> We’re already seeing this shift, according to creator platforms... Patreon... Podia... Teachable
No OnlyFans?
> One creator on Teachable who advises artists on how to sell their art made $110,000 last year with only 76 students, at an average of $1,437 per course. Another creator who teaches physiotherapy made $141,000 with only 61 students, at an average price point of $2,314 per course
For those who don't get the reference, there's a saying along the lines of "During a gold rush, sell shovels", implying that everybody joining the gold rush needs tools to dig, but not everybody who digs will strike gold.
To further increase the sells of your shovels as a next step you pay successful gold diggers (or actors) to amplify the message how easy it is to find gold, as a side job you show how easy it is to sell shovels ... at some point you arrive at the pinnacle of the current financialization of every aspect of life: you sell people the philosopher's stone itself to transmute everything into gold i.e. how easy it is to sell anything, really.
It is remarkable how long this spawned ouroboros can bite through itself given the context of financial desperation (no savings, inflation, no stable source of income). At some point I came to the sober realization that younger generations, now, have no clue how people lived back then. It must have been even more terrible.
This might be misunderstood as followers on social media, but a follower on social media does not equal to a fan. They address this at:
> Here’s how it works: A creator can cultivate a large, free audience on horizontal social platforms or through an email list.
Fair enough, but let's say the TrueFans™ are in the range of 0.1% - 1% of your followers. That translates to 10k-100k followers which is still incredibly hard to build.
> let's say the TrueFans™ are in the range of 0.1% - 1% of your followers. That translates to 10k-100k followers which is still incredibly hard to build.
A true fan in TFA is willing to spend $1k a year. That’s gotta be way less than 0.1% in terms of social media followers (usually). A friend of mine has close to 3 million social media followers on one platform alone, and the number of “true fans (tm)” paying more than $1k a year is about ten to twenty. Of course it heavily depends on the category, too.
I think it depends on how you decide to structure your offerings? For example, someone who emphasizes 1-1 instruction can shift some people to much higher payment tiers, at the cost of turning away a larger number of people who aren't interested in that sort of thing.
For me it'd be hard to pay 1K a year although I could afford it. Heck it was only back in 2019 that I'd force myself to buy apps that make me happy, even though I'd drop 6 dollars on a coffee without thinking twice. I'm definitely a slave to my mentality.
Newcomers started doing this on twitter for a while and turn social media from platform ads to federation ads network .. it's getting worse, like everybody is literally selling to each other. Remember old "long time no see" friends shown up trying to sell you something? Aghh now everyone pretends to be friend and sell you something.
Yeah that's a part of twitter I don't interact with. It's so cringy and obvious when people spew marketing advice like this and then turn around and act like your friend. As if their ulterior motive can't be deduced from what they advice others to do. I try spending my time with kinder more normal people instead.
The word 'friend' is really abused these days (guess because of Facebook etc) and people are somehow falling for it. Seems it's becoming quite common (in my circles anyway) that people use the term friend for basically everyone they ever talked or wrote to and 'good friend' for people they had a deeper than casual talk with. And then the drama after because these 'friends' probably didn't think the same about them (if they even remembered meeting them).
I have been called old for using acquaintance a twice. Which feels really weird to me, as I am not that old. ('97)
I'd say I have about 3 friends at MOST, altough, more like 1 that I consider to truly be a friend. And I agree, friend is completely misused.
On steam, friend means someone you want to be able to contact.
On discord its someone you trust (more than regular people) or one you allow to contact you at all (if dms are otherwise turned off) and so on.
My personal definition of "friend" has always been "someone not in your family you would want to inform if you found out you had cancer." It's served me quite well.
The key to enjoying Twitter is to unfollow anyone who is clearly only Tweeting engagement and follow bait all day.
It’s easy to spot. They all seem to follow the same pattern du jour, such as posting threads that feel like mad libs (“I talked to <number> people who are passionate about <topic>. What I learned was surprising! Here are the top five takeaways. 1/6” is popular right now)
Much of Twitter is just people signaling to one another that they are relevant in what they say and how they say it. It is a tax on your brain for which you get little in return.
Sadly true, tons of people wouldn't care less if it isn't opportunity involves. Because social animal is mostly passive. You don't show up? We don't look for you even if you have some potentials.
I'm quite interested in learning more about what kind of things people are willing to pay 80-100 USD a month for on Patreon.
The author also throws around some percentages of the growth of hig end payers on Patreon, but no hard numbers. Did it increase by 5 people? Are high paying patrons growing faster than low paying?
While it doesn't fit TFA's premise of 100 on one thing, Patreon is used as a donation platform by many groups, for example i know of several online radio platforms using it (when asked "why not Liberapay?", they say Patreon helps take care of business and tax issues, provides an API, etc.). DKFM uses the API to display their Patreon donors on the website for example.
Sci-fi publications use it as well for monthly subscriptions - the general math holds up that some people spend $5/$10 per thing totalling up to $100/mo (or some variation). But I don't think that supports what TFA is suggesting $100/thing/mo), that feels like a lot. They might believe the Patreon user only supports one thing/mo, but I'm not sure that's true - people have varied interests based on my travels.
> when asked "why not Liberapay?", they say Patreon helps take care of business and tax issues, provides an API, etc.
Another big advantage, especially in audio / video formats, is that you can say "support me on Patreon" and people will know what you're talking about, vs. needing to spell out a URL for people.
On Twitch people commonly give $100 for absolute nothing, just to be thanked by the creator live, which they would do for significantly less money as well, often just $5.
I suspect the top tiers at Patreon must work the same, there's some benefit there but people are doing it because they are a megafan and want to show it. I'd be intested in how many of them are living in a false belief / parasocial relationship though.
I have a few streamers I occasionally throw money at. But those are ones I actually interact with outside of the streams/very small streamers, without deluding myself to think they are my friends. They owe me NOTHING.
Parasocial relationships are scary though. A few times I almost slipped into one. (Nowadays I intentionally stop watching streamers I feel I am getting too close to.)
Some of these megafan donations are probably fakes, the streamer sending themselves money with an alt in the hope that real people follow. The platform has little incentive to stop that sort of thing.
That is absolutely possible, but there are also definitely people who simply want to support people who do cool stuff, and don't necessarily need anything in addition to the free content in exchange.
I only follow a couple streamers (as opposed to surfing more generally) and I notice the same names repeatedly doing donations like that. Most are one-offs but there are maybe 10 names that stick out in my brain because I see them so often.
I know parasocial is the popular thing right now, but I think it's just a more general 'microtransaction whale factor' that encompasses collectible card games, gachas, and stream donations. I leave realmoney gambling out of that because I think the chance to get actual money back makes the rationalization different, nobody who is whaling thinks they will get a dime back.
Agreed. It seems like examples should be easy to find and highlight if it’s really as common as this article suggests.
I’ve seen people spontaneously put $100 toward creators they really appreciate, but those are rare. $100 per month on a recurring basis or a constant influx of one-off $100 donations is a much higher bar. You would need a relatively massive audience to convert enough people interested in spending $1K/year on something.
> I'm quite interested in learning more about what kind of things people are willing to pay 80-100 USD a month for on Patreon.
This is probably not representative over the whole population, but, I have a Patreon. I had a few people pay me $50/month (where the base tier is $5/month). The $50/month tier has no extra benefits besides a vanity Discord role. So why did they do it? They genuinely want to support whatever I'm doing. That's it.
I'm a Github sponsor for $100/m for audio support on Asahi Linux for M1 MacBooks (though I don't expect this to last a full year) and a $48/m Patreon supporter of marcan for the overall development. For marcan that was their highest tier, I probably would have went more towards the $80 range had it been an option. There are actually a few others with lower max tiers (like $10) where I've maxed out. My goal here is they deliver good work and I want to make sure they are able to continue investing the hardware and time to do that.
Prior to the Asahi stuff I had that more spread out across some interesting and/or useful things like Zig.
> Another creator who teaches physiotherapy made $141,000 with only 61 students, at an average price point of $2,314 per course.
This seems like a scam. To be a physiotherapist in the United States, you have to have a bachelor’s degree (4 years) followed by a 3 year Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from an accredited college.
So the people paying that money definitely aren’t making progress to become an actual physiotherapist.
There is also a physiotherapist assistant training which can be completed in just a couple of years. These programs are offered by community colleges and are likely cheaper and more useful than an online course.
I don't know anything about this teacher, but they might already be physiotherapists and doing additional courses on some speciality.
It's common for health workers to take additional classes to stay on top of things. Some countries require certain professions to take some number of classes every few years to keep their license.
And describing those situations as "Fans" just feels wrong. It is clearly offering a service as product. And basically buying the possibly relevant certificate for participation.
Of course this poses other challenges. You'll end up an 'artist' of gilding toilet seats for rich and demanding 'customers' who are very clear on what they want.
That ain't me: my branding is aligned with what my actual values and heritage are, and it's profoundly oriented towards the folks who have skills and dreams but no resources, and so I make open source software supporting 'em.
I get excited when I can support a new platform like the new Raspberry Pi, not about thinking up stuff to excite about three of my audience who could throw me a hundred bucks a month. If I go over to serving only them I'll be doing only as they direct, and they absolutely don't have the vision to run my show and get anywhere worthwhile with it.
This doesn't make the article worthless. I've been thinking very hard about how I can expand into hardware DIY and the article hints at possibilities there. I can try to come up with a DIY synth module that comes in under $20 for my primary base… or, apparently, if I can make the ultimate speaker cabinet using all my tricks and sell it to someone for $200, I could also execute it in the most sophisticated possible way, and sell it for $2000 to a superfan who is that kind of wealthy. The $20 guy can't afford either, but the $2000 guy doesn't need me to hold it to $200, they need me to make it special for them.
Risk of course is if the $2000 guy doesn't exist or doesn't show up. Trying to target only the wealthy is dangerous. They are as fickle as your attitude towards them is. There's exactly one guy out there who randomly gave me $1000, and rather than demand a product, he wanted me to think about spherical harmonics in the belief that I might come up with something helpful in the field that interested him. I suspect there are guys out there who would likewise give me $1000 on the condition that I abandon what I do and start doing what they would do if they were me…
I think the difference between what you're saying and this article is that you have customers, not patrons (or you're treating your patrons like customers).
The people who shell out $1K a year aren't generally doing it because they are getting a product or service in return that is worth $1K / year to them, they're doing it because they believe in the mission of the creator and want to help support that.
Most of our creators that have a "crazy amount of money" plan generally don't offer anything extra beyond gratitude to the big spenders (public gratitude, but still just gratitude). And oddly enough, the big spenders tend to be the least demanding. So long as you don't overcharge them or something, they don't have many demands, because they were never thinking of it as purchasing something in the first place.
No, you've got it backwards. 'your creators'? Are you affiliated with this type of payment system? I'm in the top 100 music creators worldwide on Patreon, so I figure my observations are salient: it's working for me.
I only have patrons. There's a set of tiers that are all voluntary, and a one dollar and two dollar tier that are very popular because people want to be doing something, especially when they have nothing and I'm helping them out.
In my experience there are two kinds of 'whales': randomly appearing ones who throw money commensurate to THEIR resources (which will appear like a large sum to me), and the ones who want to throw money to get me to do something specific, and they have demands and often go away again if I don't comply. I enjoy the former and am not really interested in the latter.
It's not that I'm mad at them, but if their ideas were that great they would be me… the reason I do as well as I do on Patreon with zero 'extra' and zero 'customers' is because I've got a vision and I'm executing on it. I'm not there to take requests, I'm there to show people something they have not seen, and also to give free opensource tools by way of executing on that vision.
I'm not at all sure the 'people who shell out 1K a year because they believe in the mission' exist. Can't prove it by me, I don't have any of those. I do think there are people out there steering indie media figures politically in that way, but I don't think that counts, I think it's money laundering and a backchannel way of funding influencers to deliver specific messages. That's far from philanthropy, that's business (in the form of politics, usually, but probably there are examples that are more directly just business)
I work for a company that's very much like Patreon for podcasters (Supercast). The people who will pay $1K a year to support a creator absolutely exist, but they are a small subset of the people who will pay $100 / year, which is itself a very small subset of the people who will listen to your podcast.
Some rough numbers:
- A podcast with an engaged fan base can usually get about 5% of their listeners to support them monthly / yearly
- Of the paid supporters, 1-2% are going to be the big spenders who spend in $1K a year territory.
So sure, you can be self-sufficient on 100 $1K a year fans, but to get there, you need 5,000 $100 / year fans (which needs 100,000 listeners), and not doing anything for them is leaving money on the table.
Surprisingly we don't have a ton of creators offering swag stuff, I'd have assumed that it would have been a bigger draw (Some of that might have to do with us not really offering any support on our platform, but it's not a common request either).
If there's a "product" to sell, it's usually either the content itself, or access through things like community. But like I said in another comment, how much people spend isn't very correlated with what they get out of it at all.
This is pretty interesting! I've been thinking about a platform for unique swag for podcasters, streamers, youtubers, etc. as I think there's definitely an opportunity to engage with fans there, but I imagine it's pretty overwhelming and expensive to figure out how to do it effectively if you are busy producing content. I sell an item that'd be perfect for those folks to giveaway/sell and I know how hard it is to figure out shipping and logistics.
I remember in early internet times webcomics were one of the few niches where creators were trying to make a living on the internet.
At first it was “easy” - ad rates were super inflated in the dot com boom, and people were making rent with “punch the monkey and win” banner ads.
Then came the crash and the bottom fell out of the ad market. A lot of creators just went away, but the ones who held on generally monetized via merch.
Granted, these were people that were both funny and had graphic design chops, so novelty t-shirts were a natural fit.
Presumably the buyer demand was always there, but no one discovered it until they were forced to do the hard thing of flailing for cash.
Possibly as the market matures and people test more monetization methods we’ll see more podcast shwag.
I'm not sure about creators, but I get swag and invites from charities and it annoys me. I'm donating to give them resources, if I want a T Shirt I'll buy one myself thanks, I dont need them spending money on me.
1 - Them sending you a teeshirt is a form of advertising. They're hoping you will wear it and be an advocate for them in your social circle. This is a reasonable thing to spend money on.
2 - Engagement. They're trying to keep you engaged in what they're doing, this is valuable too.
Of course, you don't want them spending all their resources on this, but a certain percentage is absolutely a good idea. This is why you should care about non-profits statements about % of funds that go towards the charity vs overhead.
I disagree that Tshirts are a reasonable marketing expense. For one thing, they're relatively expensive to produce and ship on a per unit basis, and you will need to order in multiple sizes. Second, most 'brand' t-shirts are low effort logo templates made from BigCartel.com that look fugly. They're clearly an afterthought.
And because of that, those tshirts will end up in a landfill somewhere, just like the majority of soulless corporate swag that you'd accumulate visiting a trade show.
I bought 2 dozen mixed T-shirts and hoodies (mostly T-shirts) with the logo for my business on them front and back in two sizes (the logo, not the shirts). Because I wear these things daily, I bought good T-shirts and good hoodies: tagless 100% cotton (mixed polyester increases pilling). I think I was in for about $15 a T-shirt. More for the hoodie, obviously.
I'm not getting any kind of volume rate on these for a 2 dozen shirt order of mixed sizes (for friends and family as well). I can't imagine anybody ordering in real quantity is paying more than $10 a shirt, even for good ones.
If you go through somebody whose business is making and shipping t-shirts, you get the benefit of their lower shipping rates and their bulk purchasing power for the shirts). If you're handing them out at a trade show, your unit cost to ship a couple hundred shirts is negligible.
For me, my T-shirts for my business are effectively free: they replace other t-shirts I'd have to buy (or would, once I got through all the company and trade show swag from when I worked software). Plus they promote my business. And when they're too beat up to wear, they become shop rags before they hit the trash.
I think you make some valid points (sizes are a nuisance), but I don't think T-shirts are the clear stinker for the folks giving them away that you think they are.
I donated ONE TIME to a classical radio network in Southern California and over the next 5 years they proceeded to send me mailers that cost at least what I'd donated. They did eventually stop.
A creator would effectively be selling swag at a markup by giving a reward at a certain backing tier. It's like your local NPR'S funding drive - you give them $100, they give you a tote bag or whatever with their logo on it.
Everyone wins - you buy cool branded merch, the creator gets to sell at a large markup as "fundraising".
That's not the same as being sent a free t shirt with the hopes of them wearing it.
> So sure, you can be self-sufficient on 100 $1K a year fans, but to get there, you need 5,000 $100 / year fans (which needs 100,000 listeners), and not doing anything for them is leaving money on the table.
And probably more importantly, losing people out of the funnel: after all, most people don't go from 0 to $1k/year fan in an instant; they'll try out the free service, upgrade to being a $100/year fan, and from there upgrade to being a $1k/year fan. The pitch of this article, it seemed to me, isn't to get rid of the lower tiers, but to add an extra tier on the top.
>most people don't go from 0 to $1k/year fan in an instant; they'll try out the free service, upgrade to being a $100/year fan, and from there upgrade to being a $1k/year fan
How do you know this? I'm mentally contrasting with monetization in games which I don't think follows that model, I think it is more like; if you are spending over 100$ its by repeating some smaller behavior (microtransactions), as opposed to deepening your investment thoughtfully as a function of time. Or, you're going to kickstart a game, and from the outset you're probably going to fall loosely into one bin of 20$-200$-2000$.
I don't have anything to back up what I'm suggesting (purely anecdotal) and I'm asking you because I'm interested in sturdier arguments than my own (or other experiences leading to different perspectives!).
For games it can be frequency of transaction as well as amount that increases over time. I don't think either case is about being particularly thoughtful though. More a sign of that thing becoming more important in your life.
Ok, then I think I can more clearly restate my root question as: "do people upgrade pledge or commitment amounts as a consistent part of becoming one of the top contributers?"
I suspect they don't. I suspect you may increase rate/intensity of microtransactions as a natural part of interaction, but if the financial transaction part isn't an active part of the interaction cycle then the contribution amount probably stays pretty static.
I wonder where I could get data to sketch this out.
Whether contributions are steady support or a constant drip of (sometimes quite large) support varies tremendously by industry.
Games rely a lot on the one-time / tip model through Twitch.
Podcasts are almost exclusively through recurring subscriptions / support.
My impression of video / YouTube is that a lot of it comes through stuff like merch which is more of a drip of one-time support, but there's definitely continual support there as well, so a bit mixed?
I suspect that it would be hard to experiment too far outside of the standard in any of those contexts, since you'd have to convince people to support you in ways that aren't the norm.
Makes sense. You can't focus on just the true fans, because at first, you don't have any. First you focus on just getting listeners, then on fans who are willing to pay something, and only once that group gets big enough, does it make sense to focus on the $1000/y "true" fans.
And if your numbers are correct, you're already making $500k/y from $100 fans by the time you can make $100k/y from the $1000 fans. So the middle is still more lucrative, even if the top is growing.
As an example, Sam Harris is charging $15 / month. Good for him that he’s able to pull it off, but man, that’s more than most streaming services.
Your supercast is charging $0.59 / month per sub going through your platform on top of stripe fees. So if you had a niche but interesting podcast you can’t just charge $1.00 / month and generate any revenue. These fees are a massive friction. Just the Stripe fees without additional markup is a lot of friction on small transactions.
Yeah, $5 a month is really the minimum where it starts to make sense with Supercast.
I haven't run the numbers, but my gut tells me that supporters really aren't as price sensitive as you think. The conversion rates on a $5 / month podcast and a $10 / month one aren't all that different. Again, for a lot of podcasts, it's less about purchasing a product and more about supporting a creator.
Supporting super niche podcasts that want to sell for $1.00 a month unfortunately doesn't make much sense for us since our costs are fairly fixed per subscriber.
> The conversion rates on a $5 / month podcast and a $10 / month one aren't all that different.
IMO $5.00 is still beyond the price anchoring in most people's minds. You're getting close to the range of Apple TV premium, Youtube premium, Disney plus, Prime, and other bundled content services. Competing as a single content producer is going to be tough. It's natural you get mostly consumers that want to support you, instead of just people who are selfishly interested in the content, of which there are likely a lot more.
The thing is, for most creators, there's not really much content to sell. The bulk of creators are going to distribute the vast majority of their content for free (they wouldn't be able to get the audience to monetize in the first place if they didn't), so if you're looking at it from the perspective of the value you get for your subscription fee, frankly for most podcasts you're not coming out ahead even at a dollar or two.
Maybe, but only if you compare it to those things. I support tons of people on patreon and other platforms and never have I once thought about comparing it to my Netflix subscription, it's just totally different.
Netflix and co are a utility and you expect to pay low utility costs for it, but supporting a creator is something you do because you are excited and look forward to what they do next and their contribution to the world and more specifically your day. What are you more excited for, sitting down to your daily Netflix or getting the latest podcast/comic/picture from your favourite creator? Who will disappear if you don't support them and be lost forever?
I just started a podcast a few weeks ago [1] where I interview other folks who work at Microsoft to answer the question that I often had back when we had company meetings: what do all of these people do? I was surprised that I hadn't heard of Supercast before. At what point does it make sense for me to start thinking about services like Supercast? Is there a threshold of # subscribers, downloads, some other metric that makes sense?
If you have engaged listeners, over time you should be able to convert about 5% of them (generally for $5-10 a month). When that becomes worth it is up to you, but we generally don't see super successful launches for podcasts with less than 10,000 downloads per episode.
Though the composition also matters. A small twitch streamer that recognises all their regulars usernames and interacts with them individually is likely to have a much higher concentration of die hard fans. So there the math works easier despite lower absolute numbers.
And that in turn is determined by what type of content it is and what type of parasocial relationship it is
> Since 2017, the share of new patrons paying more than $100 per month—or $1,200 per year—has grown 21 percent
I think this is worded ingenuously. I originally read it that new patrons paying $100 per month has grown to 21%, but upon second reading I see that the percent has grown 21%. But what's the base line? Why not reference that? Is it relative compared to other subs (e.g. percent paying $100+ went from 1% -> 1.23%) or absolute (e.g. 1k people paying $100+ -> 1,230). I would think a large percent of that is probably friends and family.
Does anyone personally support a stranger creator to the tune of $100+ a month? It seems like a lot. What's the thought process and what do you expect?
Immanuel Kant once formulated the categorical imperative … something is moral if it can work universally and be sustainable.
How about economically? Is it sustainable to have every artist supported by 100 true fans? Maybe. It means enough people have disposable income to spend $1000 a year on something, and that every artist finds a niche. Those artists who already got 100 fans would drop out of the marketplace, leaving the others until everyone found a dance partner (like with dating).
Viewed more broadly, though, this would go heavily against the Pareto principle, where some artists simply achieve escape velocity and get to a different level because they never leave the market, while most artists do not produce anything that people would really pay to consume, even if they discovered it over and over. It is like polygamy starving many young men of mates, and polygamy goes hand in hand with war.
I think a much more sustainable model is a UBI that isn’t truly “unconditional” but a gated community where successful artists and their patrons voluntarily agree to redistribute some wealth to new artists that keep showing progress in their craft. Crypto can be done to redistribute this wealth.
But that would mean there would be quotas on who can join as a new struggling artist and get the UBI subsidy, since it’s free money for any scammer, especially globally it could pay for a lot more where cost of living is small. People would try to make 10 accounts.
It is essentially voluntary socialism online. And one major problem with libertarian socialism and why it can’t solve poverty is that people don’t want to let in too many others into their subsidy program that pays non-market rates for what could be art no one wants. So yes the workers own the factory collectively and work 2 hour days but they do hazing for new people. That’s what countries do with immigration and fraternities do on college campuses.
>>I think a much more sustainable model is a UBI that isn’t truly “unconditional” but a gated community where successful artists and their patrons voluntarily agree to redistribute some wealth to new artists that keep showing progress in their craft.
It seems like you're inferring that unconditional UBI is not sustainable and therefore immoral according to Kant's definition.
While that position may ruffle some feathers, you may have a point. How do you ensure that under conditional UBI that recipients are adequately redistributing their productivity/wealth?
I am pragmatic, not a purist. Having more people (refugees, starving artists etc.) receiving money from benefactors is better than less.
That means spreading the wealth redistribution as thinly as possible: one person one account (it is also good for voting).
We can approach such a system by kicking out the artists who already got 100 donors, and forcing them “off the market” the same way someone should leave a dating site when they paired off.
The problem is that various actors have incentives create fake accounts. It isn’t even so much about UBI for people being unsustainable, but that people can create fake accounts (sybil attacks). There HAS to be a gatekeeping mechanism. There has to be a condition, the U can’t stand for Unconditional. It can stand for Universal (to all members of a community).
The hard part is ensuring there is no serious corruption in the mechanisms that whitelist accounts. WorldCoin scans eyeballs and Proof of Humanity does network analysis and tokenomics. I think that there should be a self-regulating organization (SRO like FINRA is for example) of KYC providers that stake a surety bond proportional to how many accounts they whitelist, and if some duplicates or fake accounts can be proven, in some sort of due process, they lose that stake. So they have some enforcement.
But still it may not be enough, for example for a national election there are strong incentives to register fake voters, and if the whole thing is done without appearing in person then that’s even easier to do. So then you need really harsh penalties for corrupt bureaucrats and ways to revoke certifications. But by that time some amount of UBI / welfare / disability benefits will have been paid out, or an election to install a director or head fo state has already taken place.
Far better not to concentrate the wealth and power to begin with, because then there would be less incentive to cheat and rally and grab the spoils of “war” whether that is marauders raiding a village, or a political party taking over an election, or Jeff Bezos now picking winners and losers in his investments / philanthropy
Basically, it is not that UBI is unsustainable, but that free (or subsidized, by exceeding the value whatever contribution the recipient makes to the system) money requires some increasingly harsh mechanisms to vet people.
At the end of the day though, we need such systems as there is a growing proportion of people whose labor just simply isn’t valuable enough to exceed their cost of living. And asking them to forego the modern conveniences of life, like safe potable running water and at least 500 square feet of space to live in, safe neighborhoods, access to lifesaving emergency medicine etc. is silly. If we subdidizs them anyway, why not standardize the system and remove corruption?
This kind of fan driven art transform artists into dancing monkeys.
I mean, there is nothing wrong in that - but makes art bland and utilitarian.
It changes thinking from expressing oneself, pushing boundaries, to what can I do to make my fans continue to pay $5. The soul somehow gets lost.
Many artists cannot fit themselves into such regime and end up giving up. I guess that's how humans work.
This bothers me too. I get tons of social media ads for how to make money from music, one of them is Savvy Musician - a stay-at-home Mom with 5 kids who makes Celtic Metal. Her advice centers on finding your micro-niche, which to me feels like just writing the same song over and over, and then digging in it looks like most of her income is from selling merch, so the music ends up being just ads for t-shirts and mugs.
Doesn't this sound like inherently bad advice? Fewer number of "fans" means that you risk is centralized around those few fans and their particular requests and demands. I can honestly see this getting very dark, very quickly.
You would rarely argue that a business should centralize around only a limited number of customers.
I think the shift from big companies deciding the winners to democratized content creators Isa shift in the right direction.
However, has anyone tried to quantify just how difficult it is to get those 100? Even for unpaid followers/listeners I've never managed to get more than a handful.
What the article is describing isn't "fans" as much as plain old "customers". Almost all the examples given in the article are people doing courses. If you sell a course for $1000, then the person buying it isn't a "fan" who just gives you money, the buyer is just a customer who buys a service.
The only thing new about this is that it's happening online; offering courses for $1000 is not exactly a new thing, it's a business that has existed for ever.
And I'm pretty sure that most of these customers aren't long-time fans. People will pay for access to a course, but they aren't going to take the course over and over again.
These aren't educational courses, they're self-help/improvement courses.
"Starts with the user's needs and pain points - motivated by self-interest - desire for improvement, transformation and/or exclusive access"
So, you need to get fit/get in shape! $40/month for my nutrition and exercise coaching! Go green and zero-waste with my advice! How to teach your kids! Yoga and meditation to improve your health! How to pick up women! Break into your dream career/TV writing/comedy! Be your own boss! Etc, etc. Some needs are never satiated.
The original essay that this pulls its title from from was written in 2008, and used examples of self-published authors and musicians - purely creative works. None of the startup-bubble, hustle-culture fueled BS that infected the following decade.
VCs are only interested monetizing the "product" aspect of creative ventures so they rephrase the key concepts in MBA blandspeak.
> This doesn't apply to webnovels. There are people there making over $1000 a month (some over $15 000) publishing completely free webnovels.
I don't consider authors of web novels or serials with Patreons like Wild bow or ErraticErrata to be representative of the broader population of authors on places such as Royal Road. I'd assume the total income distribution of web novel authors to be fairly top heavy.
Wildbow makes two to three times less than other authors on royalroad.
As always in the creative industry, the earnings are on a steeply descending exponential curve. But people still make good money out of a couple of hundreds fans.
Yeah, in an ideal world content creators could make an entire salary off of donations and offering simple perks and exclusive access. But actually this is a terrible career advice and relatively few people actually end up making anywhere close to $100k on Twitch or Patreon.
For each example the author mentions there are 100s if not 1,000s more who are wasting their time. We just aren’t a society where most people donate thousands or even hundreds of dollars out of altruism or for “exclusive access” except in a few niche scenarios.
I personally subscribe to a few content creators on Patreon. These people are very talented and have die-hard fans, because frankly their work is seriously exceptional and unique, and they make money. But not $1000 or even $100 per person, more like $1000 a month in total. The average subscriber donates ~$5 per month.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t do Patreon, in fact I think Patreon is a great tool to give you a) motivation, b) feedback, and c) a decent supplement to your income which is at least part of what you deserve for your work. But don’t think you can quit your job and do Patreon full time, that won’t happen unless you’re especially lucky or successful, and it takes years of work. And don’t think doing Patreon full time is any easier than a full-time job either.
Not to mention, the audience who donates is often very different than your main audience, who are very different than the creator himself/herself. Often what gets the most money isn’t what the most people want: case in point, mobile games, or at least mobile-style AAA games. And, often what gets the most views (and thus ad revenue) isn’t what the creator likes to create: case in point, clickbait videos and the “kid-ification” of popular YouTube channels.
Work on your passion, but don’t expect to work full-time on it.
Wasn't this a spinoff of an existing successful podcast made by the same people? They might already have had a built-in audience who'd be willing to pay.
I follow some folks on YouTube for a variety of topics, they're highly skilled, give great advice / technical information (everything from games to coding) and are very professional / great speakers and presenters.
They get noticeably few donations compared to folks who emphasize acting out and a sort of wonky infotainment (where the information is sometimes dead wrong).
> But actually this is a terrible career advice and relatively few people actually end up making anywhere close to $100k on Twitch or Patreon. [...] I think Patreon is a great tool to give you a decent supplement to your income
There are relatively few content creators making $100k/yr from a single platform, but there are tons of people making that and more by utilizing all of the platforms. The first piece of advice I always give to musicians is to treat every social media and streaming platform as its own "venue" with their own unique set of users -- because they are. Always performing at the same venue in your hometown isn't going to be lucrative or sustainable, so you branch out to other venues and other cities, because that's the only way to find new markets.
The same is true for all content creation. Focusing on in-person performances ignores the entire online market, which is >99% of potential revenue. Focusing on Twitch ignores the opportunities of TikTok and YouTube. But if you take the time to understand the quirks of each platform and its users, and then chop up your content into sizes and styles appropriate for each platform, it's actually extremely easy to go from zero online presence to $10k/mo within two years.
Not everybody understands Patreon or wants to use it (and frankly, it's not a very usable site), so if your subscriptions are solely based around that platform, then you're ignoring 95% of the potential subscriber market and making everything more difficult than it needs to be. Content is content. It can go anywhere, and investing a few days into learning basic video editing makes content distribution a breeze.
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[ 28.2 ms ] story [ 3125 ms ] threadNo OnlyFans?
> One creator on Teachable who advises artists on how to sell their art made $110,000 last year with only 76 students, at an average of $1,437 per course. Another creator who teaches physiotherapy made $141,000 with only 61 students, at an average price point of $2,314 per course
So sell shovels?
For those who don't get the reference, there's a saying along the lines of "During a gold rush, sell shovels", implying that everybody joining the gold rush needs tools to dig, but not everybody who digs will strike gold.
It is remarkable how long this spawned ouroboros can bite through itself given the context of financial desperation (no savings, inflation, no stable source of income). At some point I came to the sober realization that younger generations, now, have no clue how people lived back then. It must have been even more terrible.
> Here’s how it works: A creator can cultivate a large, free audience on horizontal social platforms or through an email list.
Fair enough, but let's say the TrueFans™ are in the range of 0.1% - 1% of your followers. That translates to 10k-100k followers which is still incredibly hard to build.
In this case, I have no fans.
Different ways of dividing your salary by N and then figuring out what you need to offer to get S/N per customer.
Usually if someone is saying stuff like this they have a “solution” to sell you to help you get there. You are now the fan rather than the star.
I'd say I have about 3 friends at MOST, altough, more like 1 that I consider to truly be a friend. And I agree, friend is completely misused.
On steam, friend means someone you want to be able to contact. On discord its someone you trust (more than regular people) or one you allow to contact you at all (if dms are otherwise turned off) and so on.
Ah wait its 2022 :(
I've got to stop sleeping in Foreverware..
Ill never grow up
sniff
Im a Toys-R-.... OH NO
Something like admitting to, that you have done something criminal,and what, feels closer to the right definition for me.
It’s easy to spot. They all seem to follow the same pattern du jour, such as posting threads that feel like mad libs (“I talked to <number> people who are passionate about <topic>. What I learned was surprising! Here are the top five takeaways. 1/6” is popular right now)
The author also throws around some percentages of the growth of hig end payers on Patreon, but no hard numbers. Did it increase by 5 people? Are high paying patrons growing faster than low paying?
Sci-fi publications use it as well for monthly subscriptions - the general math holds up that some people spend $5/$10 per thing totalling up to $100/mo (or some variation). But I don't think that supports what TFA is suggesting $100/thing/mo), that feels like a lot. They might believe the Patreon user only supports one thing/mo, but I'm not sure that's true - people have varied interests based on my travels.
Another big advantage, especially in audio / video formats, is that you can say "support me on Patreon" and people will know what you're talking about, vs. needing to spell out a URL for people.
I suspect the top tiers at Patreon must work the same, there's some benefit there but people are doing it because they are a megafan and want to show it. I'd be intested in how many of them are living in a false belief / parasocial relationship though.
Parasocial relationships are scary though. A few times I almost slipped into one. (Nowadays I intentionally stop watching streamers I feel I am getting too close to.)
I know parasocial is the popular thing right now, but I think it's just a more general 'microtransaction whale factor' that encompasses collectible card games, gachas, and stream donations. I leave realmoney gambling out of that because I think the chance to get actual money back makes the rationalization different, nobody who is whaling thinks they will get a dime back.
I wanna read an article about the $100/month patreon tiers and the people who pay for them.
I’ve seen people spontaneously put $100 toward creators they really appreciate, but those are rare. $100 per month on a recurring basis or a constant influx of one-off $100 donations is a much higher bar. You would need a relatively massive audience to convert enough people interested in spending $1K/year on something.
This is probably not representative over the whole population, but, I have a Patreon. I had a few people pay me $50/month (where the base tier is $5/month). The $50/month tier has no extra benefits besides a vanity Discord role. So why did they do it? They genuinely want to support whatever I'm doing. That's it.
Prior to the Asahi stuff I had that more spread out across some interesting and/or useful things like Zig.
This seems like a scam. To be a physiotherapist in the United States, you have to have a bachelor’s degree (4 years) followed by a 3 year Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from an accredited college.
https://www.apta.org/your-career/careers-in-physical-therapy...
So the people paying that money definitely aren’t making progress to become an actual physiotherapist.
There is also a physiotherapist assistant training which can be completed in just a couple of years. These programs are offered by community colleges and are likely cheaper and more useful than an online course.
It's common for health workers to take additional classes to stay on top of things. Some countries require certain professions to take some number of classes every few years to keep their license.
solve a deep and painful problem and people will follow
give people meaning and purpose is why religion is so powerful
the best products look like religion (see tesla as an example)
the fans take on the identity of the product
speaks more to the human condition and our need to belong, the biggest fans are rarely healthy folks
That ain't me: my branding is aligned with what my actual values and heritage are, and it's profoundly oriented towards the folks who have skills and dreams but no resources, and so I make open source software supporting 'em.
I get excited when I can support a new platform like the new Raspberry Pi, not about thinking up stuff to excite about three of my audience who could throw me a hundred bucks a month. If I go over to serving only them I'll be doing only as they direct, and they absolutely don't have the vision to run my show and get anywhere worthwhile with it.
This doesn't make the article worthless. I've been thinking very hard about how I can expand into hardware DIY and the article hints at possibilities there. I can try to come up with a DIY synth module that comes in under $20 for my primary base… or, apparently, if I can make the ultimate speaker cabinet using all my tricks and sell it to someone for $200, I could also execute it in the most sophisticated possible way, and sell it for $2000 to a superfan who is that kind of wealthy. The $20 guy can't afford either, but the $2000 guy doesn't need me to hold it to $200, they need me to make it special for them.
Risk of course is if the $2000 guy doesn't exist or doesn't show up. Trying to target only the wealthy is dangerous. They are as fickle as your attitude towards them is. There's exactly one guy out there who randomly gave me $1000, and rather than demand a product, he wanted me to think about spherical harmonics in the belief that I might come up with something helpful in the field that interested him. I suspect there are guys out there who would likewise give me $1000 on the condition that I abandon what I do and start doing what they would do if they were me…
The people who shell out $1K a year aren't generally doing it because they are getting a product or service in return that is worth $1K / year to them, they're doing it because they believe in the mission of the creator and want to help support that.
Most of our creators that have a "crazy amount of money" plan generally don't offer anything extra beyond gratitude to the big spenders (public gratitude, but still just gratitude). And oddly enough, the big spenders tend to be the least demanding. So long as you don't overcharge them or something, they don't have many demands, because they were never thinking of it as purchasing something in the first place.
I only have patrons. There's a set of tiers that are all voluntary, and a one dollar and two dollar tier that are very popular because people want to be doing something, especially when they have nothing and I'm helping them out.
In my experience there are two kinds of 'whales': randomly appearing ones who throw money commensurate to THEIR resources (which will appear like a large sum to me), and the ones who want to throw money to get me to do something specific, and they have demands and often go away again if I don't comply. I enjoy the former and am not really interested in the latter.
It's not that I'm mad at them, but if their ideas were that great they would be me… the reason I do as well as I do on Patreon with zero 'extra' and zero 'customers' is because I've got a vision and I'm executing on it. I'm not there to take requests, I'm there to show people something they have not seen, and also to give free opensource tools by way of executing on that vision.
I'm not at all sure the 'people who shell out 1K a year because they believe in the mission' exist. Can't prove it by me, I don't have any of those. I do think there are people out there steering indie media figures politically in that way, but I don't think that counts, I think it's money laundering and a backchannel way of funding influencers to deliver specific messages. That's far from philanthropy, that's business (in the form of politics, usually, but probably there are examples that are more directly just business)
Some rough numbers:
- A podcast with an engaged fan base can usually get about 5% of their listeners to support them monthly / yearly
- Of the paid supporters, 1-2% are going to be the big spenders who spend in $1K a year territory.
So sure, you can be self-sufficient on 100 $1K a year fans, but to get there, you need 5,000 $100 / year fans (which needs 100,000 listeners), and not doing anything for them is leaving money on the table.
What can I do for the $100 per year set? T shirts or other swag? Signed merch?
What can I do for the $10 per year set? Stickers?
If there's a "product" to sell, it's usually either the content itself, or access through things like community. But like I said in another comment, how much people spend isn't very correlated with what they get out of it at all.
I remember in early internet times webcomics were one of the few niches where creators were trying to make a living on the internet.
At first it was “easy” - ad rates were super inflated in the dot com boom, and people were making rent with “punch the monkey and win” banner ads.
Then came the crash and the bottom fell out of the ad market. A lot of creators just went away, but the ones who held on generally monetized via merch.
Granted, these were people that were both funny and had graphic design chops, so novelty t-shirts were a natural fit.
Presumably the buyer demand was always there, but no one discovered it until they were forced to do the hard thing of flailing for cash.
Possibly as the market matures and people test more monetization methods we’ll see more podcast shwag.
1 - Them sending you a teeshirt is a form of advertising. They're hoping you will wear it and be an advocate for them in your social circle. This is a reasonable thing to spend money on.
2 - Engagement. They're trying to keep you engaged in what they're doing, this is valuable too.
Of course, you don't want them spending all their resources on this, but a certain percentage is absolutely a good idea. This is why you should care about non-profits statements about % of funds that go towards the charity vs overhead.
And because of that, those tshirts will end up in a landfill somewhere, just like the majority of soulless corporate swag that you'd accumulate visiting a trade show.
I'm not getting any kind of volume rate on these for a 2 dozen shirt order of mixed sizes (for friends and family as well). I can't imagine anybody ordering in real quantity is paying more than $10 a shirt, even for good ones.
If you go through somebody whose business is making and shipping t-shirts, you get the benefit of their lower shipping rates and their bulk purchasing power for the shirts). If you're handing them out at a trade show, your unit cost to ship a couple hundred shirts is negligible.
For me, my T-shirts for my business are effectively free: they replace other t-shirts I'd have to buy (or would, once I got through all the company and trade show swag from when I worked software). Plus they promote my business. And when they're too beat up to wear, they become shop rags before they hit the trash.
I think you make some valid points (sizes are a nuisance), but I don't think T-shirts are the clear stinker for the folks giving them away that you think they are.
A creator would effectively be selling swag at a markup by giving a reward at a certain backing tier. It's like your local NPR'S funding drive - you give them $100, they give you a tote bag or whatever with their logo on it.
Everyone wins - you buy cool branded merch, the creator gets to sell at a large markup as "fundraising".
That's not the same as being sent a free t shirt with the hopes of them wearing it.
And probably more importantly, losing people out of the funnel: after all, most people don't go from 0 to $1k/year fan in an instant; they'll try out the free service, upgrade to being a $100/year fan, and from there upgrade to being a $1k/year fan. The pitch of this article, it seemed to me, isn't to get rid of the lower tiers, but to add an extra tier on the top.
How do you know this? I'm mentally contrasting with monetization in games which I don't think follows that model, I think it is more like; if you are spending over 100$ its by repeating some smaller behavior (microtransactions), as opposed to deepening your investment thoughtfully as a function of time. Or, you're going to kickstart a game, and from the outset you're probably going to fall loosely into one bin of 20$-200$-2000$.
I don't have anything to back up what I'm suggesting (purely anecdotal) and I'm asking you because I'm interested in sturdier arguments than my own (or other experiences leading to different perspectives!).
Ok, then I think I can more clearly restate my root question as: "do people upgrade pledge or commitment amounts as a consistent part of becoming one of the top contributers?"
I suspect they don't. I suspect you may increase rate/intensity of microtransactions as a natural part of interaction, but if the financial transaction part isn't an active part of the interaction cycle then the contribution amount probably stays pretty static.
I wonder where I could get data to sketch this out.
Games rely a lot on the one-time / tip model through Twitch.
Podcasts are almost exclusively through recurring subscriptions / support.
My impression of video / YouTube is that a lot of it comes through stuff like merch which is more of a drip of one-time support, but there's definitely continual support there as well, so a bit mixed?
I suspect that it would be hard to experiment too far outside of the standard in any of those contexts, since you'd have to convince people to support you in ways that aren't the norm.
And if your numbers are correct, you're already making $500k/y from $100 fans by the time you can make $100k/y from the $1000 fans. So the middle is still more lucrative, even if the top is growing.
As an example, Sam Harris is charging $15 / month. Good for him that he’s able to pull it off, but man, that’s more than most streaming services.
Your supercast is charging $0.59 / month per sub going through your platform on top of stripe fees. So if you had a niche but interesting podcast you can’t just charge $1.00 / month and generate any revenue. These fees are a massive friction. Just the Stripe fees without additional markup is a lot of friction on small transactions.
I haven't run the numbers, but my gut tells me that supporters really aren't as price sensitive as you think. The conversion rates on a $5 / month podcast and a $10 / month one aren't all that different. Again, for a lot of podcasts, it's less about purchasing a product and more about supporting a creator.
Supporting super niche podcasts that want to sell for $1.00 a month unfortunately doesn't make much sense for us since our costs are fairly fixed per subscriber.
IMO $5.00 is still beyond the price anchoring in most people's minds. You're getting close to the range of Apple TV premium, Youtube premium, Disney plus, Prime, and other bundled content services. Competing as a single content producer is going to be tough. It's natural you get mostly consumers that want to support you, instead of just people who are selfishly interested in the content, of which there are likely a lot more.
Netflix and co are a utility and you expect to pay low utility costs for it, but supporting a creator is something you do because you are excited and look forward to what they do next and their contribution to the world and more specifically your day. What are you more excited for, sitting down to your daily Netflix or getting the latest podcast/comic/picture from your favourite creator? Who will disappear if you don't support them and be lost forever?
[1] https://john-lam-podcast.simplecast.com/
This is one reason why medians are used with income/wealth. Some people skew the average.
I mean, it's true: one can make more money by [selling to / servicing / having as a patron] the rich, but it's not a new observation.
Though the composition also matters. A small twitch streamer that recognises all their regulars usernames and interacts with them individually is likely to have a much higher concentration of die hard fans. So there the math works easier despite lower absolute numbers.
And that in turn is determined by what type of content it is and what type of parasocial relationship it is
I think this is worded ingenuously. I originally read it that new patrons paying $100 per month has grown to 21%, but upon second reading I see that the percent has grown 21%. But what's the base line? Why not reference that? Is it relative compared to other subs (e.g. percent paying $100+ went from 1% -> 1.23%) or absolute (e.g. 1k people paying $100+ -> 1,230). I would think a large percent of that is probably friends and family.
Does anyone personally support a stranger creator to the tune of $100+ a month? It seems like a lot. What's the thought process and what do you expect?
How about economically? Is it sustainable to have every artist supported by 100 true fans? Maybe. It means enough people have disposable income to spend $1000 a year on something, and that every artist finds a niche. Those artists who already got 100 fans would drop out of the marketplace, leaving the others until everyone found a dance partner (like with dating).
Viewed more broadly, though, this would go heavily against the Pareto principle, where some artists simply achieve escape velocity and get to a different level because they never leave the market, while most artists do not produce anything that people would really pay to consume, even if they discovered it over and over. It is like polygamy starving many young men of mates, and polygamy goes hand in hand with war.
I think a much more sustainable model is a UBI that isn’t truly “unconditional” but a gated community where successful artists and their patrons voluntarily agree to redistribute some wealth to new artists that keep showing progress in their craft. Crypto can be done to redistribute this wealth.
But that would mean there would be quotas on who can join as a new struggling artist and get the UBI subsidy, since it’s free money for any scammer, especially globally it could pay for a lot more where cost of living is small. People would try to make 10 accounts.
It is essentially voluntary socialism online. And one major problem with libertarian socialism and why it can’t solve poverty is that people don’t want to let in too many others into their subsidy program that pays non-market rates for what could be art no one wants. So yes the workers own the factory collectively and work 2 hour days but they do hazing for new people. That’s what countries do with immigration and fraternities do on college campuses.
It seems like you're inferring that unconditional UBI is not sustainable and therefore immoral according to Kant's definition.
While that position may ruffle some feathers, you may have a point. How do you ensure that under conditional UBI that recipients are adequately redistributing their productivity/wealth?
That means spreading the wealth redistribution as thinly as possible: one person one account (it is also good for voting).
We can approach such a system by kicking out the artists who already got 100 donors, and forcing them “off the market” the same way someone should leave a dating site when they paired off.
The problem is that various actors have incentives create fake accounts. It isn’t even so much about UBI for people being unsustainable, but that people can create fake accounts (sybil attacks). There HAS to be a gatekeeping mechanism. There has to be a condition, the U can’t stand for Unconditional. It can stand for Universal (to all members of a community).
The hard part is ensuring there is no serious corruption in the mechanisms that whitelist accounts. WorldCoin scans eyeballs and Proof of Humanity does network analysis and tokenomics. I think that there should be a self-regulating organization (SRO like FINRA is for example) of KYC providers that stake a surety bond proportional to how many accounts they whitelist, and if some duplicates or fake accounts can be proven, in some sort of due process, they lose that stake. So they have some enforcement.
But still it may not be enough, for example for a national election there are strong incentives to register fake voters, and if the whole thing is done without appearing in person then that’s even easier to do. So then you need really harsh penalties for corrupt bureaucrats and ways to revoke certifications. But by that time some amount of UBI / welfare / disability benefits will have been paid out, or an election to install a director or head fo state has already taken place.
Far better not to concentrate the wealth and power to begin with, because then there would be less incentive to cheat and rally and grab the spoils of “war” whether that is marauders raiding a village, or a political party taking over an election, or Jeff Bezos now picking winners and losers in his investments / philanthropy
Basically, it is not that UBI is unsustainable, but that free (or subsidized, by exceeding the value whatever contribution the recipient makes to the system) money requires some increasingly harsh mechanisms to vet people.
At the end of the day though, we need such systems as there is a growing proportion of people whose labor just simply isn’t valuable enough to exceed their cost of living. And asking them to forego the modern conveniences of life, like safe potable running water and at least 500 square feet of space to live in, safe neighborhoods, access to lifesaving emergency medicine etc. is silly. If we subdidizs them anyway, why not standardize the system and remove corruption?
Many artists cannot fit themselves into such regime and end up giving up. I guess that's how humans work.
You would rarely argue that a business should centralize around only a limited number of customers.
However, has anyone tried to quantify just how difficult it is to get those 100? Even for unpaid followers/listeners I've never managed to get more than a handful.
The only thing new about this is that it's happening online; offering courses for $1000 is not exactly a new thing, it's a business that has existed for ever.
And I'm pretty sure that most of these customers aren't long-time fans. People will pay for access to a course, but they aren't going to take the course over and over again.
"Starts with the user's needs and pain points - motivated by self-interest - desire for improvement, transformation and/or exclusive access"
So, you need to get fit/get in shape! $40/month for my nutrition and exercise coaching! Go green and zero-waste with my advice! How to teach your kids! Yoga and meditation to improve your health! How to pick up women! Break into your dream career/TV writing/comedy! Be your own boss! Etc, etc. Some needs are never satiated.
VCs are only interested monetizing the "product" aspect of creative ventures so they rephrase the key concepts in MBA blandspeak.
This doesn't apply to webnovels. There are people there making over $1000 a month (some over $15 000) publishing completely free webnovels.
I don't consider authors of web novels or serials with Patreons like Wild bow or ErraticErrata to be representative of the broader population of authors on places such as Royal Road. I'd assume the total income distribution of web novel authors to be fairly top heavy.
As always in the creative industry, the earnings are on a steeply descending exponential curve. But people still make good money out of a couple of hundreds fans.
I'm kidding.
For each example the author mentions there are 100s if not 1,000s more who are wasting their time. We just aren’t a society where most people donate thousands or even hundreds of dollars out of altruism or for “exclusive access” except in a few niche scenarios.
I personally subscribe to a few content creators on Patreon. These people are very talented and have die-hard fans, because frankly their work is seriously exceptional and unique, and they make money. But not $1000 or even $100 per person, more like $1000 a month in total. The average subscriber donates ~$5 per month.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t do Patreon, in fact I think Patreon is a great tool to give you a) motivation, b) feedback, and c) a decent supplement to your income which is at least part of what you deserve for your work. But don’t think you can quit your job and do Patreon full time, that won’t happen unless you’re especially lucky or successful, and it takes years of work. And don’t think doing Patreon full time is any easier than a full-time job either.
Not to mention, the audience who donates is often very different than your main audience, who are very different than the creator himself/herself. Often what gets the most money isn’t what the most people want: case in point, mobile games, or at least mobile-style AAA games. And, often what gets the most views (and thus ad revenue) isn’t what the creator likes to create: case in point, clickbait videos and the “kid-ification” of popular YouTube channels.
Work on your passion, but don’t expect to work full-time on it.
I follow some folks on YouTube for a variety of topics, they're highly skilled, give great advice / technical information (everything from games to coding) and are very professional / great speakers and presenters.
They get noticeably few donations compared to folks who emphasize acting out and a sort of wonky infotainment (where the information is sometimes dead wrong).
It's a bit disheartening.
There are relatively few content creators making $100k/yr from a single platform, but there are tons of people making that and more by utilizing all of the platforms. The first piece of advice I always give to musicians is to treat every social media and streaming platform as its own "venue" with their own unique set of users -- because they are. Always performing at the same venue in your hometown isn't going to be lucrative or sustainable, so you branch out to other venues and other cities, because that's the only way to find new markets.
The same is true for all content creation. Focusing on in-person performances ignores the entire online market, which is >99% of potential revenue. Focusing on Twitch ignores the opportunities of TikTok and YouTube. But if you take the time to understand the quirks of each platform and its users, and then chop up your content into sizes and styles appropriate for each platform, it's actually extremely easy to go from zero online presence to $10k/mo within two years.
Not everybody understands Patreon or wants to use it (and frankly, it's not a very usable site), so if your subscriptions are solely based around that platform, then you're ignoring 95% of the potential subscriber market and making everything more difficult than it needs to be. Content is content. It can go anywhere, and investing a few days into learning basic video editing makes content distribution a breeze.