> 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.
>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.
It used to be hard to find those 7,000 people but it's now much easier with the internet. Niche forums, long tail Google search, FB groups, local meetup groups, Twitter, etc... Seth Godin talks about showing up every day and share your (niche) ideas. The internet is full of niche topics/interests. It takes time but it's possible.
>No, they are the ones most empowered to connect with those thousand true fans. They have resources and global reach.
Global brands definitely have the reach but are people really listening. Are those really true fans? If they need to cater to not just those 1,000 but the rest of the 999, 000, the message gets diluted. It's not just about reaching those people but to create resonance with them.
>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.
Go after people who'd like to BOTH give you their attention AND are interested in what you're offering. You can do that on the internet if you keep showing up and provide value to them. That personal relationship can be built on the internet even if you never meet them in person.
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.
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.
I watch many youtube channels with 100Ks of subscribers. Those creators are not out there spending resources getting an audience and those audiences are not coming from personal connections - the platforms are facilitating the connection.
Re : how "attempting to work in the art world" works : this is a very interesting subject/discussion - at what point is someone regularly publishing entertaining youtube videos about small engine repair "working in the art world"? When they get enough income to quit their day job or some lower bar - I dunno - both ? neither / never?
Re stardom: what you're saying is 1000 true fans != total number of fans/casual followers. Agreed.
> To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.
So, I would argue that creating a successful YouTube channel is almost the opposite of taking the "make 1000 true fans" path to success. YouTube promotes content in ways that causes a massive block of users -- millions, often -- to be casually exposed to a given video or channel. And hopefully some of them subscribe, watch ads, and maybe sign up for the creator's Patreon or something. But this isn't what Kelly describes.
Blasting your work out to millions in the hopes that thousands become "true fans" is a very well-known and well-worn path to success. And, frankly, still a hard one. Unless you happen to get YouTube's algorithm or HBO or Capitol Records to pick you up and give your work a massive promotional boost. And even then I suspect it's tough.
hmm... so, yeah, nothing about 1000 true fans theory points to it being an easy path. Making a living as some sort of creator is hard. The platforms & "the internet (tm)" just provide a plausible access to those fans vs old-media mechanisms.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For reference YT pay is vastly superior for actually marketable subjects. This automobile channel for example 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.
> 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.