
1,000 True Fans (2008) - bueckling
https://www.kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
======
chasing
This again.

> Every thing made, or thought of, can interest at least one person in a
> million — it’s a low bar. Yet if even only one out of million people were
> interested, that’s potentially 7,000 people on the planet. That means that
> any 1-in-a-million appeal can find 1,000 true fans. The trick is to
> practically find those fans, or more accurately, to have them find you.

No. This is not how anything works, as almost anyone attempting to work in the
art world implicitly understands. If there are 7,000 people _globally_ who
might be interested in your work, it would take a massive _global_ campaign to
find them. Which most people can't afford, especially not for a "this appeals
to 7,000 people" idea.

> Now here’s the thing; the big corporations, the intermediates, the
> commercial producers, are all under-equipped and ill suited to connect with
> these thousand true fans.

No, they are the ones most empowered to connect with those thousand true fans.
They have resources and global reach.

For normal people without those resources, "true fans" generally come from
personal connections, in my experience. And even if one gathers up thousands
of personal connections, it can be really hard to convince even close friends
to be interested in spending their time or money on what you're doing.

> The takeaway: 1,000 true fans is an alternative path to success other than
> stardom.

No, it _is_ stardom. you don't have 1,000 true fans without having 10,000 or
100,000 casual fans.

Argh.

Anyway, I'm not saying passionate people can't support themselves on their art
or personal project or whatever -- obviously it's completely possible and
people do it all the time. But this "1000 true fans" thing is not a useful
tool for getting there, in my very humble opinion.

~~~
orasis
Agree 100%. When this essay first came out I was totally on board and created
some excellent hyper-niche products...that were too difficult to find an
audience for.

After that I went for huge market and everything became SO MUCH easier.

~~~
drchiu
I’ve noticed this myself. Going niche makes it hard to find the right market
fit. Ive found that it’s easier to find users/customers in a broad market and
positioning as an option instead.

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CM30
I'd personally say this doesn't just apply to creators or media franchises,
but businesses in general. Especially in the days of the internet.

Because for good or bad, there are a lot of companies who don't really have a
loyal 'fanbase'. People use them merely because they're cheap, conveniently
located or out of necessity.

Which in turn makes them very liable to get disrupted and driven out of
business by ecommerce giants and other large competitors. See many department
stores like Sears and Macys who got obliterated by Amazon and online shopping.
Or generic supermarkets who ended up destroyed by much larger competitors
(like Walmart in the US, and the the 'big four' in the UK).

And the same pattern applies with creators on sites like YouTube. There are
numerous channels which don't really add anything 'unique' to the videos they
upload, and merely coast along on trends. They're at risk of being made
irrelevant near instantly, as their 'viewers' go off to a nearly identical
channel offering the same stuff even more quickly.

Developing that true fan following adds an extra 'moat' around your business
to protect it from being disrupted by new technological innovations or social
changes. An audience that will stick by you regardless of how much cheaper or
quicker or more 'efficient' your competition might be.

------
dang
A couple past threads — 2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10625906](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10625906)

2010:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338957](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338957)

------
redis_mlc
I'm familiar with the music Youtuber and Patreon world.

The "1000 true fans" essay is correct conceptually, it just needs to be
updated to be more prescriptive for current social media.

The numbers for an artist to hit initially are 200,000+ yt subscribers (free
equipment and self-perpetuating audience) and 150 - 200 Patrons (less if you
live at home.) yt pays $1,000 - $3,000 per million views for monetized
(eligible) videos.

1 million yt subscribers is a comfortable lifestyle.

But wearing many hats takes effort (weekly upload, social media, video
production, being "your best self" online, etc.) If you don't like/want/afford
touring though, yt is almost a perfect alternative - all the exposure, none of
the costs.

(By contrast, Rick Beato says you only need 1,200 sales for a gold jazz single
today.)

If you haven't watched the successful yt music performers and instructors, you
should - freakish level of talent out there.

AMA.

~~~
rasz
For reference YT pay is vastly superior for actually marketable subjects. This
automobile channel for example
[https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/randyshear](https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/randyshear)
with ~2M views a month gets ~$15K checks from Google. This is one of the
reasons for car channel 'bought a supercar' memes going around.

------
xrayspec
Jaron Lanier challenged Kevin Kelly to produce evidence that his theory was
true, which AFAICT never emerged, so by Kelly's own terms, "I surrender the
case".

[https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-case-agains/](https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-
case-agains/)

~~~
redis_mlc
That appears to be a very old article (anything pre-2018 is basically
irrelevant.)

Sarah Longfield has done interviews saying she makes a living off primarily
Patreon, with concerts and t-shirts a less important revenue stream.

I can think of 20 others with the same story, and in fact, most have discussed
it on video. They do that to educate their "1000 true fans" how to support
them.

AMA.

------
Aperocky
The author ignores acquisition cost, and it's not about advertising or
anything. It is as in, if you're able to find 1000 fans on a millionth
likelihood rate, you would need to have 1 billion people to evaluate your
music/game for long enough to have an opinion on it, and that is not going to
happen.

And that's what's wrong with the thinking 'I can have really niche product
there will be someone liking it on this planet'. It doesn't work that way, In
order for those niche to be found you either have to force every single person
to evaluate your stuff or if those niche are naturally concentrated
(possible). But if the potential suscribers are 1000 uniformly distributed in
the world then we should just scrap it.

------
wj
I have always loved this line of thinking since it was introduced to me on the
Tropical MBA podcast but I feel like the advice has limits. Many people, most
probably, can spend many years without developing this level of following.

------
DoreenMichele
I generally agree with the idea. I just don't know how we help people actually
do that.

In reality, the big companies seem to dominate and crowd out the smaller
players and we generally seem to be doing a poor job of counterbalancing that.
I think this is a substantial source of our current problems where we have
serious income inequality, phrases like The 99 Percent became popular, at
least for a time, etc.

This is exactly what I would like to do and would like to help others do. I've
not managed to hit the kind of numbers that would provide a middle class
lifestyle.

------
mikece
Tim Ferriss is constantly talking about the importance of this article to
anyone who dreams/wants to be an entrepreneur. Great stuff!

------
lostgame
This kind of thinking is critical these days to artist's success, especially
in music.

If 1,000 true fans buy your album and also come see your show, you are driving
a lot closer to sustainable financial success with your music.

------
cousin_it
Counterpoint: you can have a million subscribers on YouTube, or be the most
popular writer of web serials (Wildbow), and not make much money at all.

~~~
graeme
Did you read the article? it talked about having 1000 people willing to give
you $100 a year in profits in book sales, concerts, merchandise, etc

For a youtuber that might be 1000 people paying $8-$9 a month on patreon.

If you have a million subscribers but don’t have that, then by definition you
don’t have 1000 true fans.

People read and listen to lots of people and things, but only deeply, deeply
care about a fraction of them. That’s a true fan.

That is one issue with the article: it glosses over the difficulty in
acquiring a ‘true’ fan. But, it does show that it isn’t some unfathomable
number. Thus better to optimize for being loved by some rather than gathering
mild interest from many.

