Kevin Kelly speaks in his blog entry “1000 True Fans” among other things about getting $100.000 per year through 1000 true fans. He also mentions that I only need 1 true fan per day for getting 1000 in three years. But in my opinion it’s not easy to get every day a real true fan, who would buy everything from me. As an average unknown person, it will be very hard to handle that issue. Maybe, I need an extraordinary idea or be exceptionally talented. Another possibility would be to have some special skills. If not, I could order a manager, who could help me for this aim. But that would cost a lot of money. From every point of view, I always need “anything” for solving the approach to get 1000 true fans. In my mind, it’s very difficult to reach this long tail phenomenon without any of those abilities or external help. But what do you think? Can really everybody gets 1000 true fans, no matter which money, skills or talent the person has?
I don't think the point is that anyone can get 1000 fans but that anyone who is creative and has a plan and is willing to work on it can. Here's another link along with a bit of a critique:
ReplyDeletehttp://whatever.scalzi.com/2008/03/12/the-nagging-details-about-1000-true-fans/
Quote: "Again: it’s not impossible to get 1,000 “true fans.” It can be done. The problem is that Kevin Kelly, in his enthusiasm, wants to make it seem that getting 1,000 people to give you $100 is no great trick. What I am telling you is that it actually is — it’s a pretty damn neat trick, in point of fact. Even if you manage it, the financial reward is not likely to be anything close to what you had hoped for, nor will it likely be as permanent as Kelly seems to imply."
I believe Grace has stated the typical outcome for this wonderful theory, "the financial reward is not likely to be anything close to what you had hoped for, nor will it likely be as permanent as Kelly seems to imply."
ReplyDeleteThe mention of investing one's time has not come up. Let's look at the example from Jonathan Coulton’s blog (https://elearn.memphis.edu/d2l/lms/content/viewer/view.d2l?tId=19342557&ou=2926432). Coulton must spend at least five hours a day three days a week to create and maintain his blog. Frequency and content keep his 5,000 + true fans continuously coming back for more (or at least right now they are). In addition, he must also employ an intense marketing strategy to increase the amount of fans each year with outside media sources and stay current on technology and outreach in his industry. This is not an all inclusive summary, but you get the idea. Going back to our 1,000 true fans at $100 per year each providing $100,000 annual income less 27% taxes, fixed and variable expenses, other non calculated costs, etc. –then, adding in the declining financial stability of our fans income in today’s struggling economy. The average consumer will considerably cut entertainment expenses over the next few years. If we consider Coulton’s labor and then divide by his income –is this really a considerable amount of money? My guess is he works 60-70 hours a week to keep the fan level high. This is not a sustainable level for most, but for some it is completely doable. The upside, if you love what you do….does it matter?
Shannon,
ReplyDeleteI think your last sentence is really the point. For Coulton, the choice was between working 60-70 hours a week writing software, which he hated, or working 60-70 hours a week writing and performing music, which he loved. So he took the chance on doing something he loved, but definitely, he has to work at it. And you have to work not only to get the fans, but as you say, to keep them.
Also, to respond to your question Daniel, I think there is *always* a certain amount of luck in any kind of entertainment or artistic endeavor. History is littered with examples of artists who only received appreciation *after* they were dead. So there are no guarantees, certainly.