Article: 1000 true fans - Kevin Kelly


A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce.

You need to meet two criteria.
First, you have to create enough each year that you can earn, on average, $100 profit from each true fan.

Second, you must have a direct relationship with your fans.

The number 1,000 is not absolute. Its significance is in its rough order of magnitude — three orders less than a million.

Another way to calculate the support of a true fan, is to aim to get one day’s wages per year from them.

focus on the super fans

direct relationship with customers

new technology permits creators to maintain relationships, so that the customer can become a fan, and so that the creator keeps the total amount of payment, which reduces the number of fans needed.

the total sales of *all* the lowest selling obscure items would equal or in some cases exceed the sales of the few best selling items


Every thing made, or thought of, can interest at least one person in a million

that’s potentially 7,000 people

the long tail is wide open to you

crowdfunding

cultivating a thousand true fans is time consuming, sometimes nerve racking, and not for everyone.

not a binary choice





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