[Proziam]

IIRC the 1k true fans idea was walked back by its original author after they got feedback from industry folks describing how the model was basically impossible to implement in the real world.

This holds 100% true to my experience in influencer marketing and esports. Monetizing fans is really hard on passion alone. You need to create valuable calls to action and continuously produce content in order to maintain their attention. Once you 'lose' a fan (which only means losing their emotional focus, even temporarily) you often can't monetize them at all without significant re-activation effort. [0]Demonstrating this, large influencers lose extraordinary sums of money if they stop producing content for short windows of time.

This is why using influencers in marketing requires genuine strategy, and is the likely culprit behind so much 'hate' for influencer marketing.

[0] https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/ninja-reveals-shocking...

[aj-4]

I don't think Ninja is a particularly good example because (1) he is operating at a scale where the normal rules don't apply (2) his rise was equally fast and volatile (3) twitch requires a constant presence more than other content platforms.

Furthermore I read your take, and maybe I'm wrong, as a 1k "fans" and not 1k "true fans"

The "true fans" model is a subset within the larger audience demographic -- they don't care if you stop producing for a while, need their short attention spans pandered too, or the like, this is what makes them "true" fans.

maybe your advice changed their life, or they really resonate with you for some personal reasons -- and again this would only be a sub-set of a creator's total fan base.

At least this is my interpretation of the concept.

[krab]

True fans or true Scotsmen? ;-)

[Proziam]

Ninja is the most visible example, but the same pattern holds true at virtually any audience size (within the range of what is typically monetizable). This pattern is actually more extreme on platforms like Patreon because the audience is expecting something for their money. They are closer to a customer than a typical viewer.

The distinction between a 'true' fan and just a 'fan' is a vague one. If a creator has a total audience size of 1 million, you can bet that less than 1% of them are giving the creator any amount of money, even 1 dollar. Does that 1% count as their true fans? The folks with thousands of paying subscribers, or tens of thousands, have audience sizes to match.

Given that less than 1% pay anything, what percent of those do you think pay at least 20x the normal amount ($5 -> 100$)? Many creators make this somewhat visible by highlighting their contributors and the air is quite thin.

To make a long story short, I disagree with the concept because it paints a very rosy picture of the situation and doesn't match reality much, if at all. If you had 1,000 'true' fans you'd probably end up with $2,000 a month after taxes/platform fees/expenses. And of course, that assumes that you're able to consistently monetize through a subscription platform. If you had to sell individual products to get there it would be even worse.

[michaelt]

Right, but while ninja might have lost $140,000 by going two days without streaming, almost none of the youtube channels I support on patreon are producing a video daily. Much easier to take two days off if you're only producing one or two videos a week!

[Proziam]

On that front, I totally agree. Some platforms are far easier to manage an acceptable work-life balance than others. Unfortunately, a month off due to illness would still result in a massive loss of income which could take a long time to rebuild. The financial situations many creators put themselves in scare me, to be honest.

[quaunaut]

Isn't this largely what Patreon is, though? And there's a lot of people who are doing surprisingly well off of Patreon despite low subscriber counts.

I'd think the trick is to find the right niche- if you're too generic, you're up against the big personalities.

[Proziam]

Patreon is quite a bit of work and requires constant upkeep to maintain a steady income flow. It's really no different from Twitch subscriptions in that regard. It does a better job of monetizing primarily because of the easily customized tiers, and secondarily because the platform specifically caters to paid content rather than free.

That said, many of patreon's most financially successful users are producing content that isn't suitable for platforms like Twitch and Youtube.

[redis_mlc]

I commented in detail on this a few months ago ...

What Proziam wrote is a little off, at least as far as music goes.

Hundreds of musicians/music vloggers are working full-time from Patreon/Adsense once they exceed 100,000 Youtube subscribers and upload weekly/biweekly and have 100+ Patrons.

Patreon produces a reliable income stream (for rent, etc.) while Adsense fluctuates but adds up ($1,000 - $5,000/million views typically.)

What I have heard with Twitch is that you need to be online continuously or the audience moves on.

> IIRC the 1k true fans idea was walked back by its original author

That was from a time decades ago when customer acquisition was expensive. With Youtube/Adsense it's not that hard, and one could experiment with Facebook targeting.

And any time somebody uses the phrase "walked back", I've found the author didn't have a nuanced understanding of the subject.

[Proziam]

100 Patrons, even if they contribute well above average, say $25 (after platform fees/expenses/taxes), is still only $2,500 per month. There are some places in the US where that wouldn't be liveable, let alone offer enough stability for a person to enjoy a stable lifestyle. Of course, if you live in a low cost of living area you can make things fly that otherwise wouldn't. But even with that consideration in mind, how many places could you live a 'normal' life on 30k?

I've worked with musicians as well, including some with global recognition and (many) millions of views and song plays. From what I've seen, turning 100k Youtube subscribers into 100k income per year is far from the norm. Plenty of creators in that size bracket quit, suggesting it's not particularly sustainable.

That said, if you can, I'd love to get some more insight into the creators you feel are getting the most out of their effort, and how they're achieving their results!

[redis_mlc]

I'll go into some more detail so people can picture how it works in 2020 better.

100k subscribers is the gateway to really making it on YT.

Above that you start going self-viral, so some artists have snowballed very fast (in months) from 100k to 300k+. It's like they're on YT, but their channel is "their own private island" and takes on a life of its own.

1) US artists will need to live at home (or in a van) or be very frugal to make it with the numbers I provided - but it's doable, and they will get a lot of free gear.

And they'll be full-time musicians, which is living the dream for most.

However, low-COL artists can (and do) earn the average local salary, plus free gear. So they have it all figured out.

2) US (and European) musicians will have a hard time touring as the bandleader on that income, since it's pay-to-play now for non-headliners in the US, typically $500 per show, and often T-shirt sales are restricted (see Sarah Longfield's interviews for the details.)

So that means keep uploading on Patreon/YT, or have your sponsors/fans in each city put you up.

3) "Be your own label.", "Own your publishing.", etc.

The important thing to realize is that there is no label deal available for new musicians (the exception would be super-strong writers) in 2020, and even if you signed one, advances have to be repaid. And oh ya, "360 deals" go after your Patreon and YT/Adsense, publishing and show revenue now - just say no.

So go whole hog on Patreon/YT/Adsense (ie. be your own label) because it's not like there is another funding option for most people, aside from a few guys making it as contract performers (ie. paying their dues) for regional touring bands.

See Rhett Shull's YT channel to learn more about that - he's a road dog contract hired gun guitarist with a knack for YT vlogging. Hats off, man, and congrats on the 100+k subs!

Also see Yvette Young's (from San Jose) meteoric rise - she just got an Ibanez signature guitar in her 20's!

[LanceH]

Twitch counts it as a subscription if you use the free "subscription" from Amazon Prime. The thing is that it has to be manually applied every month. So if he's off for a couple days, very few people will resubscribe if they're not on his channel -- because he's off. It's not like 40k cancelled a subscription at once, their gift ran out and most re-upped as soon as he was back on a couple days later.

[nangz]

Yep, I subscribe to a couple of podcast patreons.. for $5 a month for 5-10 hours of good content it's a no-brainer... Patreon.com/redscare It's basically just 2 women mouthing off, it's funny though. They do well out of it.

[chongli]

It really is a buyer’s market in the attention economy. Viewers are fickle and it’s easy to jump ship if your preferred personality goes in a different direction.

Same goes for TV and video games. There’s just so much stuff being made constantly. It’s trivial for viewers/players to switch to something else.

[Reedx]

Yeah, plus you have to contend with power laws. Most sales or attention is concentrated in the top ~10 and then drops off rapidly with a long skinny tail. You see this with the top selling books, apps, movies, games and things like Twitter followers as well.

Twitch viewership[1] is a realtime example showing this kind of distribution. The top handful always dominate.

1. https://www.twitch.tv/directory

[Proziam]

Twitch is an extremely imbalanced platform in regard to discoverability. Their model is to 'make the big bigger' and monetize a narrow field of creators well, rather than monetize a larger pool of creators. There are a number of valid criticisms of the platform, but this one is the most painful for new creators to contend with by a wide margin.

It also sucks for advertisers looking to work directly with those creators because it narrows the field of creators large enough to work with. Plus it inflates their viewership with users that may be less suitable for targeting.

[GuiA]

It’s a specialist’s market. Want to sell an FPS? Good luck getting noticed. Want to make games that only cater to chess players who are also into LISP programming? With a bit of work you can totally carve a niche for yourself.

[JohnBooty]

    You need to create valuable calls to action and
    continuously produce content in order to maintain 
    their attention.

Recurring subscription models help with this, as "letting the subscription continue" then becomes the easiest thing to do.

Building a community helps retain people as well. This is easier said than done, since this aspect alone does require some effort and constant monitoring. Simplest examples of this would be subscriber-only Discord servers and/or webforums.

There are moral considerations to each of those strategies, of course. Canceling a recurring subscription shouldn't involve jumping through hoops. And "ostracizing/shunning lapsed members" is more or less a How To Run A Cult For Dummies tactic, so ask yourself if your subscribers-only community is operating like that.

[oska]

> Monetizing fans is really hard on passion alone.

> ... you often can't monetize them at all without significant re-activation effort

I find talk of monetising people extremely off-putting. Also (not meant as a personal attack), I do not want to be around or associate with people who talk like this.

[Proziam]

What would you prefer it to be called? We can change the words around to suit our social sensibilities but at the end of the day, we're still talking about convincing people to spend some money. Nobody bats an eye if you ask for more money from your boss, but many people are under a lot of pressure not to try to be compensated fairly for consumer-facing work.

Making good content consistently is hard work, I personally have no moral qualms about a creator trying to make a living doing it.

[oska]

I think my main issue is the shift in focus away from a transaction (people paying for a product or service) to reducing people to simply being sources of money.

Also, the idea that fans or admirers should be converted into people who pay you money. My concept of a service like Patreon is that it's a way for people to give you money if they (independently) want to, rather than being pushed or cajoled to do so.

[gowld]

The walkbalk was discussed on HN this week, which is almost certainly why this a18z blog post was written.