If you are a creator on the internet, then you would have definitely game approach the concept of thousand true fans. I first read about it on Kevin Kelly's blog and it blew me away. And from then, there have been various versions of this concept. The basic concept is very simple.
For earning a living on the internet as a creator, as an artist, you don't need millions of people to follow you or to back you. You only need thousand true fans. And how do you define the true fans?
They are different from the fans. These people are fans who follow you, who make sure they have the notification on, and they are ready to buy at least once a year from you a high ticketed product from you.
For example, maybe you're a painter and you paint, okay? And you keep on painting and giving the updates to your fans every month, every week. And every year you put out your painting, thousand paintings for sale for $100 each. And these thousand fans, true fans of yours, buy the painting. All your thousand paintings for $100 is gone. So essentially you make $100,000 per year, which is a respectable income.
So the idea is very simple. When you see the internet, you go on YouTube and see people earning money, but most of them have a million subscribers or a hundred K subscribers.
And you think, okay, maybe it's a very hard game and therefore you might not reach there. But essentially what you need to focus on is the people who are willing to back you up, to buy products from you, buy services from you, and those are your true fans and you need to focus on that. And if you can gather thousand and that number is really vague, okay?
If you have a very high ticketed price, maybe $1,000 or $10,000, you might need less true fans, or if you're selling a $5 e-book, you might need more true fans. That is depending upon what you are selling. And at what frequency? And that way you can define your true fans.
And when you think about the journey in this way, and if it can gather maybe only 100 true fans in a year, in 10 years, it would be a successful person on the internet, and you can keep doing it forever. So that's the idea of a true fan.
So if you are an in-creator, entertainer, anyone on the internet, create your art, create anything, but don't chase the vanity numbers, okay?
From the day one, you can have something called a free service, free offering from you and always have an upgrade of something which you're selling at a premium.
And if your free product is service is good enough, a percentage of the people will convert to the paid product, and those are the true fans. And you need to aim to increase that to a number which is comfortable for you.
And by doing this, you might not become famous or a big name in the industry or on the New York Times front page. And that is not the goal either.
The goal is to have a created journey where you can replace your job so you can be creative for your own life 24/7.
So go and find your 1000 true fans for yourself.