Project: One Thousand True Fans (Being Day 21 of Gameplan)
1020 True Fans
This is day 1 of One Thousand True Fans , today’s dispatch is titled 1020 true fans. You can check out the entire Gameplan here.
Project Notes: This week we’ll be getting a bit more personal in our diaries as we question our goals as creatives in relation to money, some of us might have no goals for our art related to money at all, and then it might move on to selling something at a weekend market, to making a living. In every case we’ll explore the questions. For the assignments, feel free to share sparingly, cover some key details if you need to or be as open as you like.
"To be a successful creator you don't need millions. You don't need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans."
That’s a relief ainnit.
As a kid of 5, or even 25, I hardly knew what a million was, it was an abstract unattainable concept. It was equated to making it, in any field, it felt like any thing worth doing was only worth doing if you could get a million something out of it.
Sell a painting for a million dollars, sell a million copies of a book, have a million dollars in the bank, and so on… But how do you get from anywhere to a million. And more importantly is a million even the right number?
Kevin Kelly’s famous article, transformed that idea, and should probably be credited to why the creator economy is even a thing.
Today we’re going to be talking about numbers, specifically the money we will need to earn from our art, to just do the thing. ( if you have no intention to make money from your art, I hope you will take this as a form of general knowledge, or perhaps, a ‘what if’ exercise.