Here's an interesting article: 1000 True Fans

[sff_corgi_lj]

A concept where fandom is actually seen as economically valuable.

It's a little long, but worth a few minutes. What are your thoughts? (Other than 'Happy Birthday', that is.)

Comments

[alicebentley]

I haven't re-read the article recently (though I went through the whole thing when it first came out).

I think one point missed by a lot of the conversation when that came out is that the 1,000 true fans are not the same group as the people who read your webcomic and then buy your T-shirt, even though they probably think they are. To throw some numbers at it: If you need to acquire $100,000 in one year to make a reasonable living (and lemme tell you, that's conservative, because since you're self-employed you cover both your taxes and your employer's share, so take at least 40% of that right off the top), that's $100 dollars per [true fan] per year. NOT including any production expenses you might encounter, like actually designing, printing, storing, packing and shipping T-shirts.

So in the webcomic world, it would be more reasonable to talk about 10,000 fans, and figure that between wallpaper donations, the part you get to keep from making the T-shirts, the part you get to keep from printing the books, etc., an active creator may indeed net $10 per year from each.

The bad news is, you have to keep the production-of-stuff going, and there's no reason to count on your popularity holding over the long haul. The good news is, that's possible - obviously, as dozens of people are currently making their living doing free webcomics.

And birthdays are fun! Glad to see another one!

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

I wonder what the proportions work out to - 1 Trufan = 1+n Loyal Fans = 1+n+n Casual Fans...?