1,000 True Fans (2008)
kk.org
kk.org
On the one hand, you've got creators whose fans like them for their branding and personality, and whose fans often come under the 'true fan' label described in the article. For these types of creators and businesses, getting 1000 of these fans is basically going to guarantee them a small but potentially sustainable income stream for a lifestyle business or what not.
These are your artists, YouTubers, indie game developers, etc.
On the other hand, you've got the 'scale' type of business or service, which offers products or services that fill a need without really banking on its own branding or identity. These types of creators and businesses don't tend to have 'true' fans, and become popular purely because their offerings are convenient, cheap or basically mandatory in some way.
See also the likes of Walmart, McDonalds, the average bank or a utility company. Or perhaps a generic service site online.
These would probably sink without a trace if they tried to live off Patreon or similar services, and will basically have to keep competitors out of their market or die.
And I suspect the former are probably in a better position in the long run, especially in today's market.
And the consequence of that is that it starves the room of oxygen for smaller creators. A game from Nintendo might not quite the right game for you, but the broad appeal and polish ultimately leads you to spend $60 and 60 hours playing it instead of taking a risk on a few indies. And so it goes with everything that tries to operate against bigger firms. You have to overcome the framing of risk and price sensitivity and replace it with something truly unique that overcomes low awareness. When the business is globalized that can be a really tall order.
But the difference is that if say Nintendo were small, they could probably still at least keep going with a few thousand fans, whereas a failing business going the Walmart/Amazon route would likely fold quite quickly.
I know some Youtubers who have close to a million subscribers and over 250 million views on their channel but they have like 100 Patreon subscribers and make $300 / month from it.
Really goes to show you how hard it is to get those 1,000 true fans on some platforms, and that having those fans won't necessarily put you into a "I've made it!" situation depending on where they came from.