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1. The article shows a pyramid and it's important. In order to get a few "true fans" (people prepared to pay dearly for what you produce), you need a large amou
by bambax 7y ago
1. The article shows a pyramid and it's important. In order to get a few "true fans" (people prepared to pay dearly for what you produce), you need a large amount of "distant fans" (people who like what you do, as long as it's free). The key word is conversion, and, regrettably, it's not present once in the post [0]. It's probably in the 1 to 0.1% range.
[0] Edit: In fact it is (convert). However in the next paragraph the concept is somehow replaced with "whaling", which means that a few paying customers help support a large group of free riders, or conversion in reverse. This is misleading. The large group needs to be there first.
2. At the $1000/year price point, it's not an artistic production anymore. Most examples are about "courses", about teaching something to a specific audience. Some of the topics are questionable and sound a little scammy (physiotherapy?), may be preying on people's vulnerabilities (private coding classes for kids?) or playing on vanity (having a celebrity streamer play along with you). This is Goop territory. Is this the future we want?
- beAbU 7y agoAlthough I agree with all you are saying and your general sentiment, I just want to understand why you state that Physiotherapy is scammy?
- lultimouomo 7y agoI don't think that he meant physiotherapy is scammy, just the concept of teaching it through online courses. If you take it a few steps further, e.g. online abdominal surgery courses, the point becomes more clear.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mnsc 7y agoCtrl-f "convert" gives me two hits?
- bambax 7y agoYou're right. I had searched for conversion. Post updated.
- simonh 7y agoThe phrasing and contextualising in the article is all over the place. It's referred to as a 'shift', but also shows how the basic business models for 100 x $1000 and 1000 x $100 are completely different. They are examining a new different type of business using similar platforms, not a general trend of existing relationships changing in character. Those trainers selling courses aren’t selling their $1000 courses to the same dedicated group of 100 course crazy training junkies every month, year in year out. Maybe someone will sign up for a series, or for special 1-1 sessions for a while, but then they will have got what they wanted and leave. That’s got very little in common with my long term relationship with a handful of people on Patreon for a few dollars each a month. There might be a very few, very wealthy patrons that do support a guru for large amounts every month, but that's yet another business model again and also has little similarity with the actual relationship people like me have with the people we support. Wealthy people supporting gurus has been a thing ever since there have been wealthy people.
- toxik 7y agoInteresting point with the pyramid, a podcaster (Sam Harris) recently turned his free podcast into a "freemium" model where you get half of each episode for free. I imagine this is going to completely kill his following, as it did for me. Freemium is actually being charitable, it's more like shareware.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago>completely kill his following, // You think people who currently pay will stop paying? Like, it's some sort of virtue signalling? If he's changed to that model presumably he doesn't care about his following but instead wants to make a living (or make himself rich, depending how things are for him).
- sacado2 7y agoIt's going to kill his following among people who want to follow him for free, but by definition they don't bring him any money. If you have enough paying users, meaning your business gained momentum, you don't really care about free users anymore.
- Bombthecat 7y agoBut how do you get new users? Podcasts are already very niche...
- tartoran 7y agoSome of the free users might pay. Small percentage “conversion” into paying users. But this can be done only once a large following was built and that model seems a bit disingenuous to me, free to paid, and I like the model where the content creator gives some extra to paying users.
- ishjoh 7y agoSam also does a number of live appearances, and I suspect that a number of free listeners would buy tickets once in a while to see him. It would be interesting to know if this move would decrease the popularity of live appearances as well.
- 7y ago
- test1235 7y agoWhat is "Goop"?
- lotsofpulp 7y agoAn organization that sells snake oil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goop_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goop_(company)
- dreamcompiler 7y agoOverpriced pseudoscientific junk products sold to gullible people and hyped by a minor celebrity obsessed with her vagina.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago> obsessed with her vagina Who has a basic misunderstanding on what exactly a vagina is. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/goops-netflix-series-its-so-much-worse-than-i-expected-and-i-cant-unsee-it/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/goops-netflix-series...
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoThis is what decades of de-prioritizing education funding looks like.
- makomk 7y agoI think this is more what years of teaching people the wrong things entirely looks like. There was an opinion piece in the New York Times of all places that equated criticism of that show with misogyny because 'women in particular have been mocked, reviled, and murdered for maintaining knowledge and practices that frightened, confused and confounded “the authorities.”' https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/opinion/goop-gwyneth-paltrow-netflix.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/opinion/goop-gwyneth-palt... Like, this is an argument that they expect the most educated and informed members of American society to buy, and given what we've been teaching people maybe they're right.
- circlefavshape 7y agoI get so many ads for courses on how to run ads for courses
- projectramo 7y agoYou should try my new course about how to avoid ads for new courses.
- 6510 7y agoI sell a course about making a 100 k living from selling courses about how to avoid adds for courses. You get a free golden bullshit card with it.
- gowld 7y agoWhere do you place your ads for that course?
- dobleboble 7y agoBefore you buy this person's course, you should definitely buy my course on how to determine if a course is a good value.
- JoshTko 7y agoPlease don't turn HN into reddit
- shaneprrlt 7y agoI second this. Please take my course on avoiding sarcasm and irony for healthier HN discourse if you can't conduct yourself properly.
- gadders 7y agoFrom the article it sounds like part of it is going after the same sort of business as Ramit Sethi [1] [2] He seems to mainly sell courses on how to create and sell courses. I don't know how comfortable I would feel doing that. Maybe that's just me. [1] https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/about/about-ramit/ https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/about/about-ramit/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramit_Sethi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramit_Sethi
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tablethnuser 7y agoGood points. Based on my experience with whales in f2p games you will get outsized income from 0.1% of whale users, reliable income from 20% of hobby users, and one-off spend here and there from the rest. When I think of someone paying me $1000 for art that others may pay only $20 or $5 for, first of all it still feels like charity from the whales. I think you could meaningfully create $20 and $5 tiers for any digital art. But what do you sell to raise the value two magnitudes other than status? Selling status to whales relies on a huge "commons" population for them to feel superior to. Nobody whales in a vacuum. Second issue is whale rarity. Just to find your first $1000 whale you already need 1000 fans. The rest of them are only paying you $20 x 200 = $4,000 and $5 x 799 = $3,995 per year. That's $10k/yr. The idea that you could only cultivate a stable of whales with artistic output is ridiculous. You somehow need to make the whales believe that the general population is their commons and then sell them status over gen pop, which is probably why the article hones in on wellness as the only vehicle in town.
- xchaotic 7y agoI quite like and agree with the numbers here - you could be getting 10k / year before your first whale, so it does not make much economic sense to only focus on a 100 biggest fans.
- holri 7y agoYou described the business model of Ludwig van Beethoven. One of the first independent artist in his profession. He had a few whales which gained status through personal inscription of his works and paid him to stay in Vienna. But he was massively popular in Vienna before he gained whales.
- elwell 7y ago> may be preying on people's vulnerabilities (private coding classes for kids?) Having trouble understanding how "private coding classes for kids" is preying on people's vulnerabilities...?