1k True Fans? Try 100 (2020) | Hacker News Reader

1k True Fans? Try 100 (2020)

future.a16z.com

152 pointssuperasn139 comments

I work for a company that's very much like Patreon for podcasters (Supercast). The people who will pay $1K a year to support a creator absolutely exist, but they are a small subset of the people who will pay $100 / year, which is itself a very small subset of the people who will listen to your podcast.

Some rough numbers:

- A podcast with an engaged fan base can usually get about 5% of their listeners to support them monthly / yearly

- Of the paid supporters, 1-2% are going to be the big spenders who spend in $1K a year territory.

So sure, you can be self-sufficient on 100 $1K a year fans, but to get there, you need 5,000 $100 / year fans (which needs 100,000 listeners), and not doing anything for them is leaving money on the table.

That's encouraging if you think of it as a funnel optimization problem.

What can I do for the $100 per year set? T shirts or other swag? Signed merch?

What can I do for the $10 per year set? Stickers?

Interestingly, I think most creators are already doing this intuitively without any analysis telling them to.

Surprisingly we don't have a ton of creators offering swag stuff, I'd have assumed that it would have been a bigger draw (Some of that might have to do with us not really offering any support on our platform, but it's not a common request either).

If there's a "product" to sell, it's usually either the content itself, or access through things like community. But like I said in another comment, how much people spend isn't very correlated with what they get out of it at all.

This is pretty interesting! I've been thinking about a platform for unique swag for podcasters, streamers, youtubers, etc. as I think there's definitely an opportunity to engage with fans there, but I imagine it's pretty overwhelming and expensive to figure out how to do it effectively if you are busy producing content. I sell an item that'd be perfect for those folks to giveaway/sell and I know how hard it is to figure out shipping and logistics.

This is what MCNs do. They're basically talent agencies for YouTubers, and they handle stuff like ad placement, sponsored content, and merch.

Maybe it’s just early days?

I remember in early internet times webcomics were one of the few niches where creators were trying to make a living on the internet.

At first it was “easy” - ad rates were super inflated in the dot com boom, and people were making rent with “punch the monkey and win” banner ads.

Then came the crash and the bottom fell out of the ad market. A lot of creators just went away, but the ones who held on generally monetized via merch.

Granted, these were people that were both funny and had graphic design chops, so novelty t-shirts were a natural fit.

Presumably the buyer demand was always there, but no one discovered it until they were forced to do the hard thing of flailing for cash.

Possibly as the market matures and people test more monetization methods we’ll see more podcast shwag.

I'm not sure about creators, but I get swag and invites from charities and it annoys me. I'm donating to give them resources, if I want a T Shirt I'll buy one myself thanks, I dont need them spending money on me.

Two things:

1 - Them sending you a teeshirt is a form of advertising. They're hoping you will wear it and be an advocate for them in your social circle. This is a reasonable thing to spend money on.

2 - Engagement. They're trying to keep you engaged in what they're doing, this is valuable too.

Of course, you don't want them spending all their resources on this, but a certain percentage is absolutely a good idea. This is why you should care about non-profits statements about % of funds that go towards the charity vs overhead.

I disagree that Tshirts are a reasonable marketing expense. For one thing, they're relatively expensive to produce and ship on a per unit basis, and you will need to order in multiple sizes. Second, most 'brand' t-shirts are low effort logo templates made from BigCartel.com that look fugly. They're clearly an afterthought.

And because of that, those tshirts will end up in a landfill somewhere, just like the majority of soulless corporate swag that you'd accumulate visiting a trade show.

I bought 2 dozen mixed T-shirts and hoodies (mostly T-shirts) with the logo for my business on them front and back in two sizes (the logo, not the shirts). Because I wear these things daily, I bought good T-shirts and good hoodies: tagless 100% cotton (mixed polyester increases pilling). I think I was in for about $15 a T-shirt. More for the hoodie, obviously.

I'm not getting any kind of volume rate on these for a 2 dozen shirt order of mixed sizes (for friends and family as well). I can't imagine anybody ordering in real quantity is paying more than $10 a shirt, even for good ones.

If you go through somebody whose business is making and shipping t-shirts, you get the benefit of their lower shipping rates and their bulk purchasing power for the shirts). If you're handing them out at a trade show, your unit cost to ship a couple hundred shirts is negligible.

For me, my T-shirts for my business are effectively free: they replace other t-shirts I'd have to buy (or would, once I got through all the company and trade show swag from when I worked software). Plus they promote my business. And when they're too beat up to wear, they become shop rags before they hit the trash.

I think you make some valid points (sizes are a nuisance), but I don't think T-shirts are the clear stinker for the folks giving them away that you think they are.

I donated ONE TIME to a classical radio network in Southern California and over the next 5 years they proceeded to send me mailers that cost at least what I'd donated. They did eventually stop.

You're confusing the intent here.

A creator would effectively be selling swag at a markup by giving a reward at a certain backing tier. It's like your local NPR'S funding drive - you give them $100, they give you a tote bag or whatever with their logo on it.

Everyone wins - you buy cool branded merch, the creator gets to sell at a large markup as "fundraising".

That's not the same as being sent a free t shirt with the hopes of them wearing it.

> So sure, you can be self-sufficient on 100 $1K a year fans, but to get there, you need 5,000 $100 / year fans (which needs 100,000 listeners), and not doing anything for them is leaving money on the table.

And probably more importantly, losing people out of the funnel: after all, most people don't go from 0 to $1k/year fan in an instant; they'll try out the free service, upgrade to being a $100/year fan, and from there upgrade to being a $1k/year fan. The pitch of this article, it seemed to me, isn't to get rid of the lower tiers, but to add an extra tier on the top.

>most people don't go from 0 to $1k/year fan in an instant; they'll try out the free service, upgrade to being a $100/year fan, and from there upgrade to being a $1k/year fan

How do you know this? I'm mentally contrasting with monetization in games which I don't think follows that model, I think it is more like; if you are spending over 100$ its by repeating some smaller behavior (microtransactions), as opposed to deepening your investment thoughtfully as a function of time. Or, you're going to kickstart a game, and from the outset you're probably going to fall loosely into one bin of 20$-200$-2000$.

I don't have anything to back up what I'm suggesting (purely anecdotal) and I'm asking you because I'm interested in sturdier arguments than my own (or other experiences leading to different perspectives!).

For games it can be frequency of transaction as well as amount that increases over time. I don't think either case is about being particularly thoughtful though. More a sign of that thing becoming more important in your life.

hmmm.

Ok, then I think I can more clearly restate my root question as: "do people upgrade pledge or commitment amounts as a consistent part of becoming one of the top contributers?"

I suspect they don't. I suspect you may increase rate/intensity of microtransactions as a natural part of interaction, but if the financial transaction part isn't an active part of the interaction cycle then the contribution amount probably stays pretty static.

I wonder where I could get data to sketch this out.

Whether contributions are steady support or a constant drip of (sometimes quite large) support varies tremendously by industry.

Games rely a lot on the one-time / tip model through Twitch.

Podcasts are almost exclusively through recurring subscriptions / support.

My impression of video / YouTube is that a lot of it comes through stuff like merch which is more of a drip of one-time support, but there's definitely continual support there as well, so a bit mixed?

I suspect that it would be hard to experiment too far outside of the standard in any of those contexts, since you'd have to convince people to support you in ways that aren't the norm.

Makes sense. You can't focus on just the true fans, because at first, you don't have any. First you focus on just getting listeners, then on fans who are willing to pay something, and only once that group gets big enough, does it make sense to focus on the $1000/y "true" fans.

And if your numbers are correct, you're already making $500k/y from $100 fans by the time you can make $100k/y from the $1000 fans. So the middle is still more lucrative, even if the top is growing.

Podcast pricing is in it’s wildly crazy phase.

As an example, Sam Harris is charging $15 / month. Good for him that he’s able to pull it off, but man, that’s more than most streaming services.

Your supercast is charging $0.59 / month per sub going through your platform on top of stripe fees. So if you had a niche but interesting podcast you can’t just charge $1.00 / month and generate any revenue. These fees are a massive friction. Just the Stripe fees without additional markup is a lot of friction on small transactions.

Yeah, $5 a month is really the minimum where it starts to make sense with Supercast.

I haven't run the numbers, but my gut tells me that supporters really aren't as price sensitive as you think. The conversion rates on a $5 / month podcast and a $10 / month one aren't all that different. Again, for a lot of podcasts, it's less about purchasing a product and more about supporting a creator.

Supporting super niche podcasts that want to sell for $1.00 a month unfortunately doesn't make much sense for us since our costs are fairly fixed per subscriber.

> The conversion rates on a $5 / month podcast and a $10 / month one aren't all that different.

IMO $5.00 is still beyond the price anchoring in most people's minds. You're getting close to the range of Apple TV premium, Youtube premium, Disney plus, Prime, and other bundled content services. Competing as a single content producer is going to be tough. It's natural you get mostly consumers that want to support you, instead of just people who are selfishly interested in the content, of which there are likely a lot more.

The thing is, for most creators, there's not really much content to sell. The bulk of creators are going to distribute the vast majority of their content for free (they wouldn't be able to get the audience to monetize in the first place if they didn't), so if you're looking at it from the perspective of the value you get for your subscription fee, frankly for most podcasts you're not coming out ahead even at a dollar or two.

Maybe, but only if you compare it to those things. I support tons of people on patreon and other platforms and never have I once thought about comparing it to my Netflix subscription, it's just totally different.

Netflix and co are a utility and you expect to pay low utility costs for it, but supporting a creator is something you do because you are excited and look forward to what they do next and their contribution to the world and more specifically your day. What are you more excited for, sitting down to your daily Netflix or getting the latest podcast/comic/picture from your favourite creator? Who will disappear if you don't support them and be lost forever?

I just started a podcast a few weeks ago [1] where I interview other folks who work at Microsoft to answer the question that I often had back when we had company meetings: what do all of these people do? I was surprised that I hadn't heard of Supercast before. At what point does it make sense for me to start thinking about services like Supercast? Is there a threshold of # subscribers, downloads, some other metric that makes sense?

[1] https://john-lam-podcast.simplecast.com/

If you have engaged listeners, over time you should be able to convert about 5% of them (generally for $5-10 a month). When that becomes worth it is up to you, but we generally don't see super successful launches for podcasts with less than 10,000 downloads per episode.

Thanks! That gives me a concrete goal to strive for.

Your assessment has a name: power law!

This is one reason why medians are used with income/wealth. Some people skew the average.

What the article is describing isn't "fans" as much as plain old "customers". Almost all the examples given in the article are people doing courses. If you sell a course for $1000, then the person buying it isn't a "fan" who just gives you money, the buyer is just a customer who buys a service.

The only thing new about this is that it's happening online; offering courses for $1000 is not exactly a new thing, it's a business that has existed for ever.

And I'm pretty sure that most of these customers aren't long-time fans. People will pay for access to a course, but they aren't going to take the course over and over again.

These aren't educational courses, they're self-help/improvement courses.

"Starts with the user's needs and pain points - motivated by self-interest - desire for improvement, transformation and/or exclusive access"

So, you need to get fit/get in shape! $40/month for my nutrition and exercise coaching! Go green and zero-waste with my advice! How to teach your kids! Yoga and meditation to improve your health! How to pick up women! Break into your dream career/TV writing/comedy! Be your own boss! Etc, etc. Some needs are never satiated.

But it's the VC world. They need to come up with new, innovative concepts so they can be seen as a thought leader! /s

The original essay that this pulls its title from from was written in 2008, and used examples of self-published authors and musicians - purely creative works. None of the startup-bubble, hustle-culture fueled BS that infected the following decade.

VCs are only interested monetizing the "product" aspect of creative ventures so they rephrase the key concepts in MBA blandspeak.

>What the article is describing isn't "fans" as much as plain old "customers".

This doesn't apply to webnovels. There are people there making over $1000 a month (some over $15 000) publishing completely free webnovels.

> This doesn't apply to webnovels. There are people there making over $1000 a month (some over $15 000) publishing completely free webnovels.

I don't consider authors of web novels or serials with Patreons like Wild bow or ErraticErrata to be representative of the broader population of authors on places such as Royal Road. I'd assume the total income distribution of web novel authors to be fairly top heavy.

Wildbow makes two to three times less than other authors on royalroad.

As always in the creative industry, the earnings are on a steeply descending exponential curve. But people still make good money out of a couple of hundreds fans.

Yeah, in an ideal world content creators could make an entire salary off of donations and offering simple perks and exclusive access. But actually this is a terrible career advice and relatively few people actually end up making anywhere close to $100k on Twitch or Patreon.

For each example the author mentions there are 100s if not 1,000s more who are wasting their time. We just aren’t a society where most people donate thousands or even hundreds of dollars out of altruism or for “exclusive access” except in a few niche scenarios.

I personally subscribe to a few content creators on Patreon. These people are very talented and have die-hard fans, because frankly their work is seriously exceptional and unique, and they make money. But not $1000 or even $100 per person, more like $1000 a month in total. The average subscriber donates ~$5 per month.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t do Patreon, in fact I think Patreon is a great tool to give you a) motivation, b) feedback, and c) a decent supplement to your income which is at least part of what you deserve for your work. But don’t think you can quit your job and do Patreon full time, that won’t happen unless you’re especially lucky or successful, and it takes years of work. And don’t think doing Patreon full time is any easier than a full-time job either.

Not to mention, the audience who donates is often very different than your main audience, who are very different than the creator himself/herself. Often what gets the most money isn’t what the most people want: case in point, mobile games, or at least mobile-style AAA games. And, often what gets the most views (and thus ad revenue) isn’t what the creator likes to create: case in point, clickbait videos and the “kid-ification” of popular YouTube channels.

Work on your passion, but don’t expect to work full-time on it.

Cum Town makes close to 100k per month on Patreon. Proof that you can make a lot of money by just fucking around.

Well someone can ... "you" probably can't ;)

I don't know dude, I've got a pretty foul mouth and opinions.

Wasn't this a spinoff of an existing successful podcast made by the same people? They might already have had a built-in audience who'd be willing to pay.

Your second to last paragraph rings true for me.

I follow some folks on YouTube for a variety of topics, they're highly skilled, give great advice / technical information (everything from games to coding) and are very professional / great speakers and presenters.

They get noticeably few donations compared to folks who emphasize acting out and a sort of wonky infotainment (where the information is sometimes dead wrong).

It's a bit disheartening.

> But actually this is a terrible career advice and relatively few people actually end up making anywhere close to $100k on Twitch or Patreon. [...] I think Patreon is a great tool to give you a decent supplement to your income

There are relatively few content creators making $100k/yr from a single platform, but there are tons of people making that and more by utilizing all of the platforms. The first piece of advice I always give to musicians is to treat every social media and streaming platform as its own "venue" with their own unique set of users -- because they are. Always performing at the same venue in your hometown isn't going to be lucrative or sustainable, so you branch out to other venues and other cities, because that's the only way to find new markets.

The same is true for all content creation. Focusing on in-person performances ignores the entire online market, which is >99% of potential revenue. Focusing on Twitch ignores the opportunities of TikTok and YouTube. But if you take the time to understand the quirks of each platform and its users, and then chop up your content into sizes and styles appropriate for each platform, it's actually extremely easy to go from zero online presence to $10k/mo within two years.

Not everybody understands Patreon or wants to use it (and frankly, it's not a very usable site), so if your subscriptions are solely based around that platform, then you're ignoring 95% of the potential subscriber market and making everything more difficult than it needs to be. Content is content. It can go anywhere, and investing a few days into learning basic video editing makes content distribution a breeze.

Obviously this is HN and not r/Livestreamfail, but the vast majority of Super Fans are not buying courses or supporting the development of content.

The real Super Fans have an unhealthy obsession with an online personality and think they are going to buy a friendship, or a girlfriend, or some other reciprocity. I worked in this industry for a bit. A lot of times big donors will dump their life savings or steal a family member or relative's credit card (Which is why the rate of chargebacks is so high). The companies pushing this have all the data and know exactly what's going on, but market to this demographic anyway.

IMO it's no different than a Casino taking advantage of someone with a gambling addiction. It's not a "Passion Economy" it's an economy of exploitation and social dysfunction.

I've consulted with several hundred live streamers, and none of what you're saying is reflective of their experiences. It is outrageously false and disparaging to claim that the vast majority (or even a significant portion) of large contributors are somehow dysfunctional and that content creators are exploiting them.

Some people build cars for fun and spend their disposable income on that experience. Other people enjoy online content and spend their disposable income ensuring that content keeps getting made, or can be made even better. To declare an entire populations' preferred hobby as "dysfunctional" is plainly inflammatory and entirely inappropriate.

> The companies pushing this have all the data and know exactly what's going on, but market to this demographic anyway.

"The companies" aren't marketing high-cost options in any way. Twitch's highest subscription tier is $25/mo. Patreon suggests a higher tier of $30. Those are not "ruin mom's credit" or "dump your life savings" prices, so it's disingenuous (at best) to suggest that something nefarious and exploitative is happening in regards to platforms' marketing efforts.

> "The companies" aren't marketing high-cost options in any way. Twitch's highest subscription tier is $25/mo. Patreon suggests a higher tier of $30. Those are not "ruin mom's credit" or "dump your life savings" prices, so it's disingenuous (at best) to suggest that something nefarious and exploitative is happening in regards to platforms' marketing efforts.

You're ignoring superchats and tips which is where most of the money comes from. Watch any fairly popular livestream, especially during the "just chatting" style periods, and you'll see $500, $1000 or higher superchats getting dumped in every few minutes.

I mainly watch VTubers (never paid one money, for the record...) and the so-called "Girlfriend Experience" (or Boyfriend Experience, to a much lesser extent) is a real thing. Look at what happened to Uruha Rushia -- she accidentally leaked that she was dating someone and that caused her entire contract to get terminated.[0] Her "GFE" style made her the top Hololive earner in 2021, making $1.6 million from superchats alone.[1]

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/t06ryl/what_i...

[1] https://animecorner.me/hololive-vtubers-dominate-top-10-list...

> You're ignoring superchats and tips which is where most of the money comes from.

Tips represent less than 40% of revenue for nearly every type of content creator, so let's not exaggerate things. Super Chats are also limited to $500, so you're exaggerating the amounts you've seen.

More importantly, you're conflating the original comment's generalization about how "the vast majority" of all highly-supportive fans have "unhealthy obsessions and are trying to have a girlfriend experience." Whereas what you're discussing is a corporate content farm[1] of exactly 61 brands, most of which are specifically designed to create a "girlfriend experience" in order to intentionally develop obsessions. That is an extremely specific situation which is not representative for >99% of content creators.

[1] https://virtualyoutuber.fandom.com/wiki/Hololive

Hololive is just one example within a specific niche (and even within VTubers it's not the only one -- Nijisanji is pretty large as well now). Are you really telling me that people like Amouranth, Valkyrae, and Pokimane aren't aware of the girlfriend experience? That the whole hot tub streaming drama that led to the creation of an entire new Twitch category wasn't extremely exploitative of lonely, addicted men?

Unhealthy parasocial relationships are an extremely lucrative revenue stream for content creators, just like whales with gacha games. Platforms do nothing to discourage this and in fact even encourage it.

Again, you're exaggerating everything. There are literally dozens of hot tubbers among many tens of millions of creators. You're purely discussing extreme niches which, even when combined, don't represent a significant portion of the overall market. So, I'll reiterate that making a declaration of "the vast majority of super fans being dysfunctional and exploited" is outrageously false and disparaging, not to mention being based on no actual data or working knowledge.

You two sure know a lot about this stuff ;)

Rushia had five whales donating over $25k to her. I saw a Ninomae Inanis fan drop $30k in Ame's charity stream. Coco had fans that would use two or three alternate accounts to drop multiple $500 chats per stream.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Super Chats are limited to $500 per user per day, so the parent comment's claim of seeing individual $1,000+ Super Chats was false regardless of the total donations for a stream. Furthermore, people subverting the platform's limit does not magically make the company "nefariously marketing" and "taking advantage" of people. In fact, you're describing the opposite of nefarious, as the daily cap is clearly meant to slow the rate of individual contributions.

> "The companies" aren't marketing high-cost options in any way. Twitch's highest subscription tier is $25/mo.

Twitch has a "Gift 100 subs $499" button right in the gift UI. If you haven't noticed that with the several hundred live streamers you've consulted with then it seems by definition the streamers you interact with do not have the Super Fans being discussed yet such fans are common enough for Twitch to make UI for it.

Making an option available isn't the same as nefarious marketing and intentional exploitation, which is the entirely false claim being made by the OC. You're also acting incredibly inflammatory by suggesting that I am "ignorant of functionality" and "couldn't possibly work with streamers at that level." Unfortunately for your claim, I've consulted with several of Twitch's top 100 music streamers and have years of direct experience with every type of fan, super and otherwise. The OC's claims are nonsense, and your pedantic nitpicking isn't appropriate or applicable.

Please don't put quotation marks around words and claims which were not said. The quote was "If you haven't noticed that with the several hundred live streamers you've consulted with then it seems by definition the streamers you interact with do not have the Super Fans" and this does not contain either of those quotes or claims you're disparaging as they were never said. Not working with folks that try to get this type of viewer to press this button multiple times per months is a fantastic thing not something to get inflamed about. At the same time it doesn't mean these types of streamers and fans don't exist just because you don't work with them and clearly they do exist or Twitch wouldn't have bothered to make all of these types of options and fancy effects and the aforementioned bad example streams wouldn't have them triggered constantly.

I don't see this as a nit, the claim in question was:

> "The companies" aren't marketing high-cost options in any way. Twitch's highest subscription tier is $25/mo

Which is central to the arguments and the error core not inconsequential. Companies like Twitch have multiple high-cost options like the aforementioned $499 in one click gift button and the larger the cost for the option chosen the fancier/louder the button and after effects look. If you work with several of Twitches top streamers that's fantastic and it should be easy to verify there are many accounts spending orders of magnitude more than $25/month, super fans are the main folks being marketed to with these options and they make up the majority of their use.

Regarding the rest of the GP's claims when it comes to your response:

> Some people build cars for fun and spend their disposable income on that experience. Other people enjoy online content and spend their disposable income ensuring that content keeps getting made, or can be made even better. To declare an entire populations' preferred hobby as "dysfunctional" is plainly inflammatory and entirely inappropriate.

Super Fans donate hundreds of dollars per action to streamers who are sometimes making millions per year. This is not the "I'm tier 3 for my favorite streamer so they can stay full time" crowd it's the "I'm top bit donator/sub gifter on a top channel" crowd. I consider myself part of the former hobby/support group but I can't see any way to construe the latter group as part of the same hobby either. I'm open to hearing ways that whale segment could be though if you'd be willing to expound

> you haven't noticed [...] the streamers you interact with do not have [...] Please don't put quotation marks around words and claims which were not said.

You're pedantically nitpicking again, when you clearly understood that I was paraphrasing to highlight the obvious inflammatory intent behind your blatantly disparaging remarks. You're concocting confrontation. You even just edited your comment to include more disparaging commentary and suggestions that I'm ignorant of the existence of a group of people. All you did (before editing your comment) is claim that I don't know things because your extremely limited personal anecdotes somehow outweigh my professional experience, which is the definition of inflammatory behavior.

> Which is core to the arguments and the error major not minor. Companies like Twitch have multiple high-cost options

The core argument made by the OC was that "the vast majority of super fans" are "socially dysfunctional" and "companies pushing this have all the data and know exactly what's going on, but market to this demographic anyway." The suggestion here is that these companies are nefariously encouraging people to donate higher amounts. When in reality, the functionality to gift groups of subs isn't even visible by default on Twitch and the user needs to go out of their way to switch to the gift subs tab, before consciously deciding to click at the bottom of the list of amounts, which also requires scrolling on some mobile screen sizes before you can even see the higher amounts.

So, no, the higher-cost items are, in fact, not "pushed" or "marketed" as the OC or you suggest, which makes your entire argument a nitpick. All you did was mention that a thing existed, without providing any context or evidence as to how it's exploitative or how it could even be considered marketing. Twitch even makes a point in the site's verbiage of labeling any subs larger than $5 as "going above and beyond," which makes clear that even moderate amounts are more than is expected of the user. Again, the existence of functionality does not constitute nefarious behavior -- it doesn't even qualify as "marketing," and it definitely doesn't qualify as "exploiting dysfunctional users."

> Super Fans donate hundreds of dollars per action to streamers who are sometimes making millions per year. This is not the "I'm tier 3 for my favorite streamer so they can stay full time" crowd it's the "I'm top bit donator/sub gifter on a top channel" crowd. I consider myself part of the former hobby/support group but I can't see any way to construe the latter group as part of the same hobby either. I'm open to hearing ways that whale segment could be though if you'd be willing to expound

Super fans are not exclusive to million dollar streamers, so you're using a rare example to make generalizations which are not reflective of the overall industry or culture. The existence of a personality type which seeks attention by donating large amounts to see themselves on a leaderboard where thousands (or tens of thousands) of people are watching, does not magically mean that applies to all donors and, in fact, applies to so few donors that your argument really has no foundation.

For one of thousands of examples I could provide, a relatively small streamer I worked with has an average viewership of less than 150 per stream. Yet, roughly 20% of their regular viewers contribute more than $100/mo, with several over $500/mo, and exactly zero of them are doing it for attention -- a fact, given that there is no leaderboard and they receive no acknowledgement verbally or via overlays. In reality, most large contributors prefer to do so anonymously anyway, and streamers typically make a point of communicating with those supporters to ensure that larger donations aren't risking their financial well-being.

My edit was to add:

> Not working with folks that try to get this type of viewer to press this button multiple times per months is a fantastic thing not something to get inflamed about. At the same time it doesn't mean these types of streamers and fans don't exist just because you don't work with them and clearly they do exist or Twitch wouldn't have bothered to make all of these types of options and fancy effects and the aforementioned bad example streams wouldn't have them triggered constantly.

I'm genuinely interested in how/why this is being taken as disparaging or concocting confrontation. It's not intended to be so at all but often on the internet plain text can be interpreted many different ways, maybe ways I can't see from my point of view alone. Regardless, apologies if anything has come across as being written to incite confrontation.

Nothing I've talked to is about my personal experience vs your professional experience or anecdotes though, it's been about what is factually on the site and available for all to see. I do have some personal anecdotes I could bring but I haven't as I like to stay away from them when possible. Them same avoidance can be given as well to relying on any experience, be it personal or professional, when the information itself is readily available.

In general if there is something you find nitpicking, confrontational, disparaging, inflammatory, or so on I'd greatly appreciate if you could provide an example of what and how it could have been better worded to focus on the content. As it stands now I'm having a hard time distilling what or how you're expecting things to be different, just that you seem extraordinarily unhappy with every comment I make.

> The core argument made by the OC was that "the vast majority of super fans" are "socially dysfunctional" and "companies pushing this have all the data and know exactly what's going on, but market to this demographic anyway." The suggestion here is that these companies are nefariously encouraging people to donate higher amounts. When in reality, the functionality to gift groups of subs isn't even visible by default on Twitch and the user needs to go out of their way to switch to the gift subs tab, before consciously deciding to click at the bottom of the list of amounts, which also requires scrolling on some mobile screen sizes before you can even see the higher amounts.

On the contrary these things are extremely visible and advertised. Popping into a top Twitch stream right now with an incognito tab these are the things I see right away:

- The top gifters for the week are pinned to the top of the chat. The number 1 place has a large golden gift box with a 1 in it followed by their name and gift count (which is near 500)

- High spend actions result in ever more exclusive emotes next to names such as having max tier subscription and being the top gifter resulting in very elaborate icons while cheap actions like prime sub very plain ones. This is made apparent by these displaying by default next to every message these users type (both an advertisement and incentive system)

- High spend actions place themselves in chat with links to how you yourself can do the same thing

- Hype trains also appear on the page with much fanfare pushing the use of gifts and bits. These give exclusive emotes and individual callouts as well.

- Once subscribed (at any level) the gift sub button is actually displayed by default on the page and the section does list the $499.00 option by default. Hidden would be the $999.00 options for tier 2/tier 3 gifting I haven't even mentioned.

- Many of these are mirrored for bits

And these are just the things from Twitch itself, not the things Twitch is fine with streamers adding on top. On the flipside the strongest action you can do without spending money is highlight a message.

Marketing pushes aside though I also disagree with the premise that marketing is even central to whether it means it's not exploitative or not, to me it just makes it even more nefarious as a whole. Simply having a 100 gift sub button in the UI, well hidden and never mentioned otherwise, is still extremely hard to justify as anything but exploitative. There are very few select cases $499 is reasonable in one month let alone needs to be available in one purchase flow and Twitch is well aware it's being used more often than could ever be attributed to non-exploitative cases so I argue the existence itself is nefarious, before even getting into the whole incentive system built around it.

> Super fans are not exclusive to million dollar streamers, so you're using a rare example to make generalizations which are not reflective of the overall industry or culture. The existence of a personality type which seeks attention by donating large amounts to see themselves on a leaderboard where thousands (or tens of thousands) of people are watching, does not magically mean that applies to all donors and, in fact, applies to so few donors that your argument really has no foundation.

Million dollar streamers are the stealman case. One can still find this type of "Super Fan" in many other streams, no need to rely on generalization, but the example makes for a case where it's easy to show the exploitation is well known and large in scale.

Also the conversation was never about all "donors", from the beginning it was about "the vast majority of Super Fans are not buying courses or supporting the development of content". Disagree or not with the statement it never made claims every single

> For one of thousands of examples I could provide, a relatively small streamer I worked with has an average viewership of less than 150 per stream. Yet, roughly 20% of their regular viewers contribute more than $100/mo, with several over $500/mo, and exactly zero of them are doing it for attention -- a fact, given that there is no leaderboard and they receive no acknowledgement verbally or via overlays. In reality, most large contributors prefer to do so anonymously anyway, and streamers typically make a point of communicating with those supporters to ensure that larger donations aren't risking their financial well-being.

Sounds like a well built community :). Unfortunately even * 1000 these numbers pale in comparison and don't exactly line up with the "dump their life savings or steal a family member or relative's credit card" type users described in the GP, both in strength and volume, to the large stream examples and do not set what the majority is. The leaked Twitch payout data is a great example of this, a small handful of streams make the majority not the long tail of thousands.

Edit clarification: Remembered hard Twitch payout data was leaked and added a note on how you could help me with the items felt confrontational.

> If you haven't noticed that with the several hundred live streamers you've consulted with then it seems by definition the streamers you interact with do not have the Super Fans being discussed [...] At the same time it doesn't mean these types of streamers and fans don't exist just because you don't work with them

I'm trying to take your word that you don't mean to disparage, but I don't see another interpretation for what you've said. You suggested that I'm not aware of basic Twitch functionality (when I clearly am), then claimed that I must not have knowledge of the subject because the streamers I work with "by definition" don't have super fans (even though they clearly do), then claimed I said super fans don't even exist (though I never so much as remotely hinted it), then repeated the claim that I don't work with anyone who has super fans (even after explicitly telling you they do).

All of those things (and some that I left out) are disparaging, and the entire premise of your commentary has been that your perspective as a viewer can be applied to the entirety of the content creation industry as an absolute and indisputable fact, but that my perspective as a viewer, streamer and consultant strictly applies to a unique subset of streamers whom I've personally worked with -- because apparently I exclusively find the extremely rare streamers and whales who aren't part of "the vast majority" involved in an "exploitative" industrial complex, even though that would be a statistical impossibility. So, when you say "nothing I've talked to is about my personal experience vs your professional experience," that's patently untrue. It's the basis for everything you've said.

> Simply having a 100 gift sub button in the UI, well hidden and never mentioned otherwise, is still extremely hard to justify as anything but exploitative.

At the end of the day, you're attempting to perpetuate the completely false notion that "the vast majority" of large donors are "dysfunctional" and being "exploited." You witness people donate large amounts and for some reason automatically assume exploitation, but you have no actual evidence or justification for that assumption other than it seeming like a lot of money to you, personally. Unless you're a professional psychologist who analyzed these people, you don't get to declare that "the vast majority" of any population are mentally unwell or being exploited -- especially when your only knowledge of the situation is that you saw strangers push buttons on a website. That's not situational knowledge of anything.

In reality, there are magnitudes more large donors who contribute to be supportive and out of appreciation for the streamers time and talents. Some fans will spend 100+ hours per month watching a particular streamer, so if they can afford to donate $1,000, that works out to paying $10/hr for entertainment, which is less than many hobbies. Yet, I don't see you making claims that people who spend lots of money on other forms of entertainment are exploited -- just this particular industry, and for reasons you haven't actually articulated.

And that's all still ignoring the fact that your perceived observations do not apply to the content creation industry as a whole, or even the majority of it. When I tell you that what you're describing can't be applied to the nearly 1,000 whales I've personally communicated with over the past few years, it makes no sense for you to double down on a blanket generalization that "the vast majority" of streamers are exploitative and large donors are being exploited, because even basic math doesn't back your argument.

> On the contrary these things are extremely visible and advertised.

You listed the basic concept of subscriptions and rewards as evidence for nefarious activity and exploitation. That's rather silly, and I'm not going to engage with it.

> Also the conversation was never about all "donors", from the beginning it was about "the vast majority of Super Fans are not buying courses or supporting the development of content". Disagree or not with the statement it never made claims every single

Please stop making pedantic nitpicks. I've literally quoted "the vast majority" a dozen times in these comments, and you're choosing to pick a single instance where I generally referred to them as donors for the sake of brevity within a long sentence, which itself is inside a paragraph specifically about super fans and even started with the words "super fans." You know exactly what I was referencing, and that you continue to turn these false nitpicks into full arguments is both exhausting and starting to resemble gaslighting.

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Thanks for the walkthrough on the statement, I think I see a bit of what you were thinking when you read the statement. At the same time let's walk through what it says and try to see :

> Twitch has a "Gift 100 subs $499" button right in the gift UI. If you haven't noticed that with the several hundred live streamers you've consulted with then it seems by definition the streamers you interact with do not have the Super Fans being discussed yet such fans are common enough for Twitch to make UI for it.

What I intended to communicate: Twitch has far more than a $25 subscription option but the vast majority of partnered channels (there are ~50k active) don't know things like "Gift 100 subs" is a preset option because $499 is a whole number percentage of their lifetime Twitch revenue not something they regularly get from a single user action. And genuinely on the condition the hundreds of live streamers you've consulted aren't exactly the top couple hundred overall you would then by, by your own answer to the question, not talking about the same types of fans when referring to the "Super Fans" that dump life savings or such into these actions. On the other half of the if, i.e. those are the streamers, then we've short-circuited to these high cost options existing and went back to discussion on exploitation/marketing that was perhaps accidentally (or for some other reason) initially dismissed as not even being possible on the site.

What you interpreted I communicated: I found a few nits as an excuse to say you're ignorant and couldn't possibly work with streamers of that level.

This is the kind of split I had in mind when talking about "often on the internet plain text can be interpreted many different ways". If you go into the comment assuming it has good intent it's just a genuine comment asking if you're referring to the same group that sees these extremely high cost actions or not since the type of fan being talked about necessarily is one doing far more than a tier 3 sub worth $25 via Twitch. If you go into the comment assuming my only intent is to nit and demean, discussion be damned, then it's a reductive comment made purely to be inflammatory. When you start with either of those points of view going in though it can be extremely hard to see how the other person could see it so differently but talking through it like this really helps, for me at least :).

> All of those things (and some that I left out) are disparaging, and the entire premise of your commentary has been that your perspective as a viewer can be applied to the entirety of the content creation industry as an absolute and indisputable fact, but that my perspective as a viewer, streamer and consultant strictly applies to a unique subset of streamers whom I've personally worked with -- because apparently I exclusively find the extremely rare streamers and whales who aren't part of "the vast majority" involved in an "exploitative" industrial complex, even though that would be a statistical impossibility. So, when you say "nothing I've talked to is about my personal experience vs your professional experience," that's patently untrue. It's the basis for everything you've said.

Going off the above if we start making the conversation about how I view your experience or how you view my experience we'll both get nowhere as we'll be divining things from our interpretations of the other person's anecdotes, neither of which is solid on their own so doubly less so together. That's why I've tried to avoid talking about my experiences vs your experiences and instead try to bring back each talking point to a hard publicly verifiable item like what actions Twitch makes purchasable, how they are advertised, the Twitch data leak and how there can't be 1000 counterexamples because there aren't 1000 accounts with the payout level to have had fans like the mentioned. I'm not bringing these points in because I'm trying to find nits to take a shit on your consultancy business (which sounds pretty successful, congrats consulting can be hard to grow) but because they necessitate that there was a misinterpretation in who GP was referring to and they can't possibly have been referring to all of the people you went to the strong defense of. Now that doesn't mean I think you'll agree with GP's original statements but the reason I bring them up is I think it steers towards a much more interesting conversation on why you disagree with GP with the people they were really referring to not the larger group you feel the need to defend.

> In reality, there are magnitudes more large donors who contribute to be supportive and out of appreciation for the streamers time and talents. Some fans will spend 100+ hours per month watching a particular streamer, so if they can afford to donate $1,000, that works out to paying $10/hr for entertainment, which is less than many hobbies. Yet, I don't see you making claims that people who spend lots of money on other forms of entertainment are exploited -- just this particular industry, and for reasons you haven't actually articulated.

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Conveniently enough this is the exact kind of conversation I was just talking about trying to find! Certainly particularly rich, particularly interested, fans of a particular stream can spend $1,000 on actions without causing personal financial problems and it can be a reasonable entertainment expense for that particular combo. The same could be said for gambling which was mentioned in the original comment but is also still extremely problematic for the majority it attracts in practice and nowadays heavily regulated. Being able to find many individual anecdotes of such users would even be expected given the original claim was about the majority not every single one of what is probably a group on the order of the mid 4 digits, most of which. In regards to articulating why it's a problem despite these anecdotes something else I've previously mentioned to build off this is the millionaire streamers (roughly the top ~10^2 of payouts not ~10^3) are more heavily weighted to be the ones getting these kinds of donations. Not that the ~10^3 pool won't get any but it's not a flat or even linear distribution. In general it's more this misalignment in distribution that defines how exploitative an industry/service is with whales than the presence of whales itself. The idea about it being in majority for supporting content only works if the majority of whales are very evenly spread out not highly clustered. Unfortunately it's exceedingly rare to regularly have someone or multiple someone's like the user that donated nearly 500 gift subs within the last week unless you're a top 10 exception or one of the streamer types the GP was talking about.

> And that's all still ignoring the fact that your perceived observations do not apply to the content creation industry as a whole, or even the majority of it. When I tell you that what you're describing can't be applied to the nearly 1,000 whales I've personally communicated with over the past few years, it makes no sense for you to double down on a blanket generalization that "the vast majority" of streamers are exploitative and large donors are being exploited, because even basic math doesn't back your argument.

Again I'm not really expecting to make much progress talking about how you perceive my perceived observations. If you want to talk about this in terms the publicly accessible data or hard facts from twitch.com itself I think there might be more interesting discussion to be had there. Or dive into the math you're talking about as if I've provided my derivations and sources and came to a conclusion I'm not going to be able to come no a new conclusion with just the additional info "even basic math doesn't back your argument".

> You listed the basic concept of subscriptions and rewards as evidence for nefarious activity and exploitation. That's rather silly, and I'm not going to engage with it.

It's 100% up to you what you find silly or not silly. Some people find the basic concept of casinos having meanendering layouts, free drinks/meals, and machines/games designed to make you feel continually close to a payout or needing to up the bet as rather silly evidence for nefarious activity/exploitation. At the same time it's very hard to have any meaningful conversation with someone who simply says things like "that's rather silly, and I'm not going to engage with it" when confronted with the reasoning of the other person.

> Please stop making pedantic nitpicks... You know exactly what I was referencing, and that you continue to turn these false nitpicks into full arguments is both exhausting and starting to resemble gaslighting.

> In general if there is something you find nitpicking, confrontational, disparaging, inflammatory, or so on I'd greatly appreciate if you could provide an example of what and how it could have been better worded to focus on the content. As it stands now I'm having a hard time distilling what or how you're expecting things to be different, just that you seem extraordinarily unhappy with every comment I make.

In particular my initial "internet filter" reading whenever you say nitpicking multiple times per comment without trying to build off of it is that every time I bring up a counter point it's just a nit to be ignored while every time you bring up a counter point it's something that could only be disagreed with if I'm trying to incite confrontation or personally attack you. Of course this interpretation isn't going to help either of us so again I refer to my comment that if you do feel these things it'd be very helpful of why the non-nit interpretations of my comments are invalid and how they could have been better framed to focus around the core of the conversation.

Claims like gaslighting (defined as "psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator") are particularly extraordinary interpretations of a few short comments on HN but if you really think these kinds of things I think it's probably best to report such things to the mod team and disengage completely as it's both extremely troubling if the claim as true or extremely troubling if you're interpreting comments as being that way but it wasn't true. Unlike the other things I'm not really sure how to gain new perspective when one of the parties is honestly suspicious they are being psychologically manipulated.

Regardless I appreciate your time so far, you've certainly opened me to the concept there are many more "wholesome" communities out there than one would expect from just looking at the top numbers. I also think you've helped me better see how wide interpretations of the same plain text statements can be taken and it will help to have that in mind in the future.

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Of course this poses other challenges. You'll end up an 'artist' of gilding toilet seats for rich and demanding 'customers' who are very clear on what they want.

That ain't me: my branding is aligned with what my actual values and heritage are, and it's profoundly oriented towards the folks who have skills and dreams but no resources, and so I make open source software supporting 'em.

I get excited when I can support a new platform like the new Raspberry Pi, not about thinking up stuff to excite about three of my audience who could throw me a hundred bucks a month. If I go over to serving only them I'll be doing only as they direct, and they absolutely don't have the vision to run my show and get anywhere worthwhile with it.

This doesn't make the article worthless. I've been thinking very hard about how I can expand into hardware DIY and the article hints at possibilities there. I can try to come up with a DIY synth module that comes in under $20 for my primary base… or, apparently, if I can make the ultimate speaker cabinet using all my tricks and sell it to someone for $200, I could also execute it in the most sophisticated possible way, and sell it for $2000 to a superfan who is that kind of wealthy. The $20 guy can't afford either, but the $2000 guy doesn't need me to hold it to $200, they need me to make it special for them.

Risk of course is if the $2000 guy doesn't exist or doesn't show up. Trying to target only the wealthy is dangerous. They are as fickle as your attitude towards them is. There's exactly one guy out there who randomly gave me $1000, and rather than demand a product, he wanted me to think about spherical harmonics in the belief that I might come up with something helpful in the field that interested him. I suspect there are guys out there who would likewise give me $1000 on the condition that I abandon what I do and start doing what they would do if they were me…

I think the difference between what you're saying and this article is that you have customers, not patrons (or you're treating your patrons like customers).

The people who shell out $1K a year aren't generally doing it because they are getting a product or service in return that is worth $1K / year to them, they're doing it because they believe in the mission of the creator and want to help support that.

Most of our creators that have a "crazy amount of money" plan generally don't offer anything extra beyond gratitude to the big spenders (public gratitude, but still just gratitude). And oddly enough, the big spenders tend to be the least demanding. So long as you don't overcharge them or something, they don't have many demands, because they were never thinking of it as purchasing something in the first place.

No, you've got it backwards. 'your creators'? Are you affiliated with this type of payment system? I'm in the top 100 music creators worldwide on Patreon, so I figure my observations are salient: it's working for me.

I only have patrons. There's a set of tiers that are all voluntary, and a one dollar and two dollar tier that are very popular because people want to be doing something, especially when they have nothing and I'm helping them out.

In my experience there are two kinds of 'whales': randomly appearing ones who throw money commensurate to THEIR resources (which will appear like a large sum to me), and the ones who want to throw money to get me to do something specific, and they have demands and often go away again if I don't comply. I enjoy the former and am not really interested in the latter.

It's not that I'm mad at them, but if their ideas were that great they would be me… the reason I do as well as I do on Patreon with zero 'extra' and zero 'customers' is because I've got a vision and I'm executing on it. I'm not there to take requests, I'm there to show people something they have not seen, and also to give free opensource tools by way of executing on that vision.

I'm not at all sure the 'people who shell out 1K a year because they believe in the mission' exist. Can't prove it by me, I don't have any of those. I do think there are people out there steering indie media figures politically in that way, but I don't think that counts, I think it's money laundering and a backchannel way of funding influencers to deliver specific messages. That's far from philanthropy, that's business (in the form of politics, usually, but probably there are examples that are more directly just business)

Newcomers started doing this on twitter for a while and turn social media from platform ads to federation ads network .. it's getting worse, like everybody is literally selling to each other. Remember old "long time no see" friends shown up trying to sell you something? Aghh now everyone pretends to be friend and sell you something.

Yeah that's a part of twitter I don't interact with. It's so cringy and obvious when people spew marketing advice like this and then turn around and act like your friend. As if their ulterior motive can't be deduced from what they advice others to do. I try spending my time with kinder more normal people instead.

There are also twitter extension apps coming up that helps flooding twitter. And tech twitter is not moving on yet on meme and drama.

The word 'friend' is really abused these days (guess because of Facebook etc) and people are somehow falling for it. Seems it's becoming quite common (in my circles anyway) that people use the term friend for basically everyone they ever talked or wrote to and 'good friend' for people they had a deeper than casual talk with. And then the drama after because these 'friends' probably didn't think the same about them (if they even remembered meeting them).

I have been called old for using acquaintance a twice. Which feels really weird to me, as I am not that old. ('97)

I'd say I have about 3 friends at MOST, altough, more like 1 that I consider to truly be a friend. And I agree, friend is completely misused.

On steam, friend means someone you want to be able to contact. On discord its someone you trust (more than regular people) or one you allow to contact you at all (if dms are otherwise turned off) and so on.

97 what the fuck

Ah wait its 2022 :(

I probably shouldve written it out. The "'" is kinda hard to see, now that I am looking at it again.

No I was more surprised that people from 97 are in fact walking and talking adult humans. Time flies.

I've got to stop sleeping in Foreverware..

The Internet turns everyone over 20 into Rip Van Winkle.

snifff

Ill never grow up

sniff

Im a Toys-R-.... OH NO

My personal definition of "friend" has always been "someone not in your family you would want to inform if you found out you had cancer." It's served me quite well.

Id still consider that to be too broad.

Something like admitting to, that you have done something criminal,and what, feels closer to the right definition for me.

The key to enjoying Twitter is to unfollow anyone who is clearly only Tweeting engagement and follow bait all day.

It’s easy to spot. They all seem to follow the same pattern du jour, such as posting threads that feel like mad libs (“I talked to <number> people who are passionate about <topic>. What I learned was surprising! Here are the top five takeaways. 1/6” is popular right now)

Don't know who to follow now honestly, it's all boring. My followings are pretty diverse.

You forgot to drench it in finger pointing up and high five emojis

Much of Twitter is just people signaling to one another that they are relevant in what they say and how they say it. It is a tax on your brain for which you get little in return.

Much of life is social signaling in general.

Sadly true, tons of people wouldn't care less if it isn't opportunity involves. Because social animal is mostly passive. You don't show up? We don't look for you even if you have some potentials.

These days anytime I see the "finger pointing down" emoji that tells me that there's a thread below, I unfollow. Straight away.

Reminds me of my first year on DeSo. Money really brings out the worst in people.

> Another creator who teaches physiotherapy made $141,000 with only 61 students, at an average price point of $2,314 per course.

This seems like a scam. To be a physiotherapist in the United States, you have to have a bachelor’s degree (4 years) followed by a 3 year Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from an accredited college.

https://www.apta.org/your-career/careers-in-physical-therapy...

So the people paying that money definitely aren’t making progress to become an actual physiotherapist.

There is also a physiotherapist assistant training which can be completed in just a couple of years. These programs are offered by community colleges and are likely cheaper and more useful than an online course.

I don't know anything about this teacher, but they might already be physiotherapists and doing additional courses on some speciality.

It's common for health workers to take additional classes to stay on top of things. Some countries require certain professions to take some number of classes every few years to keep their license.

And describing those situations as "Fans" just feels wrong. It is clearly offering a service as product. And basically buying the possibly relevant certificate for participation.

I'm quite interested in learning more about what kind of things people are willing to pay 80-100 USD a month for on Patreon.

The author also throws around some percentages of the growth of hig end payers on Patreon, but no hard numbers. Did it increase by 5 people? Are high paying patrons growing faster than low paying?

While it doesn't fit TFA's premise of 100 on one thing, Patreon is used as a donation platform by many groups, for example i know of several online radio platforms using it (when asked "why not Liberapay?", they say Patreon helps take care of business and tax issues, provides an API, etc.). DKFM uses the API to display their Patreon donors on the website for example.

Sci-fi publications use it as well for monthly subscriptions - the general math holds up that some people spend $5/$10 per thing totalling up to $100/mo (or some variation). But I don't think that supports what TFA is suggesting $100/thing/mo), that feels like a lot. They might believe the Patreon user only supports one thing/mo, but I'm not sure that's true - people have varied interests based on my travels.

> when asked "why not Liberapay?", they say Patreon helps take care of business and tax issues, provides an API, etc.

Another big advantage, especially in audio / video formats, is that you can say "support me on Patreon" and people will know what you're talking about, vs. needing to spell out a URL for people.

On Twitch people commonly give $100 for absolute nothing, just to be thanked by the creator live, which they would do for significantly less money as well, often just $5.

I suspect the top tiers at Patreon must work the same, there's some benefit there but people are doing it because they are a megafan and want to show it. I'd be intested in how many of them are living in a false belief / parasocial relationship though.

I have a few streamers I occasionally throw money at. But those are ones I actually interact with outside of the streams/very small streamers, without deluding myself to think they are my friends. They owe me NOTHING.

Parasocial relationships are scary though. A few times I almost slipped into one. (Nowadays I intentionally stop watching streamers I feel I am getting too close to.)

Some of these megafan donations are probably fakes, the streamer sending themselves money with an alt in the hope that real people follow. The platform has little incentive to stop that sort of thing.

That is absolutely possible, but there are also definitely people who simply want to support people who do cool stuff, and don't necessarily need anything in addition to the free content in exchange.

I only follow a couple streamers (as opposed to surfing more generally) and I notice the same names repeatedly doing donations like that. Most are one-offs but there are maybe 10 names that stick out in my brain because I see them so often.

I know parasocial is the popular thing right now, but I think it's just a more general 'microtransaction whale factor' that encompasses collectible card games, gachas, and stream donations. I leave realmoney gambling out of that because I think the chance to get actual money back makes the rationalization different, nobody who is whaling thinks they will get a dime back.

$100 for 1 piece of content, yes, but $100 regularly per month?

Yes. A month.

I wanna read an article about the $100/month patreon tiers and the people who pay for them.

Good point. I’d pay 1k for that content

Agreed. It seems like examples should be easy to find and highlight if it’s really as common as this article suggests.

I’ve seen people spontaneously put $100 toward creators they really appreciate, but those are rare. $100 per month on a recurring basis or a constant influx of one-off $100 donations is a much higher bar. You would need a relatively massive audience to convert enough people interested in spending $1K/year on something.

> I'm quite interested in learning more about what kind of things people are willing to pay 80-100 USD a month for on Patreon.

This is probably not representative over the whole population, but, I have a Patreon. I had a few people pay me $50/month (where the base tier is $5/month). The $50/month tier has no extra benefits besides a vanity Discord role. So why did they do it? They genuinely want to support whatever I'm doing. That's it.

I'm a Github sponsor for $100/m for audio support on Asahi Linux for M1 MacBooks (though I don't expect this to last a full year) and a $48/m Patreon supporter of marcan for the overall development. For marcan that was their highest tier, I probably would have went more towards the $80 range had it been an option. There are actually a few others with lower max tiers (like $10) where I've maxed out. My goal here is they deliver good work and I want to make sure they are able to continue investing the hardware and time to do that.

Prior to the Asahi stuff I had that more spread out across some interesting and/or useful things like Zig.

I have heard this kind of stuff for years (going back to early 2000s).

Different ways of dividing your salary by N and then figuring out what you need to offer to get S/N per customer.

Usually if someone is saying stuff like this they have a “solution” to sell you to help you get there. You are now the fan rather than the star.

This kind of fan driven art transform artists into dancing monkeys. I mean, there is nothing wrong in that - but makes art bland and utilitarian. It changes thinking from expressing oneself, pushing boundaries, to what can I do to make my fans continue to pay $5. The soul somehow gets lost.

Many artists cannot fit themselves into such regime and end up giving up. I guess that's how humans work.

This bothers me too. I get tons of social media ads for how to make money from music, one of them is Savvy Musician - a stay-at-home Mom with 5 kids who makes Celtic Metal. Her advice centers on finding your micro-niche, which to me feels like just writing the same song over and over, and then digging in it looks like most of her income is from selling merch, so the music ends up being just ads for t-shirts and mugs.

> We’re already seeing this shift, according to creator platforms... Patreon... Podia... Teachable

No OnlyFans?

> One creator on Teachable who advises artists on how to sell their art made $110,000 last year with only 76 students, at an average of $1,437 per course. Another creator who teaches physiotherapy made $141,000 with only 61 students, at an average price point of $2,314 per course

So sell shovels?

> So sell shovels?

For those who don't get the reference, there's a saying along the lines of "During a gold rush, sell shovels", implying that everybody joining the gold rush needs tools to dig, but not everybody who digs will strike gold.

To further increase the sells of your shovels as a next step you pay successful gold diggers (or actors) to amplify the message how easy it is to find gold, as a side job you show how easy it is to sell shovels ... at some point you arrive at the pinnacle of the current financialization of every aspect of life: you sell people the philosopher's stone itself to transmute everything into gold i.e. how easy it is to sell anything, really.

It is remarkable how long this spawned ouroboros can bite through itself given the context of financial desperation (no savings, inflation, no stable source of income). At some point I came to the sober realization that younger generations, now, have no clue how people lived back then. It must have been even more terrible.

This article was written a couple years back. I'm not sure OnlyFans was as big then as it is now.

One true fan but it’s Marc Andreessen.

That is also a successful (and much more traditional) model.

One true fan that happens to be your boss is really the classic model

Unfortunately they are a fan of having your butt on a seat (sit stand desks excepted) for 40h/w.

This is my current model. I actually got a lot of work because of this.

This might be misunderstood as followers on social media, but a follower on social media does not equal to a fan. They address this at:

> Here’s how it works: A creator can cultivate a large, free audience on horizontal social platforms or through an email list.

Fair enough, but let's say the TrueFans™ are in the range of 0.1% - 1% of your followers. That translates to 10k-100k followers which is still incredibly hard to build.

> let's say the TrueFans™ are in the range of 0.1% - 1% of your followers. That translates to 10k-100k followers which is still incredibly hard to build.

In this case, I have no fans.

A true fan in TFA is willing to spend $1k a year. That’s gotta be way less than 0.1% in terms of social media followers (usually). A friend of mine has close to 3 million social media followers on one platform alone, and the number of “true fans (tm)” paying more than $1k a year is about ten to twenty. Of course it heavily depends on the category, too.

I think it depends on how you decide to structure your offerings? For example, someone who emphasizes 1-1 instruction can shift some people to much higher payment tiers, at the cost of turning away a larger number of people who aren't interested in that sort of thing.

I really hate this building audience things in the past couple years. It makes me want to quit twitter.

Social media changed to be brand-centric pretty early on. It's only natural that users would respond by becoming brands themselves.

Doesn't this sound like inherently bad advice? Fewer number of "fans" means that you risk is centralized around those few fans and their particular requests and demands. I can honestly see this getting very dark, very quickly.

You would rarely argue that a business should centralize around only a limited number of customers.

> Since 2017, the share of new patrons paying more than $100 per month—or $1,200 per year—has grown 21 percent

I think this is worded ingenuously. I originally read it that new patrons paying $100 per month has grown to 21%, but upon second reading I see that the percent has grown 21%. But what's the base line? Why not reference that? Is it relative compared to other subs (e.g. percent paying $100+ went from 1% -> 1.23%) or absolute (e.g. 1k people paying $100+ -> 1,230). I would think a large percent of that is probably friends and family.

Does anyone personally support a stranger creator to the tune of $100+ a month? It seems like a lot. What's the thought process and what do you expect?

I'm wondering how much of these shifts in monthly revenue for creators are actually additional signs of inflation.

I think the shift from big companies deciding the winners to democratized content creators Isa shift in the right direction.

However, has anyone tried to quantify just how difficult it is to get those 100? Even for unpaid followers/listeners I've never managed to get more than a handful.

For me it'd be hard to pay 1K a year although I could afford it. Heck it was only back in 2019 that I'd force myself to buy apps that make me happy, even though I'd drop 6 dollars on a coffee without thinking twice. I'm definitely a slave to my mentality.

love is hard to foster

solve a deep and painful problem and people will follow

give people meaning and purpose is why religion is so powerful

the best products look like religion (see tesla as an example)

the fans take on the identity of the product

speaks more to the human condition and our need to belong, the biggest fans are rarely healthy folks

Immanuel Kant once formulated the categorical imperative … something is moral if it can work universally and be sustainable.

How about economically? Is it sustainable to have every artist supported by 100 true fans? Maybe. It means enough people have disposable income to spend $1000 a year on something, and that every artist finds a niche. Those artists who already got 100 fans would drop out of the marketplace, leaving the others until everyone found a dance partner (like with dating).

Viewed more broadly, though, this would go heavily against the Pareto principle, where some artists simply achieve escape velocity and get to a different level because they never leave the market, while most artists do not produce anything that people would really pay to consume, even if they discovered it over and over. It is like polygamy starving many young men of mates, and polygamy goes hand in hand with war.

I think a much more sustainable model is a UBI that isn’t truly “unconditional” but a gated community where successful artists and their patrons voluntarily agree to redistribute some wealth to new artists that keep showing progress in their craft. Crypto can be done to redistribute this wealth.

But that would mean there would be quotas on who can join as a new struggling artist and get the UBI subsidy, since it’s free money for any scammer, especially globally it could pay for a lot more where cost of living is small. People would try to make 10 accounts.

It is essentially voluntary socialism online. And one major problem with libertarian socialism and why it can’t solve poverty is that people don’t want to let in too many others into their subsidy program that pays non-market rates for what could be art no one wants. So yes the workers own the factory collectively and work 2 hour days but they do hazing for new people. That’s what countries do with immigration and fraternities do on college campuses.

>>I think a much more sustainable model is a UBI that isn’t truly “unconditional” but a gated community where successful artists and their patrons voluntarily agree to redistribute some wealth to new artists that keep showing progress in their craft.

It seems like you're inferring that unconditional UBI is not sustainable and therefore immoral according to Kant's definition.

While that position may ruffle some feathers, you may have a point. How do you ensure that under conditional UBI that recipients are adequately redistributing their productivity/wealth?

I am pragmatic, not a purist. Having more people (refugees, starving artists etc.) receiving money from benefactors is better than less.

That means spreading the wealth redistribution as thinly as possible: one person one account (it is also good for voting).

We can approach such a system by kicking out the artists who already got 100 donors, and forcing them “off the market” the same way someone should leave a dating site when they paired off.

The problem is that various actors have incentives create fake accounts. It isn’t even so much about UBI for people being unsustainable, but that people can create fake accounts (sybil attacks). There HAS to be a gatekeeping mechanism. There has to be a condition, the U can’t stand for Unconditional. It can stand for Universal (to all members of a community).

The hard part is ensuring there is no serious corruption in the mechanisms that whitelist accounts. WorldCoin scans eyeballs and Proof of Humanity does network analysis and tokenomics. I think that there should be a self-regulating organization (SRO like FINRA is for example) of KYC providers that stake a surety bond proportional to how many accounts they whitelist, and if some duplicates or fake accounts can be proven, in some sort of due process, they lose that stake. So they have some enforcement.

But still it may not be enough, for example for a national election there are strong incentives to register fake voters, and if the whole thing is done without appearing in person then that’s even easier to do. So then you need really harsh penalties for corrupt bureaucrats and ways to revoke certifications. But by that time some amount of UBI / welfare / disability benefits will have been paid out, or an election to install a director or head fo state has already taken place.

Far better not to concentrate the wealth and power to begin with, because then there would be less incentive to cheat and rally and grab the spoils of “war” whether that is marauders raiding a village, or a political party taking over an election, or Jeff Bezos now picking winners and losers in his investments / philanthropy

Basically, it is not that UBI is unsustainable, but that free (or subsidized, by exceeding the value whatever contribution the recipient makes to the system) money requires some increasingly harsh mechanisms to vet people.

At the end of the day though, we need such systems as there is a growing proportion of people whose labor just simply isn’t valuable enough to exceed their cost of living. And asking them to forego the modern conveniences of life, like safe potable running water and at least 500 square feet of space to live in, safe neighborhoods, access to lifesaving emergency medicine etc. is silly. If we subdidizs them anyway, why not standardize the system and remove corruption?

It depends. In reality, much easier to work with 1k true fans model.

Exceptions are, when your expensive product is in high demand, but not scaled well, so you HAVE to limit number of clients, because you just cannot make more sales.

What this could be? One example I hear from CG community - CG Grooming Artist - at the moment in high demand and highly paid, and many firms accept freelancers, but not all CG firms need it.

That does seem about right

Though the composition also matters. A small twitch streamer that recognises all their regulars usernames and interacts with them individually is likely to have a much higher concentration of die hard fans. So there the math works easier despite lower absolute numbers.

And that in turn is determined by what type of content it is and what type of parasocial relationship it is

I’d try 1 if you can even, then 10, then..

I had a lengthy reply here but really it comes down to one thing: Andresson Horowhatsit can either start giving every creator on Patreon a few hundred a month, or they can fuck right off. Their "100 true fans" model proposed here is not true fans at all in the sense Kelly meant, and if I pivoted my Patreon to doing the kind of stuff they're advocating, it would involve doing a ton of crap that's tedious work to me, and constantly warping my work around what I think my bigger supporters want instead of making what I want to create and trusting my fans to keep on wanting to follow wherever the Muses lead me.

Also if any of you FAANG types have a thousand bucks a month you're not using, I will gladly take it and convert it to goofy furry porn, and give you absolutely no training or special treatment. https://www.patreon.com/egypturnash

Maybe. Sort of. What I'd really like to see is some sort of data on long-term income from these sorts of models. Yes, I know there are some--but I haven't seen it widely successful over several years or more for more than the '1%'.

Just another observation about The Long Tail, the top 0.1% of the long tail can do well with 100 patrons. I bet that Damien Hirst has < 100 patrons that contribute >80% of his revenue.

Why stop at 100 fans when you can have one winning lottery ticket or one sugar daddy. "100/1000 true fans theory" ignores the difficulty and luck required in getting those 100-1000 paying fans. It's a nice story or idea, but impractical for the vast majority of people. Getting even a handful of fans is probably very hard for most people unless you are lucky or famous.

A good observation. If you are the creator trying to please one of your ten very wealthy super-patrons, have eyes on the back of your head because there will be thousands of people, some of 'em better than you, who will want to win away your patron's custom.

You're probably not special enough to hang on to your ultra-wealthy super-patron. There will be someone younger and cuter who'll come along and take 'em from you. Metaphorically, if not literally. And if you've devoted your life to trying to be their ultimate creator, and they leave, then you don't have much of a fall-back position. You've specialized around something that has been taken away. Your branding, your identity, is 'super-patron's ideal artist' and that's no longer true. Nasty.

(2020)

So the point here is that you don't need as many fans if your fans are sufficiently rich?

I mean, it's true: one can make more money by [selling to / servicing / having as a patron] the rich, but it's not a new observation.

Keep an eye out for my next blog post:

“100 true fans? Try 10”

Why stop there? Why not 10?

Why not 1? Just marry a rich fan/customer.

I'm kidding.

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