Revel Lever®

There is a home for Artists in between poverty and stardom. Somewhere lower than stratospheric best-sellerdom, but higher than the potential obscurity offered by The Long Tail.

Kevin Kelly @ The Technium suggests The Long Tail is a mixed blessing for individual Artists as they are overlooked in the equation. In reality, The Long Tail does not raise the sales of creators much, adds massive competition and endless downward pressure on prices and offers no real path out of the quiet doldrums of minuscule sales

So, other than aim for a blockbuster “hit”, what can an Artist do to escape The Long Tail?

Kevin Kelly’s solution is to find and cultivate 1,000 True Fans. The point of this strategy is that you don’t need a “hit” to survive. You don’t need to aim for the short head of best-sellerdom to escape The Long Tail. There is a place in the middle, that is not very far away from the tail, where you can at least make a living.

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything an Artist produces. For an Artist to raise their sales out of the flatline of The Long Tail they need to connect with their True Fans directly. Rather, they need to convert a thousand Lesser Fans into a thousand True Fans. But, the key challenge for the Artist is to maintain direct contact with their 1,000 True Fans with the added benefit of direct feedback and love.

The genius of the True Fan model is that the fans are able to move an Artist away from the edges of The Long Tail to a degree larger than their numbers indicate. They can do this in three ways: (1) by purchasing more per person, (2) by spending directly so the Artist keeps more per sale, and (3) by enabling new models of support.

The accepted price of being an Artist is large and the likely alternative to making a living based on True Fans is poverty. A dedicated Artist who could cultivate 1,000 True Fans and directly support them using new technology, can potentially make an honest living through the commerce of their art.

Go check out the full article and make sure to read the comments.

1000 True Fans — Kevin Kelly @ The Technium

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