
1000 True Fans? Try 100 - tonicb
https://a16z.com/2020/02/06/100-true-fans/
======
bambax
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 paragraph the concept
is somehow replaced with "whaling", which means that a few paying customers
help support a large group of free riders, or conversion in reverse. This is
misleading. The large group needs to be there first.

2\. At the $1000/year price point, it's not an artistic production anymore.
Most examples are about "courses", about teaching something to a specific
audience. Some of the topics are questionable and sound a little scammy
(physiotherapy?), may be preying on people's vulnerabilities (private coding
classes for kids?) or playing on vanity (having a celebrity streamer play
along with you). This is Goop territory. Is this the future we want?

~~~
toxik
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.

~~~
sacado2
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.

~~~
tartoran
Some of the free users might pay. Small percentage “conversion” into paying
users. But this can be done only once a large following was built and that
model seems a bit disingenuous to me, free to paid, and I like the model where
the content creator gives some extra to paying users.

------
Proziam
IIRC the 1k true fans idea was walked back by its original author after they
got feedback from industry folks describing how the model was basically
impossible to implement in the real world.

This holds 100% true to my experience in influencer marketing and esports.
Monetizing fans is _really hard_ on passion alone. You need to create valuable
calls to action and continuously produce content in order to maintain their
attention. Once you 'lose' a fan (which only means losing their emotional
focus, even temporarily) you often can't monetize them _at all_ without
significant re-activation effort. [0]Demonstrating this, large influencers
lose _extraordinary_ sums of money if they stop producing content for short
windows of time.

This is why using influencers in marketing requires genuine strategy, and is
the likely culprit behind so much 'hate' for influencer marketing.

[0] [https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/ninja-reveals-
shocking...](https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/ninja-reveals-shocking-
number-of-subscribers-he-lost-by-missing-two-days-of-streaming-100449)

~~~
quaunaut
Isn't this largely what Patreon is, though? And there's a lot of people who
are doing surprisingly well off of Patreon despite low subscriber counts.

I'd think the trick is to find the right niche- if you're too generic, you're
up against the big personalities.

~~~
Proziam
Patreon is quite a bit of work and requires constant upkeep to maintain a
steady income flow. It's really no different from Twitch subscriptions in that
regard. It does a better job of monetizing primarily because of the easily
customized tiers, and secondarily because the platform specifically caters to
paid content rather than free.

That said, many of patreon's most financially successful users are producing
content that isn't suitable for platforms like Twitch and Youtube.

~~~
redis_mlc
I commented in detail on this a few months ago ...

What Proziam wrote is a little off, at least as far as music goes.

Hundreds of musicians/music vloggers are working full-time from
Patreon/Adsense once they exceed 100,000 Youtube subscribers and upload
weekly/biweekly and have 100+ Patrons.

Patreon produces a reliable income stream (for rent, etc.) while Adsense
fluctuates but adds up ($1,000 - $5,000/million views typically.)

What I have heard with Twitch is that you need to be online continuously or
the audience moves on.

> IIRC the 1k true fans idea was walked back by its original author

That was from a time decades ago when customer acquisition was expensive. With
Youtube/Adsense it's not that hard, and one could experiment with Facebook
targeting.

And any time somebody uses the phrase "walked back", I've found the author
didn't have a nuanced understanding of the subject.

~~~
Proziam
100 Patrons, even if they contribute _well above average_ , say $25 ( _after_
platform fees/expenses/taxes), is still only $2,500 per month. There are some
places in the US where that wouldn't be liveable, let alone offer enough
stability for a person to enjoy a stable lifestyle. Of course, if you live in
a low cost of living area you can make things fly that otherwise wouldn't. But
even with that consideration in mind, how many places could you live a
'normal' life on 30k?

I've worked with musicians as well, including some with global recognition and
(many) millions of views and song plays. From what I've seen, turning 100k
Youtube subscribers into 100k income per year is far from the norm. Plenty of
creators in that size bracket quit, suggesting it's not particularly
sustainable.

That said, if you can, I'd love to get some more insight into the creators you
feel are getting the most out of their effort, and how they're achieving their
results!

~~~
redis_mlc
I'll go into some more detail so people can picture how it works in 2020
better.

100k subscribers is the gateway to really making it on YT.

Above that you start going self-viral, so some artists have snowballed very
fast (in months) from 100k to 300k+. It's like they're on YT, but their
channel is "their own private island" and takes on a life of its own.

1) US artists will need to live at home (or in a van) or be very frugal to
make it with the numbers I provided - but it's doable, and they will get a lot
of free gear.

And they'll be full-time musicians, which is living the dream for most.

However, low-COL artists can (and do) earn the average local salary, plus free
gear. So they have it all figured out.

2) US (and European) musicians will have a hard time touring as the bandleader
on that income, since it's pay-to-play now for non-headliners in the US,
typically $500 per show, and often T-shirt sales are restricted (see Sarah
Longfield's interviews for the details.)

So that means keep uploading on Patreon/YT, or have your sponsors/fans in each
city put you up.

3) "Be your own label.", "Own your publishing.", etc.

The important thing to realize is that there is no label deal available for
new musicians (the exception would be super-strong writers) in 2020, and even
if you signed one, advances have to be repaid. And oh ya, "360 deals" go after
your Patreon and YT/Adsense, publishing and show revenue now - just say no.

So go whole hog on Patreon/YT/Adsense (ie. be your own label) because it's not
like there is another funding option for most people, aside from a few guys
making it as contract performers (ie. paying their dues) for regional touring
bands.

See Rhett Shull's YT channel to learn more about that - he's a road dog
contract hired gun guitarist with a knack for YT vlogging. Hats off, man, and
congrats on the 100+k subs!

Also see Yvette Young's (from San Jose) meteoric rise - she just got an Ibanez
signature guitar in her 20's!

------
wtracy
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 that, the only things I can think of would be direct access to a
celebrity or some form of conspicuous consumption. ("That game you play all
day? I personally cover 40% of its operating costs.")

I don't see how the average webcomic artist or food blogger can achieve
anything like what is described here.

~~~
onion2k
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.

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

~~~
frosted-flakes
Adobe is a big one. The Creative Cloud suite is over $600 annually.

------
giantrobot
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 content a week) of entertainment. Out of that
population, argues the essay, a creator needs to only find a thousand True
Fans out of the population that _can_ afford the $100 in order to make a
living.

That's not only workable math but something that's doable. The market can
support the model, it won't always and in every situation but it can. At the
reasonable "day's wage" level many people can afford to support multiple
creators. Spending $200 a year for content is still in the affordability range
of a large portion of the populace.

A far far smaller portion of the population at large _can_ afford $1k for 52
hours of entertainment. It's definitely not a tenth of the $100 population,
it's more likely a fraction of a percent. So any given creator isn't likely to
find 100 True _Rich_ Fans, they're going to find maybe one if they're lucky.
The market isn't going to support a model where a few dozen hours of
entertainment costs a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars will get you a game
console, a TV, subscriptions to a bunch of streaming services, and a ton of
games. Even fewer of these whales could support multiple creators so very few
creators could ever possibly survive of the whale model.

~~~
fouc
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.

~~~
arexxbifs
$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.

~~~
mikro2nd
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.

~~~
arexxbifs
Not denying your point, but the wet blob painting is probably considered an
investment that is expected to increase in value over time, unlike a Youtube
video.

------
AJRF
Guys what if... You had 200 fans each paying 500 a year?

Amazing right? 500 is less than 1000 and 200 isn’t that much more than 100.

Feel free to take down the OP and put this comment up instead

~~~
fxtentacle
Have you considered 123.5 fans? ;) The 0.5 is a half-broke student only paying
attention sometimes.

------
keiferski
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. Tying
the livelihoods of creators to the approval of their fans will lead them to
censor themselves and consequently you aren't going to get anything that
really pisses people off or challenges them in a countercultural way, at least
enough to stop buying your stuff.

The idea of basic income seems like a better path forward, in terms of
preserving artistic integrity (i.e. not "make money" or "please your fans" as
the motive for making things). Everyone will get enough money to survive, no
matter how much your ideas go against the zeitgeist.

~~~
marcusverus
I cannot think of a more trivial reason to fundamentally restructure the
economy.

~~~
keiferski
To allow people to focus on meaningful pursuits rather than work largely
superfluous jobs to survive?

Yeah, sounds really trivial.

~~~
marcusverus
That's an argument, but not the one you made above.

> The idea of basic income seems like a better path forward, in terms of
> preserving artistic integrity (i.e. not "make money" or "please your fans"
> as the motive for making things). Everyone will get enough money to survive,
> no matter how much your ideas go against the zeitgeist.

As in, the Patreon model isn't the best for artists, a better model is a
complete rework of the economy, which would remove the need for artists to
please their fans.

Extraordinarily trivial.

~~~
keiferski
Again, I think redesigning the economy to allow people to explore the human
experience and create all forms of art without the need to make a living or be
a crowd-pleaser is an extraordinarily noble goal.

~~~
marcusverus
Are we talking about a Star-Trek era future, once we've achieved something
akin to full automation? Or do you think that this is something that is worth
pursuing in the short term? Specifically, I'm curious as to who keeps the
lights on in this new economy, and why they are working when work is
unnecessary.

~~~
keiferski
Eh, I don't think we need full automation. There are plenty of superfluous
jobs today and the number of people to "keep the lights" on is probably 5% of
the population or less.

~~~
marcusverus
Currently ~60% of the adult population is employed. How do you knock that down
to 5%, while taxing that 5% enough to support the other 95%, without taxing so
much that working isn't worth the effort? It sounds like you're advocating for
a planned economy with 5% participation, which seems odd given that planned
economies haven't worked in the past with 10X the workforce.

------
Kalq
I think there's a bit of confusion here in the way the author frames these 100
people. At this level they are not fans. They're not supporting you out of
some sort of emotional attachment. They are giving you $1000 a year because
they believe that the service or product you provide is worth that much.
They're customers and that's all.

The "whale" archetype is just a modern version of what has always existed with
MLM and self-help gurus where they pray on rich and emotionally vulnerable
people. It's an absolutely tiny group of people that will never translate to a
widespread economy.

Conflating the 1000 true fans concept with this is a mistake in my opinion.

------
kbenson
> On Patreon, the average initial pledge amount has increased 22 percent over
> the past two years.

22% is not the same as 10,000%. Nowhere near it.

> Since 2017, the share of new patrons paying more than $100 per month—or
> $1,200 per year—has grown 21 percent.

Is this a statistics fail? My bet is that this is either $100 over all
subscriptions (I pay about $30/mo for 7 or 8 creators on patreon, most in the
$1 to $5 range), or the _increase_ is from a number previously so small as to
be almost inconsequential, meaning it's still almost inconsequential.

Twitch, on the other hand, I can believe. There's a much more immediate
feedback loop there, and creators responding to your pledges directly.

------
factsaresacred
The 1000 fans concept is mostly about gratitude - 'thanks, keep doing what
you're doing'.

The 100 fans idea seems to be mostly about expectation - 'I gave you money,
now deliver this'.

The article describes customers not fans. The _VC 'ing_ of 1000 true fans.

Nevertheless it's great to see an Internet where growing numbers of people are
willing to pay individuals for value and have the means to do so.

------
weinzierl
The fewer _" fans"_ you have and the more they pay the more power they will
have over you and the more demanding they will become. In other words: Your
fans turn into patrons and will have a major influence on your work.

Also their demand might drive you in a corner you may not be able to easily
escape. As with everything, focus is good but too much focus can be a risk as
well.

------
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.

~~~
AmericanChopper
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.

~~~
claudiawerner
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 economy must reproduce itself
daily, hourly.

There are many criticisms of this economy that we currently have, and the
creeping monetization of the last vestige of private life in which we don't
need to currently sell, those hours after work and before sleep.

"Why exclude this?", as you ask, simply shows you think that there is no space
to resist the totality (I would sometimes go as far as to say tolatitarianism)
of "the economy". No space is free, because we have given up resisting it.

~~~
jonkho
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.

~~~
claudiawerner
You're correct, but that's not a reason against trying to change the system.
There were many economic phenomena through history people have consented to,
and not all of them good for society as a whole - sometimes with disastrous
consequences.

------
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.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Monetisation is a cult in its own right.

The idea that everything has to be about the hustle is toxic and entirely
insane.

------
nadam
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 really work, but as Peter Thiel said:
money is in monopolies. Non-monopolies 'compete-away' the profit.

As a developer, you are better off to go work for a monopoly: they pay well.
(Google, Facebook, etc).

(This does not mean I do not have a passion project ('indie game'), I just
know that the chance that it can replace my day-job is quite low.)

~~~
yters
Maybe the passion project can make an impact within the monopoly? E.g. use
indie game dev knowledge to improve costumer engagement with the product?

~~~
gowld
Is that a good thing? "Engagement" is usually toxic Skinner boxing.

~~~
yters
Most things can be used for good or ill. A well defined and engaging UI can
certainly be a good thing, if designed appropriately. Most business software
is a boring slog to use. Why not design it so the user feels uplifted during
the workday? Work could potentially benefit the person as well as the company
bottom line, and become a virtuous whole.

------
sytelus
While this is well written, I would urge people to NOT to follow this advice.
Subscriber churn is a real thing and losing $1000/yr subscriber hurts way more
than losing $100/yr subscriber. Additionally, it takes an order of magnitude
more effort for conversion and your product has to almost match the utility of
a smartphone produced by $1T company to even demand that kind of automated
recurring payments. The vast majority of fun creative content won't qualify
for this anyway.

However, my bigger beef is with the subscriber model itself which somehow
every person wants to impose for their next product. The fact is that it is
_much easier_ to convince me to pay $10 to get a new release instead of
forcing on me $10/yr subscription. The subscription should be _optional_
merely provided as a convenience to the customers who find themselves paying
you again and again, not as _requirement_ to use your product. This is a true
customer-obsessed point of view. If you have something good to sell, make at
least part of it _free_ so people know the value to expect. Rest make it one-
time fee and create your upgrades/releases appealing enough so people buy them
recurringly!

~~~
busterarm
Do both instead. Do something where you can offer tiers. Group lessons (100/yr
subscribers) vs Individualized (1000/yr).

~~~
sytelus
I'd suggest not doing tiers. Segmentation is repulsive. Why do I ever want to
be a bronze-level customer in your product world? It perhaps makes sense for
products that have monopolized or established firmly or where costs are truely
substantial as feature/utilization is increased. However, most likely is often
the side effect of throwing in the MBA part of your brain to squeeze in that
last bit of revenue juice without you having to improve the tech. In essence,
just luring in customers with "low starting from..." prices and then telling
them they are fools to expect those prices. I tend to distrust products that
rely on segmentation to inflate revenues and I think they are often ripe for
disruption. At least, for creative/educational products please don't tell your
customers that they are 3rd class citizens in your world unless they allow you
to completely squeeze them out.

~~~
stingraycharles
Different price tiers are a completely normal thing. Put another way, why
would I have to buy the premium package when all I want is much more simple?

Trying to make all your customers fit just one single pricing model is bad for
business.

------
hnick
It's of course easy to prove if you define the nebulous 'true fans' as 'fan
enough so that $X from each of them support me financially'.

I'm not against the idea but I know some creatives who operate in spaces where
asking $1k a year is a tough sell. I don't think many people are paying that
for knitting or gardening lessons even from the best but hey, maybe I'm wrong.

It makes sense for skills that can be monetised into a career. A cake
decorator I know said the risk is that you're training your replacements (but
she also said you might as well, or someone else will).

------
projectramo
The logical conclusion of this trend has already been reached: Adam Neumann
only needed 1 true fan.

------
mouzogu
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. I just find something hokey and fake about this idea of having 100 or
1000 true fans to support you. It's especially grating coming from a VC firm
whose basis for existence is growth, growth and more growth and then
capitalising on that growth in the most ruthless and efficient way possible.

~~~
paulpauper
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.

------
gadders
Apart from the practicality of the business process, I would say if your
content is in any way "edgy" or skirts close to the edge of the Overton Window
[1] I would try and self-host as much as possible. It would be all too easy
for a twitter-storm to get you kicked off social media, twitch, patreon,
cloudflare, stripe, paypal etc and then your business disappears overnight.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)

------
robinduckett
What I got from this post:

Network economy matches userland economy.

We should henceforth refer to billionaires as "whales".

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Is this what _trickle down to economy_ looks like?

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

------
tempthrow2222
Next up: 1 true fan.

~~~
Matheus28
Also called: your employer

~~~
anentropic
LOL yes, and in return you have to produce exactly what they ask for

~~~
kangnkodos
Sugar baby

------
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.

------
JackPoach
Is it just me or Passion Economy is a totally empty marketing BS term that
doesn't really mean anything?

------
hi5eyes
> Here’s how it works: A creator can cultivate a large, free audience on
> horizontal social platforms or through an email list. He or she can then
> convert some of those users to patrons and subscribers. The creator can then
> leverage some of those buyers to higher-value purchases, such as extra
> content, exclusive access, or direct interaction with the creator.

having a couple blogs/influencer pages with 20k+ followers are actually most
useful (IMO) when starting new brands on new platforms and slowly monetizing
(ala gary v's Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook as corny as he is it works)

> As the Passion Economy grows, more people are monetizing what they love

it's simply fun growing a brand/discovering new communities/creating
one/watching the engagement and metrics

------
scoutt
Maybe for a kid paying for school or saving it could be OK, but 100-fans-
income is quite _volatile_. And the end of the day these people are living out
from _tips_ , _pity_ and the _grace_ of 1st world country donors (I am saying
this while trying not to be controversial).

Most fans may be kids (under 25?) and thus _volatile_ , in the way that the
creator is off for 1 day and they'll replace him/her with whatever else is out
there, and that's 1 percent per lost fan. Or PayPal can decide that your niche
is not convenient to them and cut you out, or a fan loses interest, or...
countless reasons.

Very risky for making a living, IMO.

------
CryoLogic
We actually see a similar pattern on
[https://www.anim8.io](https://www.anim8.io)

A couple animators on our platform have extremely dedicated fans making up the
majority of the donation revenue.

------
claudiulodro
It looks to me what a16z has just discovered is a service business. A plumber
or an SAT tutor or an upholstery shop or whatever basically just needs 100
customers a year paying around $1000.

~~~
mcclux
Call me cynical, but to me the entire post just reads like an advertisment for
the companies in the $1000 column that they've invested in...

------
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.

~~~
scep12
I understand what you're getting at but I think the relationship with a
'creator' or artist feels much more personal than that of a business. There's
more to this than a simple repeating customer/business transaction.

------
johnchristopher
> 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.

~~~
JohnBooty
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 a neighborhood restaurant or food truck.
Most people in your town might visit once or twice per year, if at all. But
then you have your regular customers that you see a few times per week.
Somebody who stops by twice a week is spending 100x as somebody who visits
once a year.

Same with a department store. Most people buy nothing, some just want a pair
of socks, and some will drop $2,000 on a new business wardrobe.

Something worth considering: if your business is one that inspires passionate
fans, do you have any options for these folks to spend more? If not, are you
kinda leaving a bunch of money on the table and hamstringing your fledgling
business? Probably. Of course, this is something that takes ethical
consideration and good judgement.

~~~
nottorp
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.

~~~
naniwaduni
There's an upper limit to the amount that you can consume.

There is no upper limit on the amount you can pay.

~~~
ergl
Sure there is, unless you consider incurring infinite debt a positive thing.

------
bernardlunn
The real business that A16Z wants is aggregating millions of passion projects.
Must have been pitched by something like that

------
dclusin
I feel like these numbers are skewed by the sex workers on Patreon offering
subscription pornography. It'd be interesting to see if there's a difference
between the numbers adult content creators see vs. everyone else.

~~~
octocode
I don't think people who create adult content should be excluded. It's a valid
job which — like streaming, painting, or any other online content creation —
just isn't for everyone.

~~~
dclusin
Yeah I agree. I wasn’t suggesting that it is or should be illegal and banned.
I’m just saying that the economics for that business are so different than
every other creative and performing art that it really distorts what non-adult
content creators can expect to make from their patrons.

------
Plough_Jogger
This talk from MicroConf discusses a similar idea and the origins of the 1000
true fans allegory:
[https://youtu.be/otbnC2zE2rw?t=273](https://youtu.be/otbnC2zE2rw?t=273)

------
HoustonRefugee
I would like to see some stats from youtube and other platforms actually
auditing those sub counts. I really have a hard time believing some youtube
channels actually have 10,000 subs, let alone a million. While I agree with
the article and the tier system, patreon is basically an e-begging platform. I
understand that probably isn't popular to say but that is how I see it.

~~~
el_cujo
>patreon is basically an e-begging platform

This is more true for some people than others. A decent number of YouTubers I
know have their patreons set up to only charge customers after they put out a
video, so if several months go by without any new content they aren't just
pulling a salary from patrons. This model is only really relevant to YouTubers
who put effort into fewer videos released farther apart, rather than those
with weekly or even daily releases of vlog content, but still it feels like a
fair way of doing things where they are essentially being paid for releasing
something and not like begging.

Contrast this with some people I see on twitter who have a patreon... just for
tweeting? Occasionally there is a spin put on it about being a minority or
disabled and taking donations, but this definitely feels much more like
e-begging, even though I guess you could try and make the argument that tweets
are just as valid "content" as youtube videos.

------
sebastianconcpt
I do now think 1K/year is something that will sustain in time. Passion wears
out.

------
haileris
Just watched a MicroConf talk mentioned "1000 fan" theory.

~~~
Plough_Jogger
This talk covers the origin & debunks the premise of 1000 fans:
[https://youtu.be/otbnC2zE2rw?t=273](https://youtu.be/otbnC2zE2rw?t=273)

------
the_watcher
This thesis seems like 1000 True Fans hired patio11.

~~~
jv22222
I was wondering if it was written by patio11. It’s just like his writing
style.

~~~
WA
What? Not at all imho. He writes very different. He likes to construct more
complex sentences. This reads like your average journalist, which is okay, but
not particular distinguishable.

~~~
the_watcher
Yea I don't think the writing style is patio11 at all. The thesis of,
effectively, "charge more", however, is.

------
esch89
I've seen this work before.

------
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".

------
dvanduzer
$ whois a1.6z.com

------
acd10j
Taking this to extreme :) 100 True Fans ? try 1 Internet has enabled
visibility so you need to only find one true fan who is willing to sponsor you
100,000 per year.

~~~
oefrha
Aka your employer.

~~~
anonytrary
Funny, but this is not wrong either. It turns out anyone who has a good job is
already building something one entity really wants -- themselves. The only
difference is that they pay with their time.

------
6510
In my mind the article reduces to: Paywalls are cool, we need moar of them.

------
peter_d_sherman
Brilliant!

------
fxtentacle
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.

~~~
numlock86
TL;DR (1000 * 100) == (100 * 1000)

------
marknadal
The _Future_ of the _Internet_ , a post-scarce good, is not going to be a
Profit Model Powered by The Extraction Economy.

It needs a fundamentally different economic model, that measures the _gain_ in
value added to the network, not the transaction (rebalance, distribution,
etc.) of it: [http://free.eco](http://free.eco) .

~~~
dragonwriter
> a post-scarce good

There is no such thing.

------
dav43
God these guys live in a bubble

~~~
dang
" _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](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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

~~~
kaybe
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.

~~~
nottorp
Well let me expand it again (i have another comment saying the same thing):

HN readers are for the most part highly paid tech workers. Even in the US,
tell someone who makes 30k/year that you spend 1K/year on someone's Patreon
and he'll think you're crazy... or spit in your face.

~~~
dang
> HN readers are for the most part highly paid tech workers

That's a false assumption. HN is much larger than you think, with people all
over the US and all over the world. It has highly paid workers, lowly paid
workers, people who don't need to work, and people who need to but can't find
any.

We tend to make assumptions like "for the most part" based on the internal
image when our pre-existing conditions meet a handful of striking data
points—say the first 3 or so. And then we don't change it. But which data
points happen to strike us are actually a function of our pre-existing
conditions also. There are many other data points.

------
bnonim
Here is a model for the author:

give money to things not to people, people should have enough to live. Food,
safe place to stay etc.

i dont want to pay for people to become rich just necause he/she produced a
thing I enjoyed.. I dont have to be responsible for artists, creaters being
alive, safe etc. I am just a person expects same comfort as creater... creater
might have a chance to accomplish his/her passion position in life but most of
us should/must do the ugly things... that doesnt mean that people create
something are always good at what they do... actually they are not most of the
time...

prize tag is for goods not for people...

