1000 True Fans Revisited

Is the vintage internet marketing article still relevant?

If you’re an internet marketing OG, just reading the headline to this article probably made you feel all nostalgic and tingly inside.

Reading 1000 True Fans (written back in 2008) was a lightbulb moment for anyone involved in the internet marketing game in the late 00’s-early 10’s era.

Good memories from that time indeed. A true wild west era.

The article for any newbies who are unaware: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

(For the OG’s: It’s definitely worth rereading for nostalgia purposes)

Why this article became famous

The reason this article was groundbreaking was because, at the time, pop culture taught everyone that success was all-or-nothing: You’re either a superstar or a pleb. Nothing in-between.

1000 True Fans presented a middle ground: You don’t need a million superfans. You only need a thousand of them to make a decent living (defined as $100k/yr: 1000 people each spending $100/yr = $100k).

But the 1000 can’t be passive fans who are kind-of-sort-of interested in what you do. They have to be obsessed:

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

If you want to build your base of True Fans, the article said, you have to do it all yourself:

The key challenge is that you have to maintain direct contact with your 1,000 True Fans. They are giving you their support directly. Maybe they come to your house concerts, or they are buying your DVDs from your website, or they order your prints from Pictopia. As much as possible you retain the full amount of their support. You also benefit from the direct feedback and love.

The technologies of connection and small-time manufacturing make this circle possible. Blogs and RSS feeds trickle out news, and upcoming appearances or new works. Web sites host galleries of your past work, archives of biographical information, and catalogs of paraphernalia. Diskmakers, Blurb, rapid prototyping shops, Myspace, Facebook, and the entire digital domain all conspire to make duplication and dissemination in small quantities fast, cheap and easy. You don’t need a million fans to justify producing something new. A mere one thousand is sufficient.

You have to remember the mindset people had in the 00’s to truly understand how groundbreaking this concept was.

Back then, creative types had been trained to think that they needed a gatekeeper/intermediary between them and their fans: Record label, publisher, gallery, etc.

The idea of going direct to the fans didn’t really cross most people’s minds (as insane as that sounds today).

There are many from the OG era who owe their success the the mindset shift they experienced while reading this article.

Does it hold up in 2025?

Online marketing is (obviously) VERY different now.

Most people in 2008 didn’t even know that it was possible to make money online.

Now EVERYONE has some type of side hustle.

Kids don’t want to become astronauts or athletes any more. They want to become influencers.

Online marketing has gone mainstream. Meaning: There’s a lot more competition.

Downside: It’s harder to stand out

If you’re young, you won’t even believe the type of low-effort content that went viral back in the day.

People were starved for content and were perpetually bored.

I remember my friend telling me about Dexter. I immediately went to Blockbuster and rented the first season on DVD because I was so happy to hear about a good show to watch.

Life was BORING AF in the 00’s (I miss it).

Compare that with the glut of content that exists today. Now you get annoyed if someone tells you about a new show or (god forbid) sends a ‘funny’ video to you and later asks if you watched it.

“JFC I already have too much stuff to consume, why are you sending me this?”

As someone trying to make a living online, you have to work a lot harder to break out then at any other time in the history of the interwebs.

Modern social media algorithms haven’t made things any easier.

Back in the day, if someone followed you on Facebook they saw 100% of what you posted.

A user’s “wall” showed EVERYTHING anyone posted in reverse chronological order.

The only way your followers didn’t see your content is if they didn’t log in at the right time and/or didn’t feel like scrolling down far enough.

It was a true meritocracy. Your audience was your audience.

Now?

You have to play the cringey algorithm engagement-bait game.

People only see a small percentage of what you post (applies to all social media sites).

It’s possible have tens of thousands of followers yet only a few hundred see what you’ve just posted.

Now you don’t only have to worry about how to get initial eyeballs on your content, you have to think about how to keep them there. Every day is a new battle in the Attention Economy. No one cares what you did yesterday. How can you stay relevant TODAY?

You have to constantly compete for “your” audience’s attention. Insane to think about.

The game has definitely gotten harder in that regard.

But there are more opportunities to monetize your audience than ever before

Assuming you’re able to escape the algorithmic gravitational pull that’s trying to drag all of us down into obscurity, it’s now a lot easier to make money from your True Fans.

First of all: People are much more willing to pay for content now than they were back in the day.

The 00’s were the Torrent Era. Consumers weren’t willing to pay for anything they couldn’t physically hold in their hand. The idea of a ‘digital product’ was laughable. And subscribing to content online? Forget about it.

Spotify, Netflix, et.al. have now trained people to view digital content subscriptions as normal. Buying eBooks/audiobooks is a normal thing (although physical books are making a strong comeback). Renting/buying digital versions of movies is the default.

As an individual creator, you now have things like Patreon, Substack, Medium, YouTube, and yes, OnlyFans that all let people directly subscribe to you, and people are willing to do it.

Paywalls are a normal and accepted part of online life. Consumers don’t throw temper tantrums over them anymore.

Physical products are easier to create/sell

Having products manufactured in the 00’s was an ORDEAL. Don’t get me started on dealing with the logistics. A total nightmare.

Now you can white label anything.

Drinks, toothpaste, supplements, food, cosmetics, apparel. Anything can be white-labeled and there are fulfillment companies that will handle the storage and shipping for you.

Once you have a product, you can throw up a professional-looking Shopify store without any coding knowledge whatsoever.

It’s as close to turnkey as it gets.

Final verdict: Does 1000 True Fans hold up?

The answer is obviously: Yes.

$100k isn’t what is used to be, but it’s still a living. If you can get a thousand people to spend $100/year each, you can make a living.

Should you aim higher?

Yes, of course.

But sometimes focusing on a quote-unquote achievable goal helps people stay motivated. The bar for making a living online is a lot lower than most people think.

The caveat is that it’s a LOT harder to get to the make-a-living point than it was back then, but the flip side to that caveat is that there are now a lot more different ways you can monetize your audience.

To sum it up: Making a living online is simultaneously easier and harder than it’s ever been before.

So the article is still relevant. Dated, but still worth reading if you’ve never read it before.