Make Money Online With 1,000 True Fans in 2024

Make Money Online With 1,000 True Fans

Get the Free Guide for Creators: What Is 1000 True Fans?


In 2008, Kevin Kelly, Wired editor wrote an essay called “1,000 True Fans,” predicting the internet would allow large groups of people to make a living off their creations, whether you’re an artist, musician, author, or entrepreneur. This concept of 1,000 true fans still holds:

“A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. You don’t need to become famous. If you can get just 1,000 people to spend $100 dollars a year, you can earn a very reasonable living.”

Kevin’s advice is to focus on values and lifestyles to attract your 1,000 true fans. To make a living with a micro niche, as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only 1,000 true fans.

True fans not only are the direct source of your income, but also your chief marketing force for ordinary fans. It has never been easier to gather 1,000 true fans around a creator, and never easier to keep them near.

The Art Party volunteered for the Digital IMPACT Festival (July 16 to 19, 2020) with a reach of 1.7 million views from over 250,000 unique visitors! That was achieved partially through the principle of “1,000 True Fans”. There were over 100 artists (DJs, musicians, visual artists and performers) and 50 workshop leaders, each with their own fan base. We also partnered with other non-profits and sponsors with audiences.


How to Find Your True Fans in 20 Minutes or Less

To find your true fans, you need to find a niche for your online business. If you don’t, chances are you won’t get very far. If you want to be a successful creative entrepreneur, then you need to focus on finding a niche that will allow you to focus on creating successful online products and services. If you haven’t found your niche yet, here’s how you can find it in 20 minutes or less.

Finding Keywords to Work With

Searching for niche ideas is incredibly easy when you use Google’s Keyword Planner Tool. The tool is free, and it allows you to discover both local and global search volume numbers for keywords, related keywords, and the competitiveness of those keywords. When it comes to choosing a niche, you want to find keywords that have a minimum of 1,000 searches a month. You also will want to make sure that the keywords you choose aren’t overly competitive as well. Choose low or medium competition, rather than high competition. For example, cat prints.

Determining the Competitiveness of the Keywords

Once you’ve found some keywords that you think you want to work with and which ones you want to focus your time on, you can start to check out how competitive each one is. You can do this by typing your chosen keyword into the Google search bar to see how many other pages show up on the results pages. Don’t forget to spend some time looking at the video and image search results as well. This will allow you to see what other kinds of competition you’ll be up against besides the organic search results and PPC customers.

Making a Decision

Now that you have found some relevant keywords and determined the competitiveness of those keywords, you can decide whether or not you will move forward with your niche idea. If the organic competition is low and there isn’t a lot of paid-for competition, then you can feel reasonably confident in moving forward with your idea. However, if the competition is high, you might want to move through the process again to find a better niche to enter. If you decide to move forward, the next thing you should do is select a domain name that fits your keyword.

Choosing a niche for your online business doesn’t have to be a long, drawn-out process. Following these three steps will help you choose your niche in 20 minutes or less, and you’ll have your online business up and running in no time.


How 1000 True Fans Can Support Crowdfunding

One of the many new innovations serving the true fan creator is crowdfunding with fans financing your next product for them. The crowdfunding platform Patreon has become the embodiment of true fans for creators—and Kelly mentioned this platform in his 2016 update of “1,000 True Fans”.

Patreon enables creators to set up monthly, subscription-style payment tiers, with different pledges for different levels of content. For example, a patron could subscribe for $5 per month and receive early access to the creator’s content.

The Art Party co-produced the sold-out Crowdfunding Success Workshop to help 270 Creatives & Changemakers get their projects funded. The keynote speaker for the workshop was Daryl Hatton, CEO of Fundrazr.

Founded in 2008, Fundrazr was originally created to be a Facebook app for users to crowdfund money over Facebook. Since then, users are able to log in to FundRazr using several other platforms. FundRazr is passionate about providing an alternative funding source for startups, charities, and personal causes.

There are other crowdfunding platforms, including Start Some Good for creatives, changemakers, non-profits and social enterprises. It offers step-by-step video training to learn crowdfunding as an online fundraising toolkit. This enables you to raise funds, to validate a new idea and build community around your new project or venture.

To learn the basics of building your 1,000 True Fans, we’ve put together a short 8-page report on how to get started:

Turn Your Creativity Into An Online Business

  • If you can get “just 1,000 people to spend $100 dollars a year, you can earn a very reasonable living”.
  • Discover, meet and grow your true fans. Start making money online with your creativity.
  • To start getting true fans, you need an automated process with no tech skills.

Zoe Cat Prints