to claim, as many do, that you have no peers, then good luck convincing a remotely critical person that you should be paid for your service rather than you paying them for using their time for your market research .

i'm all for encouraging people but dont give unrealistic expectations on how hard it is to create and sell b2b software please.

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#56

Post by swyx »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #30
willhinsa wrote: post #22

You only need 1 true fan if it's the right fan! There was a (uploaded to TikTok) video I saw where this guy had 18 followers on YouTube, and just was not getting any kind of traction at all. I mean some traction but not much -- only 18 followers! Was about to quit. Then all of a sudden he got contacted by Oprah Winfrey's people about hosting a TV show about the ideas that he talked about in his videos. It turns out t…

I think that's called luck... so apart from putting in the time and effort, work towards increasing your Luck Surface Area.

> Luck Surface Area

https://www.swyx.io/create-luck/#luck-surface-area

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#57

Post by rootusrootus »

brookst wrote: post #32
grepLeigh wrote: post #16

1,000 true fans is an essay about a thousand die-hard fans paying a content creator $100/year, which comes out to 100k before taxes and expenses. I'd argue that if you're smart enough to be reading this website, you're smart enough to create and sell a piece of software to 10 businesses. If you can add 2% of revenue/quarter or save 5-10% of an expense, you can name your price (as long as it's below the amount of reve…

I like your vision and commitment, but when I read your comment I think “that’s 10 businesses that will want support and upgrades forever, who will call you in the middle of the night, who will expect the world of you because they depend on you”. It’s a great model and I applaud it, but I would much rather have 1000 (preferably 5000!) consumers paying me $100/ea/year than have 10 businesses paying me $100k/ea/year.

> 1000 (preferably 5000!) consumers paying me $100/ea/year than have 10 businesses paying me $100k/ea/year.

I like to have more diversity than just 10 customers, but on the other hand, having $1M of income seems very preferable to $100K ;-).

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#58

Post by unity1001 »

gumboza wrote: post #27
grepLeigh wrote: post #16

1,000 true fans is an essay about a thousand die-hard fans paying a content creator $100/year, which comes out to 100k before taxes and expenses. I'd argue that if you're smart enough to be reading this website, you're smart enough to create and sell a piece of software to 10 businesses. If you can add 2% of revenue/quarter or save 5-10% of an expense, you can name your price (as long as it's below the amount of reve…

Meh. If you're smart enough to read this web site you should find someone else to leverage some equity out of and a good salary and ride it to IPO then retire and do something else.

> IPO then retire and do something else.

Yeah, do what, exactly... Dawdle around dabbling in random stuff, only to eventually get bored and return to tech for making an impact on something and changing the world...

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#59

Post by merek »

brookst wrote: post #32
grepLeigh wrote: post #16

1,000 true fans is an essay about a thousand die-hard fans paying a content creator $100/year, which comes out to 100k before taxes and expenses. I'd argue that if you're smart enough to be reading this website, you're smart enough to create and sell a piece of software to 10 businesses. If you can add 2% of revenue/quarter or save 5-10% of an expense, you can name your price (as long as it's below the amount of reve…

I like your vision and commitment, but when I read your comment I think “that’s 10 businesses that will want support and upgrades forever, who will call you in the middle of the night, who will expect the world of you because they depend on you”. It’s a great model and I applaud it, but I would much rather have 1000 (preferably 5000!) consumers paying me $100/ea/year than have 10 businesses paying me $100k/ea/year.

It depends. There can be several benefits of selling to businesses (based on experience):

- You may only need to be responsive to customers during business hours. Of course this changes when you sell globally.

- User-facing upgrades (new features) are not necessarily expected. They might be perfectly content with the product as is, barring a few (hopefully low-priority) tweaks/bug fixes here and there.

- If businesses are dependent on your service for mission critical jobs and can hardly tolerate outages, charge them accordingly. They should be willing to support measures that ensure your continuity and reliability. This might enable you to hire others.

- If a business has trained its people to use your offering, or spent time integrating it, they are probably not going anywhere for many years. This is even more true with highly specialized software for which there is little or no competition. This means once you have reached your threshold of customers, you shouldn't have to invest much time in acquiring new customers if you don't want to.

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#60

Post by coldtea »

throwaway98797 wrote: post #23
ugjka wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read their definition of a true fan they sound like borderline insane >A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. These diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing; they will buy the hardback and paperback and audible versions of your book; they will purchase your next figurine sight unseen; they will pay for the “best-of” DVD version of your free youtube channel; they will come t…

sounds like someone in love

So probably works better for OnlyFans creators :)
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