Can You Find Your 1000 True Fans?
They Will Provide a Living
In 2008 Kevin Kelly wrote an essay on his blog. The essay was based on the premise that if you found 1,000 true fans, you could earn a reasonable living off of those fans. He defined a true fan as someone who was so committed to your work they would provide you with $100 worth of profit every year. His math would give you $100,000 income each year. Not a bad base.
The creative would need to connect with and communicate directly with those true fans. Would need to build community to keep their enthusiasm as brand evangelists stoked. Those true fans would then spread the word to regular fans who would also buy products and you’d grow even more.
He’s talking about building a brand on the long tail. The big tech companies like Amazon realized early on that the sales of all the low selling products combined equalled the total sales of the top sellers. When the sales were displayed graphically, the tail of low selling products were equal to the head of the top sellers.
It’s why algorithms and discovery engines were programed into existence. Not finding a way to churn up products in the low selling part of the graph was leaving money on the table. A lot of money.
