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1k True Fans (2008)

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Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#11

Post by coldtea »

This idea reminds me of something I've read on some old blog post about enterpreneurship.

So, the guys starting the company were excited, because they said "We know the odds are small, but we don't need much, if just 1 in 1000 buys our product we're rich, as that's like 350K people in the US. And how difficult would be to get 1 in 1000 to buy our stuff with a little marketing? It's a great product anyway! Heck, if just 1 in 10,000 buys our product, that's still 35K sales, enough to bootstrap the company and make some decent profit! And 1 in 10,000 should be trivial!"

Ultimately, though the message the author of the post got from that business plan failing miserably, is that there's always the posibility of 0 in 1000 buying their product...

"Just get 1000 true fans" downplays the difficulty.

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#12

Post by Mtinie »

coldtea wrote: post #11

This idea reminds me of something I've read on some old blog post about enterpreneurship. So, the guys starting the company were excited, because they said "We know the odds are small, but we don't need much, if just 1 in 1000 buys our product we're rich, as that's like 350K people in the US. And how difficult would be to get 1 in 1000 to buy our stuff with a little marketing? It's a great product anyway! Heck, if ju…

Does it downplay the difficulty?

As an artist, I appreciate the statement because it reminds me to appropriately scope what tiers of “success” can mean.

I have zero illusions about the ease of convincing 1000 people to trade their money for works I’ve produced. But 1000 people is a small enough number that I can conceive of in my minds eye and then plan concrete steps to try to make it happen.

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#13

Post by ugjka »

coldtea wrote: post #11

This idea reminds me of something I've read on some old blog post about enterpreneurship. So, the guys starting the company were excited, because they said "We know the odds are small, but we don't need much, if just 1 in 1000 buys our product we're rich, as that's like 350K people in the US. And how difficult would be to get 1 in 1000 to buy our stuff with a little marketing? It's a great product anyway! Heck, if ju…

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 to your chef’s table once a month.

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#14

Post by MrLeap »

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 downloaded the demo on steam that a few novels worth of text has probably been written with it, so that's fun. I'm not at a point where I can discern my count of who is a _true fan_, but there's probably a few in there.

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#15

Post by rafram »

jmathai wrote: post #2

The 1k true fans approach is the most suitable one for most people looking to build a business or income stream. It lets you hyper focus on a niche that may not be well served by more general purpose solutions. But don’t let the 1k number fool you. Getting even 1 true fan is incredibly difficult. But the idea is that if you can get 1, you can find your 2nd, then 4th, 8th, 16th, 32nd, 64th, 128th, 256th, 512th and fin…

Nitpick: On Elodie’s homepage, “No Propietary Database” should be “No Proprietary Database”.

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#16

Post by grepLeigh »

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 revenue you generated or money you saved). Paradoxically, it's easier to charge lots of money vs. convince lots of people to give you a little bit of money. If you don't believe me, I encourage you to run a time-boxed experiment where you attempt to do both for 1 month. Post your findings to HackerNews!

This might seem more boring compared to 1,000 fans (1,000 people who follow you is a great dopamine hit), but it's also much easier!

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#17

Post by rafale »

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.

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#18

Post by bhaak »

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…

If it's a game I wonder why you tried TikTok but not Twitch?

That would probably need more time involvement than TikTok but most game livestreams are still on Twitch.

Although from your description I'm not sure how much of a spectators game it is.

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#19

Post by moneywoes »

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…

Brilliant point.

May I ask if anyone is aware what type of businesses to target? SMB?

I always thought enterprise has super long sale cycles and won't trust a new product easily ( more decision makers) but to get 10 businesses to pay $833 wouldn't that need enterprise customers not SMB?

Re: 1k True Fans (2008)

#20

Post by paulpauper »

This again? 1k true fans, like the 10k hours rule popularized by Gladwell or the Purple Cow by Godin, etc. sounds better on paper than in practice, but there are always caveats and major survivorship bias. Getting those 1k fans is quite hard, as it turns out, maybe impossible even though it's not that many on an absolute basis. According to Kevin Kelly, a true fan is more than just a Twitter follower or a Facebook like. It's someone who is a paying customer or will refer others.

https://greyenlightenment.com/2022/06/26/1000-true-fans-long...

How do you get those 1k fans? Hard enough just getting 1000 hits to a website, 1000 people to even click a link, etc.

It's like MLM. "All you need is 2 people ..and then they tell 2 people, etc."

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