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1000 True Fans? Try 100

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Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#91

Post by [deleted] »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #84
armitron wrote: post #80

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…

Monetisation is a cult in its own right. The idea that everything has to be about the hustle is toxic and entirely insane.

[deleted]

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#92

Post by kaybe »

nottorp wrote: post #82
dang wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " " Don't be snarky. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Well it is a good critical comment but the HN readers are part of the same bubble and don't realize it :)

It is not, it's far too short for that. The way it is now it isn't even a decent invitation to discuss.

dav43 could probably expand it into one easily though. What kind of bubble? Who's in it? Why do they think so? What are the consequences and what could be done about it? etc.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#93

Post by shakermakr »

The No Agenda podcast from Adam Curry and John C Dvorak have seemingly successfully worked this model. No adverts, but donation only. Of course many listen to free, but creating producers out of those who donate and giving them credits and shout outs has built an interesting community.

What doesn’t work is to cut your prime value out just to those who pay. Then you can’t build momentum and the large fan base.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#94

Post by scandox »

> 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 want it to be the one part of my existence not dominated by money. And I don't want an actual passion (awful word really) to form part of an economy.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#95

Post by sokoloff »

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.

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

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#96

Post by etrautmann »

biztos wrote: post #83
anonytrary wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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! The same people who pay thousands of dollars for self-help seminars and MLM schemes. You're missing why people are buying a product. All of the video streaming services out there combined won't help people get better at love or their career. That's why they'…

I pay $75 per week to my personal trainer and where I live trainers are cheap. People routinely pay hundreds per week in places like LA. I’m not sure I’d pay that for an online trainer but if there are probably things a step or two away from workouts where I would pay for an internet mitigated version. But that’s not being a fan, that’s buying a service.

Apps like Shred are pretty good for this now...

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#97

Post by klunger »

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…

My first thought was how ridiculously out of touch with the economic reality of the 99% this author was. Even if you love an artist and are willing to spend some amount of money to support them, that amount is not going to be anywhere near 1k. This author is deeply ensconced in her elite Bay Area bubble. It is embarrassing, tbh.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#98

Post by mikro2nd »

arexxbifs wrote: post #88
fouc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you know, $1000 a year is only $84/mo, which is less than $4 per day. It's the price of a fancy starbucks coffee probably.

$84 is more than I pay monthly for Spotify, Netflix, the local newspaper, my broadband connection and occasional magazine buys combined. $1000 is more than I spend yearly on my biggest hobby - and that includes air travel and hotel fares. I have a really hard time coming up with any kind of content that'd be worth that much money.

I think the point is that Netflix and your local newspaper don't interact with you, personally in a one-on-one, honest, direct interaction. At an $84/mo subscription level, that's what you're buying.

Now this may be because the buyer is a true-believer or whatever, but equally likely because they're now able to drop a name around the dinner table, tell their friends that they're in direct dialogue with a 'name',... Status signalling, in a phrase. Tell me why some (rich!) people are willing to pay millions of dollars for a painting that looks like a couple of wet blobs on a half-plastered wall. Same forces at work, I suspect.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#99

Post by AmericanChopper »

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…

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.

Re: 1000 True Fans? Try 100

#100

Post by gadders »

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…

From the article it sounds like part of it is going after the same sort of business as Ramit Sethi [1] [2] He seems to mainly sell courses on how to create and sell courses. I don't know how comfortable I would feel doing that. Maybe that's just me.

[1] https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/about/about-ramit/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramit_Sethi

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