Motivated With "1000 True Fans" Concept

byToonblogger

537 followers

10 years ago

I pulled out my Kindle on my phone when I was waiting for my ride to the airport this afternoon and the phrase "1000 True Fans" simply reminded me to do well in my niche.

I've heard about this in AskPat podcast but it was in Pat Flynn's "Will It Fly" book that I was able to better understand it.

The article 1000 True Fans was written by Kevin Kelly in March 4 2008 (http://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans). Since it's quite long and since I'm catching a flight, I decided to drop a thought here first. I'll read the 6-year old article with 468 comments and liked 4300 times in flight.

If Steve Jobs had a "making a dent in the universe", there's also an expression that says, "If you want to make a million dollars, change a million lives". Though this may be true to Steve and other greats, not all of us can practically do that.

This is where niches come in.

If we can create niches with 1000 true fans, we don't have to sell $1 worth of products to 1M people to have a million dollars. If we can become superstars in our small ponds and change some people's lives, then we can achieve certain successes ourselves. It may not be a dent in the universe, but at least we can make a dent in the universe of those people we've changed. They may eventually become our True Fans.

Pat went on his Math saying that if our True Fans will each spend one day's wages per year in support of what we do, we can actually earn $100,000 per year assuming that each True Fan spends an average of $100 per year (that's pretty possible!). And to many folks, $100,000 is already a living!

These True Fans will purchase anything that you create or produce especially if they've really fallen in love with what you do. Just be consistent on quality.

In closing, let's always be reminded that what we do is always for our fans (or would-be fans). Let's make sure that we put our hearts into our creations regardless of the niche we're in.

Goodluck!

Have to fly in a few minutes...