True Fans

Reaching 1,000 subscribers who want to buy me coffee

Before Patreon, Indiegogo, most of the social media blitz and the very idea of an influencer, Kevin Kelly outlined a business model for creative artists called “1,000 True Fans.” The central tenet was that if you could produce enough content to have true, loyal, consumptive fans spend $100 a year with you, then you could earn de minimus six figures approximately a living wage. Sitting at the hyperbolic saddle point between historical models for financing artists — millions of dollars in patronage or millions of fans buying your latest release — it built on the popularity of the “long tail” of content monetization themes in 2008.

I keep coming back to the kilo-fan idea, both because I’m an unabashed Kevin Kelly fan boy and because it reflects three themes on which this newsletter is based: non-substitution, ideas as networks (another Kelly-ism), and self-curating, inclusive communities. My unwritten (but thought very loudly) goal for Creating Space is to reach 1,000 true fans, people who would pay the equivalent of an iced fancy coffee drink a month to find value in my musings. My rough economics imply I’ll need about 5,000 total subscribers, but balanced against my initial social media footprint and the power of referral networks it’s a fair goal for Year One of Post Enterprise Life.

The long tail’s key wag was that the “head” of the supply curve — the best selling authors and million fan touring artists — benefitted from existing marketing and distribution structure, giving rise to “best sellers” and “megastars.” The future kilo-watt and kilo-follower creators in the longer tail would aggregate the democratization of access to content and corresponding reduction in the frictional costs of e-commerce. Those next few sigma down the distribution curve would find equal purchase in the market, albeit with a bit more effort to match buyer and seller. Rather than a million copies of the ten best selling albums, it would be a 100,000 artists deserving wider recognition selling 100 units each for the same gross revenue. The problem is that 100 units — or worse, 100 streaming music listens — isn’t enough to fund a even basic website let alone pay for groceries.

I believe in the 1,000 true fan model - I’ve seen it fund comic creators and sci-fi authors whose work I adore, and on a slightly larger stage it has funded prog rock projects from some of my favorite 1970s bands who don’t have the audience to sell out a classic rock 401(k) tour.

So why should it work for Creating Space?