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1000 True Fans? Try 100

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Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#171

Post by gnud »

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…

Nah.

I work a bit as a musician, and I would say I often, but not always, create "true art" when I'm hired for a concert.

But it's not the same art I would have made if I got to call all the shots. That doesn't necessarily make it any less good, and it doesn't make it less "true", but it _does_ make it less _mine_. I'm OK with that tradeoff.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#172

Post by giantrobot »

nadam wrote: post #146

I call bullshit on this 'passion economy' thing. Masses of people never in history could make a living from what they love, and unfortunatelly there is no sign that it will happen now. Musicans, writers, indie-game creators: most of them do their passion besides a day-job. Long-tail never made much money and with globalisation it is worse than ever. The unfortunate truth is the opposite: not only long tail does not r…

The 1000 True Fans essay is specifically targeting the small transition region in the long tail graph where the tall head becomes a long tail. The thesis is that most creators aren't going to end up in the tall head (statistically) so they should target that transition region because it offers a good living doing some artistic endeavor.

At the high end of the transition region people can make a good living, at the low end they can significantly augment their day job.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#175

Post by tomnipotent »

onion2k wrote: post #49
wtracy wrote: post #42

I'm having trouble envisioning very many markets where a "fan" is going to consistently spend $1k/year. The article mentions professional training and education, which makes sense. I can also see certain people spending that kind of money on physical goods (mechanical keyboards, audiophile equipment, one-of-a-kind art pieces) but $1k of revenue from physical goods is very different from $1k of income . Other than tha…

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.

> The fact this doesn't happen very often is a significant failure of the tech industry.

It's happens considerably more than you could imagine, but most of these businesses don't market the way Twilio does. Many create niche tools you're probably just not running across (Palisades Monte Carlo Simulation for Excel, Minitab stats workbench, the legion of paid Magento/WordPress/Platform X companion tools).

Not unlike how a vast majority of professional programmers don't work for FAANG, but we pretty much only hear about FAANG.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#176

Post by ryanjm33 »

s/fan/customer

I feel like the comments here cover the main issues with this article. I kept flip-flopping between appreciating the article and disagreeing with it. The two main issues I have with it are:

1. $1000/year to provide value is a business, not a "passion" in the true sense. 2. Highlighting the outliers of a given platform discredits the concept as something that many people can achieve.

"These fans expect to derive meaningful value and purpose from the product." - yes, that would be a business transaction.

This article could be rewritten to say that if you want to create a life-style business, make sure to generate enough value for someone (or a business) that they would be willing to pay $1000/year for your product. This will make profitability/success much easier.

Yes, the original author of 1,000 True Fans retracted his original views after hearing from musicians, but the general concept/framework doesn't seem to be broken even if the numbers have to be adjusted. The main idea is that you don't need millions of people paying you $1 to have success.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#178

Post by jonkho »

claudiawerner wrote: post #109
AmericanChopper wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An economy is just a group of people all making resource allocation decisions. I have no idea why you’d want to exclude passion from the decision making process of the worlds billions of economic actors.

That is the definition of an economy in abstract - it is ignorant of the historical factors which have created this particular global economy, and it is ignorant of the large and small scale social dynamics influencing the economy and influenced by it. It is ignorant of the necessary rights, as they are formed today, to sustain the economy. It is ignorant of commodity fetishism and alienation, and the fact that an ec…

Then don’t monetize. No one is coercing anyone to do anything they themselves don’t wish to. Those creators that don’t want to monetize their own labor...can still choose to not monetize. There is no coercion here.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#179

Post by SuoDuanDao »

test1235 wrote: post #86
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…

What is "Goop"?

Gwynneth Paltrow's personal online store. People get annoyed because she's into alternative health stuff but it's really just a store for people who have the same taste as Gwynneth Paltrow.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#180

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #136
dreamcompiler wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overpriced pseudoscientific junk products sold to gullible people and hyped by a minor celebrity obsessed with her vagina.

> obsessed with her vagina Who has a basic misunderstanding on what exactly a vagina is. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/goops-netflix-series...

This is what decades of de-prioritizing education funding looks like.
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