These regular fans may buy your creations occasionally, or may have bought only once. Think of concentric circles with true fans at the center and a wider circle of regular fans around them. While the support of a thousand true fans may be sufficient for a living, for every single true fan, you might have two or three regular fans. Can you excite or please them sufficient to earn one day’s labor? That’s a high bar, but not impossible for 1,000 people world wide.Īnd of course, not every fan will be super. But the good news is that the increase in the size of your true-fan base is geometric and linear in proportion to the size of the team if you increase the team by 33% you only need to increase your fan base by 33%.Īnother way to calculate the support of a true fan, is to aim to get one day’s wages per year from them. For a team, you need to multiply further. Or if you are a duet, or have a partner, then you need to multiply by 2 to get 2,000 fans. (Likewise if you can sell $200 per year, you need only 500 true fans.) Or you may need only $75K per year to live on, so you adjust downward. If you are able to only earn $50 per year per true fan, then you need 2,000. The actual number has to be adjusted for each person. Its significance is in its rough order of magnitude - three orders less than a million. If you added one new true fan per day, it’d only take a few years to gain a thousand. You might even be able to remember a thousand names. Millions of paying fans is not a realistic goal to shoot for, especially when you are starting out. That’s a living for most folks.Ī thousand customers is a whole lot more feasible to aim for than a million fans. If you keep the full $100 of each true fan, then you need only 1,000 of them to earn $100,000 per year. You get to keep all of their support, unlike the small percent of their fees you might get from a music label, publisher, studio, retailer, or other intermediate. Second, you must have a direct relationship with your fans. That is easier to do in some arts and businesses than others, but it is a good creative challenge in every area because it is always easier and better to give your existing customers more, than it is to find new fans. First, you have to create enough each year that you can earn, on average, $100 profit from each true fan. If you have roughly a thousand of true fans like this (also known as super fans), you can make a living - if you are content to make a living but not a fortune. These diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing they will buy the hardback and paperback and audible versions of your book they will purchase your next figurine sight unseen they will pay for the “best-of” DVD version of your free youtube channel they will come to your chef’s table once a month. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.Ī true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. If you still want to read the much longer original 2008 essay, you can get it after the end of this version. I believe the 1,000 True Fans concept will be useful to anyone making things, or making things happen. This revisited essay appears in Tim Ferriss’ new book, Tools of Titans. I recently rewrote it to convey the core ideas, minus out-of-date details. This is an edited, updated version of an essay I wrote in 2008 when this now popular idea was embryonic and ragged. Maximum Philanthropy: Encouraging Giving in Asia.The Bridge Between Atoms and Bits: 2D Code.The Near-Death Experience of Dying in a Game.Evolution and Ontogeny of Game Characters.
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