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1000 True Fans? Try 100

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Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#71

Post by simonh »

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…

The phrasing and contextualising in the article is all over the place. It's referred to as a 'shift', but also shows how the basic business models for 100 x $1000 and 1000 x $100 are completely different. They are examining a new different type of business using similar platforms, not a general trend of existing relationships changing in character.

Those trainers selling courses aren’t selling their $1000 courses to the same dedicated group of 100 course crazy training junkies every month, year in year out. Maybe someone will sign up for a series, or for special 1-1 sessions for a while, but then they will have got what they wanted and leave. That’s got very little in common with my long term relationship with a handful of people on Patreon for a few dollars each a month. There might be a very few, very wealthy patrons that do support a guru for large amounts every month, but that's yet another business model again and also has little similarity with the actual relationship people like me have with the people we support. Wealthy people supporting gurus has been a thing ever since there have been wealthy people.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#72

Post by al_form2000 »

Tl;dr: "Sell your customers what they want, make them pay what you say, be sure they're rich enough."

Best paradigm busting advice in business after "If you can secure just 0.1% of the chinese market, you'll have 5 milion customers" and "Always remember: profit is revenue minus expense".

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#73

Post by nottorp »

mnsc wrote: post #69
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…

Well when I was young I spent about $1k/year on little thingamajigs called cd's. That was perhaps "stupid" in a pure economic sense but I did it. And if I were young these days I can't say I wouldn't give that amount to some random "content creator" who could give me the same joy as we 80's kids got from sitting quiet and listening actively to music albums from beginning to end. But me now is like "why the hell would…

Spending 1k per years on cd's was sponsoring what, 50 different creators @20 each? Not the same thing.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#74

Post by ageofwant »

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…

At this moment I'm paying GPBBD https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3CBOpT2-NRvoc2ecFMDCsA $600/year. Wintergatan https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcXhhVwCT6_WqjkEniejRJQ gets $120

And its a steal.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#75

Post by robinduckett »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #57
robinduckett wrote: post #45

What I got from this post: Network economy matches userland economy. We should henceforth refer to billionaires as "whales".

Is this what trickle down to economy looks like?

I'd like to see what a ring based economy would look like

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#76

Post by toxik »

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.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#77

Post by paulpauper »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #67

But finding those 100 people who care enough to pay for whatever it is you're producing must have a cost. There are more ways to reach people now but considering the amount of noise out there it's like finding a needle in a haystack or perhaps worse as it's more likely, at least for an artistic project that they would need to find you. That's without considering the fragility of a business that depends on 100 people.…

the cost is immense. Look at how much money Jeb Bush spent in 2015 to get fans. Like finding a needle in a silo. Some people can do it much easier, but it's random. there is no rule or strategy to reliably get fans quickly.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#78

Post by nottorp »

JohnBooty wrote: post #58
johnchristopher wrote: post #50

> This strategy is closely related to the concept of “whales” in gaming, in which 1 to 2 percent of users drive 80 percent of gaming companies’ revenue Last time I heard of that term - `whale` - it was a reference to a mom whose child was making in-app purchase without her mother's consent and/or knowing. Unethical behavior cursor to the max.

Everybody should think deeply about ethics and act morally. Exploiting human beings is not okay. But the idea of "whales" is nearly universal in all lines of business, and there's nothing unethical about it unless your business is already operating in some kind of ethical gray area. If you are lucky enough to have customers at all, you will have some that spend 10x or 100x as others. The most obvious example would be…

Your examples aren't really of whales, because there's an upper limit on how much food/clothes you can get.

The whale term was invented by casinos wasn't it? Where there's no upper limit to how much you can lose.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#79

Post by bambax »

mnsc wrote: post #66
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…

Ctrl-f "convert" gives me two hits?

You're right. I had searched for conversion. Post updated.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#80

Post by armitron »

The "passion economy" is flooding the Internet with low SNR material and making it harder and harder to get to high quality information.

Creators create not to meet some sort of quota or "monetize" but because they need to create. It's the same for artists. True art exists because it has to come out no matter what. Monetization doesn't come into it at all. This is an important point that the passion economy vultures don't seem to grasp. What we see today is monetization becoming THE purpose and overriding everything else.

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