[Classic](https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/) from Kevin Kelly. If you have 1000 true fans, each of which will "buy everything you sell", or pay $100, you'll make a living. You don't need stardom. Another way to think about it: are there 1000 people who would pay a day's worth of labor to you? That should be enough. Indie software is about this. SMBs are about this. Niche creators are about this. Generally all things "indie" are about this. #published 2025-03-13 ---- # 1,000 True Fans  ## Metadata - Author: [[KEVIN KELLY]] - Full Title: 1,000 True Fans - Category: #articles - URL: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ ## Highlights - Here’s how the math works. 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. That is easier to do in some arts and businesses than others, but it is a good creative challenge in every area because it is always easier and better to give your existing customers more, than it is to find new fans. Second, you must have a direct relationship with your fans. That is, they must pay you directly. You get to keep all of their support, unlike the small percent of their fees you might get from a music label, publisher, studio, retailer, or other intermediate. If you keep the full $100 of each true fan, then you need only 1,000 of them to earn $100,000 per year. That’s a living for most folks. - With the advent of ubiquitous peer-to-peer communication and payment systems — also known as the web today — everyone has access to excellent tools that allow anyone to sell directly to anyone else in the world. So a creator in Bend, Oregon can sell — and deliver — a song to someone in Katmandu, Nepal as easily as a New York record label (maybe even more easily). This 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. - One of the many new innovations serving the true fan creator is crowdfunding. - The takeaway: 1,000 true fans is an alternative path to success other than stardom. Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks of platinum bestseller hits, blockbusters, and celebrity status, you can aim for direct connection with a thousand true fans. On your way, no matter how many fans you actually succeed in gaining, you’ll be surrounded not by faddish infatuation, but by genuine and true appreciation. It’s a much saner destiny to hope for. And you are much more likely to actually arrive there. - A fundamental virtue of a peer-to-peer network (like the web) is that the most obscure node is only one click away from the most popular node. In other words the most obscure under-selling book, song, or idea, is only one click away from the best selling book, song or idea. - Another way to calculate the support of a true fan, is to aim to get one day’s wages per year from them. Can you excite or please them sufficient to earn one day’s labor? That’s a high bar, but not impossible for 1,000 people world wide.