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1000 True Fans? Try 100

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Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#121

Post by OmarShehata »

arexxbifs wrote: post #114
scandox wrote: post #94

> As the Passion Economy grows, more people are monetizing what they love. As a sentence this just fills me with dread. And it's hard to say why because I know, for example, that a writer making a living from selling their books could be said to be "monetizing what they love" OR engaging in the "Passion Economy". But if I was to try and get to the heart of it it's simply that I don't want to monetize what I love. I w…

I agree, and I also think that the sentiment that turning a passion into a job is somehow beneficial because "you will never work a day in your life" is untrue. As soon as your livelihood depends on something, you will at some point either have to make sacrifices and trade-offs, or you will starve. Creative passion can only blossom when you can do everything exactly the way you want without compromise, which is unlik…

I used to agree this, but this leads to what I think is a pernicious belief stated differently: that you can only make "true art" if you're giving it away for free.

This comes up a lot when making indie games. That your work is somehow less pure or you had to compromise on your creative vision because you had to monetize it. As a creator you have to make a ton of tradeoffs all the time anyway, since you have a finite amount of time and resources. What if monetizing it actually allows you to achieve the vision you had in mind? Or it helped you understand what your audience cares about and make something more relatable or moving (or go the other direction, disturbing or meant to role them up etc) Why isn't monetizing just another trade-off? What's so special about it?

The answer to me: culturally monetizing/greed in art has been seen as making art impure and it's a stigma we need to get over.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#122

Post by subpixel »

keiferski wrote: post #116

The problem with the "passion economy", which was alluded to in another comment, is that it strengthens the already too-prevalent assumption that everything can and should be monetizable. Markets are useful but they don't need to be involved in every aspect of existence. Sure, you don’t need to participate in Patreon to make stuff, but the trend seems to be toward relying on consumer market forces to fund culture. Ty…

I just looked at Kajabi for the first time and feel similarly. A bunch of 'coaches' selling courses to other coaches, etc.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#123

Post by frosted-flakes »

sokoloff wrote: post #95
onion2k wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incredibly annoying thing about this is that there's a really obvious case - software tools. There should be so many cases of people who have written a useful tool and have 100 businesses who pay $1000/year because that tool is the backbone of their $1000 * xxx profit. The fact this doesn't happen very often is a significant failure of the tech industry.

This seems to me like it does happen fairly often. It’s the entire model of JetBrains, RedGate, Sublime, Atlassian, etc.

Adobe is a big one. The Creative Cloud suite is over $600 annually.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#124

Post by arexxbifs »

OmarShehata wrote: post #121
arexxbifs wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and I also think that the sentiment that turning a passion into a job is somehow beneficial because "you will never work a day in your life" is untrue. As soon as your livelihood depends on something, you will at some point either have to make sacrifices and trade-offs, or you will starve. Creative passion can only blossom when you can do everything exactly the way you want without compromise, which is unlik…

I used to agree this, but this leads to what I think is a pernicious belief stated differently: that you can only make "true art" if you're giving it away for free. This comes up a lot when making indie games. That your work is somehow less pure or you had to compromise on your creative vision because you had to monetize it. As a creator you have to make a ton of tradeoffs all the time anyway, since you have a finite…

I think the discussion about what constitutes "true art" is separate from this. I'm saying that in the long run, it is unlikely that you can keep passionate about something you depend on for food and shelter. I, too, can think of examples where either monetizing up front or simply happening to create something that made you rich has been combined with true passion.

But, if you're going to spend the rest of your life creating something and expect to keep earning money from it, there will be less passion and more tedium.

> Or it helped you understand what your audience cares about and make something more relatable or moving

I'd say that's not about your passion or vision, then, but rather about creating something others will feel passionate about. It's a big difference.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#125

Post by sacado2 »

toxik wrote: post #76
bambax wrote: post #47

1. The article shows a pyramid and it's important. In order to get a few "true fans" (people prepared to pay dearly for what you produce), you need a large amount of "distant fans" (people who like what you do, as long as it's free). The key word is conversion , and, regrettably, it's not present once in the post [0]. It's probably in the 1 to 0.1% range. [0] Edit: In fact it is (convert). However in the next paragra…

Interesting point with the pyramid, a podcaster (Sam Harris) recently turned his free podcast into a "freemium" model where you get half of each episode for free. I imagine this is going to completely kill his following, as it did for me. Freemium is actually being charitable, it's more like shareware.

It's going to kill his following among people who want to follow him for free, but by definition they don't bring him any money. If you have enough paying users, meaning your business gained momentum, you don't really care about free users anymore.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#126

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

giantrobot wrote: post #48

Who in the hell is going to pay another individual $1000 a year to make content? That's more than a year's subscriptions to Disney+, Amazon Prime, and Netflix! One of the root ideas in the True Fans essay was a fan would be willing to spend a day's wage for a year's worth of content from a creator. A large portion of the population at large can pay a day's wage for say 52 hours (a creator spitting out and hour of con…

I kinda hate the current media though. I would definitely pay $1000 for the content that I want, content that caters to me.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#127

Post by numlock86 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #33

TLDR: Sell what your customers want to buy. But let's call the customers fans and rebrand the whole thing not as Capitalism but as "Passion Economy", which sounds a lot more noble than "overcharging random strangers on the internet". I'm also surprised that "whales" went from a mean joke to mock those with more money than friends into an actual description that they use as a positive term here.

TL;DR (1000 * 100) == (100 * 1000)

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#129

Post by projectramo »

circlefavshape wrote: post #87
bambax wrote: post #47

1. The article shows a pyramid and it's important. In order to get a few "true fans" (people prepared to pay dearly for what you produce), you need a large amount of "distant fans" (people who like what you do, as long as it's free). The key word is conversion , and, regrettably, it's not present once in the post [0]. It's probably in the 1 to 0.1% range. [0] Edit: In fact it is (convert). However in the next paragra…

I get so many ads for courses on how to run ads for courses

You should try my new course about how to avoid ads for new courses.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#130

Post by alexpetralia »

toxik wrote: post #76
bambax wrote: post #47

1. The article shows a pyramid and it's important. In order to get a few "true fans" (people prepared to pay dearly for what you produce), you need a large amount of "distant fans" (people who like what you do, as long as it's free). The key word is conversion , and, regrettably, it's not present once in the post [0]. It's probably in the 1 to 0.1% range. [0] Edit: In fact it is (convert). However in the next paragra…

Interesting point with the pyramid, a podcaster (Sam Harris) recently turned his free podcast into a "freemium" model where you get half of each episode for free. I imagine this is going to completely kill his following, as it did for me. Freemium is actually being charitable, it's more like shareware.

In fairness, he does continue to support a charity model as well. He clarifies very often that if you can't support the podcast due to financial reasons, you can simply email his team and get free access, no questions asked.
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