
1,000 True Fans (2008) - aaronbrethorst
http://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
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egypturnash
An oldie but a goodie.

As a creator who is about halfway to building her thousand true fans, I gotta
say that Kickstarter and Patreon have both made it a hell of a lot easier to
survive on the way to pumping out enough product to get $100 every year from
each True Fan. Patreon especially.

~~~
oddgoo
Could I ask what do you do?

~~~
luxpir
Maybe they are too polite to say, but I had a quick look at the profile and
followed some links to the home page[0] and Patreon page[1]. Also really
enjoyed reading the first chapter of Decrypting Rita!

Best of luck with your work.

[0] - [http://egypt.urnash.com/](http://egypt.urnash.com/) [1] -
[https://www.patreon.com/egypturnash?ty=h](https://www.patreon.com/egypturnash?ty=h)

~~~
egypturnash
Actually I'm just terrible at coming back to discussions here to see that
people have replied to my comments. _grin_ Thanks for picking up the slack on
that question; glad you enjoyed the comic!

Right now I'm mostly mooning about with a bad case of seasonal depression, and
sssslllloooowwwwllllyyyy working on the beginning of my next two comics. And
the kickstarter for the last volume of Rita.

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hyperpallium
The threshold of this obsessive "True Fan" is too high; having even one such
fan would be an incredible achievement.

Though the underlying idea is sound: you don't need to be a mainstream star to
make a living. You just need to be loved enough, valuable enough to enough
people. You needn't to appeal to everyone. Instead, find Your People, find
your niche.

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mouzogu
I've heard this same concept before and it comes across to me as a bit of a
fallacy. I may have misunderstood the idea but to me the argument misses the
point. In order to have 1000 true fans, how many "regular" fans must one have?

The article even says, "ONLY" 1,000 true fans which seems to be a way of
making the idea within reach of the everyday layman/procastinating
wantrepreuner.

I would argue that to get 1,000 true fans your work has to be brilliant to a
point of gaining a kind of religious zeal within a small number of a much
larger audience.

This is just my opinion though.

~~~
lmm
As an animé fan I was surprised how low the "Manabi Line" is. Less than 3000
sales is about break-even, and that's for a production that was the work of
many people (the Japanese model is (generalizing broadly) to sell more
expensive products to dedicated fans; CDs can be around $30 (but are often
"deluxe" versions with lots of special features) and in the case of animé a
single DVD can be $60 and a series will be spread across 4 or more volumes).

So I think there is a sustainable business model where, rather than trying to
go mass-market, you sell a specialized product to a much smaller number of
very dedicated fans.

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roberthahn
This is an excellent model for building any lifestyle business, not just for
artists.

If you knew how much money your favorite customers made, and asked for just
one day of their income to support you, it becomes trivially easy to work out
a definition of sustainability for your business.

For SAAS businesses, the number of "true fans" that are therefore required
could be ridiculously low. 100? Maybe 10!

