January 29, 2020
The Truth About 1,000 True Fans (And Our Attention!) – Kevin Kelly on the a16z Podcast
Check Out the a16z Podcast Episode Page & Show Notes
Key Takeaways
- Kevin’s idea for reversing the attention economy: What if companies paid audiences directly for their attention?
- Ponder this: “If it’s true that attention is the only scarcity we have in this world of abundance, how come you and I are giving our attention away for free?” – Kevin Kelly
- Another idea: What if anybody could run an ad and receive payments once people clicked on/watched it?
- Kevin’s ‘1,000 True Fans’ theory: In a world where you have direct audience contact, you only need 1,000 people paying you $100/year to make an honest living
- Kevin’s idea for reinventing the book industry: An author writes an ebook and sells it or $X. Then, the author pays readers who end up finishing the book $(X+1).
- (Most people probably won’t finish the book, enabling the author to profit)
- Doing some calculations examining the total amount of attention given to different forms of media, Kevin discovered that, on average, people surrender their attention for just $3/hour!
Books Mentioned
- In his book, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson expands on the capability of the internet at allowing one to discover niche communities
Intro
- Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) is the co-founder of WIRED Magazine
- He’s also the author of The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
- Host – Sonal Chokshi (@smc90)
Reversing the Attention Economy
- The current advertising model: To promote a new product and draw attention, a company will hire an advertising agency to make an ad (or do so themselves) to capture the consumer’s attention
- But Kevin has a different idea: What if companies paid audiences directly for their attention?
- For instance, what if you were paid $0.25 every time you watched an ad or read a promotional email?
- (Crypto/blockchain technologies will make this even more viable)
- “If it’s true that attention is the only scarcity we have in this world of abundance, how come you and I are giving our attention away for free?” – Kevin Kelly
- An idea like the above puts power back into the consumer’s hands: “The power of the attention is with the consumer. We’re surrendering it and giving it away for free when we should really be charging for it.
- For instance, what if you were paid $0.25 every time you watched an ad or read a promotional email?
What if Anyone Could Create an Ad (And Get Paid for It)?
- Media publications (magazines, newspapers, etc.) don’t have much of a choice as to which ads are run (it’s primarily determined by which the companies who end up ad slots)
- Kevin’s idea: What if anybody could run an ad and receive payments once people clicked on/watched it?
- Think of it like a decentralized ad system: Anybody can make an ad, anybody can run an ad
- (This would, though, require blockchain technology to pay creators)
The Advertising Model is Already Changing
- On TikTok, creators are essentially making “ads” (video clips that promote products, ideas, etc.)
- Those clips then have the potential to go viral (but without the creators getting paid)
The ‘1,000 True Fans’ Theory
- The premise: In a world where you have direct audience contact, you only need 1,000 people (AKA true fans) paying you $100/year to make an honest living
- (True fans are those who buy whatever you create)
- But it gets better: Your true fans are your most influential marketing force for the second-tier, casual fans
- 🎧 And good news: In a world of billions, now that the internet is global, even if only 1 out of every 1,000,000 people are interested in what you’re creating, you still have thousands of potential true fans—you just have to find them
- “With any idea you can come up with, or anything that you can imagine, you can probably find 1,000 people on the planet to be true fans of it” – Kevin Kelly
- In his book, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson expands on the capability of the internet at allowing one to find these niche communities
- “With any idea you can come up with, or anything that you can imagine, you can probably find 1,000 people on the planet to be true fans of it” – Kevin Kelly
Kevin’s ‘I’ll Pay You to Read My Book, and I’ll Make Money Doing It’ Idea
- How?
- Create an ebook and sell it for $4
- Then, pay readers $5 for finishing the book (with Kindle, completion is easy to gauge)
- (Most people probably won’t finish it, enabling the author to profit)
- This idea also solves a known problem: The reality is very few people make decent money writing books
🎧 We Give Up Our Attention for Just $3/Hour
- Doing some calculations examining the total amount of attention given to different forms of media, Kevin discovered that, on average, people surrender their attention for just $3/hour! (an extremely low amount!)
- “We’re giving up our attention for such small wages. We really want to be charging more.” – Kevin Kelly
