an article whos title translates to, in the mind if most readers, you can be successful with 1000 fans, and then suggests with the definition of the specific type of fan that you may need 100000 to have a thousand of the kind described, is disingenuous, literally, on its face. Therefore, bait and switch seems to me to be an accurate description. Also, the article makes that jump, but doesn’t actually state it straight out, because that would be admitting the title is just clickbait. Enjoy it, benefit from it, be inspired by it if you are so moved, you do you; but in my opinion, it’s trash garbage writing. it reminds me of the way people talk when they are trying to talk you into their cult or pyramid scheme.
I think the expected % of people paying for the entire output varies a lot.
It's pretty affordable to buy the entire output of a band or author if you're a working adult and they're only putting out a $20 release every 2 years - so probably quite a large fraction of their fans buy their entire output.
And subscriptions to magazines are of course commonplace (or were pre-internet, at least)
On the other hand, if you're creating youtube videos, it's normal to have a lot more subscribers than patrons. And if you're making a syndicated TV show, there might not be a single fan paying per piece of work that you produce.
You had to use the qualifier "essentially" and avoid mentioning the actual title of the article, to make your point though...
>but in my opinion, it’s trash garbage writing.
Whatever. It's an article that makes a simple observation: that in this day and age, there are ways to make a viable living with small-scale patronage, facilitated by the internet, direct payments, and so on.
It's not about being it easy to make it without putting the work.
i changed my last post to remove the word essentially, since at the time there wasn’t a reply button below your reply and I thought you had blocked me from replying or something. not trying to make you look bad and change specifically what you alluded to.
“ It's an article that makes a simple observation” - it’s an article that plays games with language to mislead its audience. to reiterate read the definition of true fan. are you that big of a fan of literally anyone? the true fan bar is so high, the article ceases to have meaning based on its own words. feel free to extrapolate your own meaning, which is what i believe you are doing.
>to reiterate read the definition of true fan. are you that big of a fan of literally anyone?
Well, I do have a few Patreon accounts I support, so there's that. As for $100+, I have given such amounts to several causes (devs working on something like Asahi Linux etc).
And there are indeed lots of people who are $100+ Patreon / Substack, etc supporters as you can see directly there. Not to mention OnlyFans, where the amounts can get crazy...
that's reasonable. patreon is the closest we've come to the richard stallman "press a button send a dollar directly" that I know of, and I really believe in that concept.
However, and this is my autism not being able to let stuff go, as I realize i should let this thread die a peaceful death, however, a few dollars split among many, doesn't make you a quote unquote true fan, in the definition of the article. I will now stop arguing with you, as you support developers with your personal dollars. Regarding only fans, i'm pretty sure that crosses over to paying for a service rather than paying for entertainment, although it does have 'fan' in the title so you've got me there at least.
