How To Attract, Keep, and Get Paid By Your 1,000 True Fans
A simple model for creators, inspired by Kevin Kelly’s idea
There are a bunch of ways to start doing what you love. You can quit your job and start cooking and blogging about it. Or, you can stay at your job and start making cat videos as a side hustle.
Whatever you decide to do, if you’re creative (which you are), you must realize this simple truth: You don’t need to have a lot of followers to become successful.
You only need 1,000.
1,000 True Fans
This idea was first proposed by Kevin Kelly (founder of Wired magazine and arguably one of the most interesting humans alive) in a blog post back in 2008.
The idea is simple: If you’re a creative (i.e. you’re making things), 1,000' true fans is all you need.
There are three underlying assumptions behind this idea.
Assumption 1: A ‘true fan’ is somebody who trusts you to the point of spending $50-$100 per year.
Assumption 2: You, the creator, should be able to produce a value of $50–$100 per year, whether it’s $50–$100 worth of songs, videos, blog posts, or books.
Assumption 3: You don’t disappoint your fans, and they stay with you forever.
If these three hold in place, the idea works. You get the following economic model:
- You have 1,000 true fans.
- You produce $50–$100 worth of creations per year.
- 1,000 x $50-$100 = you’re making $50,000-$100,000, which is a fair living to most folks.
Even though this sounds like a get-rich-quick scheme, it’s really a get-a-good-living-slowly model, which anyone can replicate.
There are three questions, though, that any creative should answer:
How do I generate 1,000 true fans?
How do I generate $50–$100 of value per year?
How do I make my fans true forever?
‘How Do I Generate 1,000 True Fans?’
A ‘true fan’ is not the same as a ‘fan.’
A fan is someone who likes you, whereas a ‘true fan’ is someone who loves you. A fan is someone who might buy your Kindle book; a ‘true fan’ is someone who would drive 20 miles to get your signed paperback.
A ‘true fan’ is someone who is loyal to you as a creator and will consume and buy anything you produce, even if it requires them making extra steps.
How many people do you have in your life who you’re that loyal to? I bet not many.
A true fan is a zealous advocate of your work and your brand. If you focus on bringing them in, you’ll have marketing leverage.
If you think about it from a marketing standpoint, focusing on generating a ‘true fan’ is the only thing that makes sense. True fans have a ripple effect: they will bring you other fans with their enthusiasm.
You generate true fans by:
- By building credibility, trust, and reputation.
- By showing up every single day with something valuable — the way you want other people to show up for you.
- By caring.
- By giving stuff out for free — whether it’s your music album, books, or genius ideas. The more you give out for free, the more leverage you’ve got as a creator. And if your stuff is valuable, you’ll make true fans.
‘How Do I Generate $50–$100 of Value Per Year?’
Value is subjective. You might price your eBook at $50 as a newbie writer while James Altucher prices his national bestsellers for $1.19.
Art (and that’s precisely what you’re creating) is subjective because it’s art. Once you’ve got a pricing mechanism, art ceases to be art and becomes a transaction.
With that said, generating $50–$100 of value per year requires two things:
Confidence
If you don’t think you’re worth making $50,000–$100,000 from something you love, neither will anybody else. You not only have to create, but you’ll also have to promote your art.
Confidence is about not thinking about writing an eBook from your blog posts, but doing so. It’s about taking the risk of getting your work out there and being prepared to be judged. It’s about breaking through resistance that’s telling you you’re not good enough.
It’s what Seth Godin calls shipping. Artists don’t talk. They ship.
Understanding your output level
How much art do you have in you? Some people can write one blog post every day (hello there), while others can only write once a month. There’s no right and wrong, and anyway, art is about creating rules, not following them.
How much are you able to produce? You’ve got to be honest with yourself when you answer that. And then stick to it, like a train following a schedule. You can’t be late.
‘How Do I Make My Fans True Forever?’
Once you’ve figured out how to generate ‘true fans’ and how to produce $50–$100 worth of value per year, the last question we need to answer is how do you make them stay? Generating fans and content is one thing.
But how do you make sure that these fans stay ‘true,’ no matter what?
- You need a ‘home.’ An asset where these fans can live. It can be an email newsletter (which is an excellent way to aggregate attention, by the way), or a blog with all of your followers on it. You need someplace where your fans will ‘live.’
- Once you have a ‘home,’ you’ll need to separate true fans from not-so-true ones. This one is important. True fans want to be recognized as ‘true fans.’ They want to be called that. You can either do it on Patreon by dividing the tiers, or you can go the way most blogs do it today: by creating a subscription-based paid content, like Farnam St.’s Learning Community for $129/year.
- You’ll need to give gifts. Seth Godin writes, “Art is a gift that changes the recipient.” Your job as an artist is to give gifts. To surprise. To go the extra mile. To do something that will make your true fan say, ‘Wow!’ That’s how they stay ‘true.’
Whatever you do, realize that all of this is not rocket science. If it sounds too good to be true, it’s not.
The internet created an opportunity that has never been there before: people with like-minded interests can unite into communities and consume content.
Your job as a creator is to create a community, a tribe of people who think like you. And the good news is that to dedicate your life to it, you only need 1,000 members.
