1,000 True Fans

1,000 True Fans - that's all a creator really needs, this article argues. It says that all one needs is a certain number of people who will buy anything you put out, see any show you perform and follow your work religiously. After reading the piece, I had a few thoughts: First, the basic premise of the theory is more or less correct. It is more advantageous to have a number of completely dedicated patrons than to have many minimally dedicated fans, or people who buy something you do once and then move on to something else. (The writer call these fans Lesser Fans.) Obviously, Lesser Fans can boost sales and help move a product too, but they aren't the type of fans one hopes to generate to sustain a long career.

Additionally, the Internet has helped put this concept into practice. The writer of the article touched on this somewhat by discussing how someone can put out a new song on their Web site, post a new update to their blog or put up a new gallery of their work online in order to please True Fans who crave new content constantly. The writer, however, missed small simple ways that a producer could appease their legion of loyal fans with new technology online. Simply posting a Twitter update or new Facebook status can get fans talking. Or, better yet, actually communicating with a fan by posting on a fan's Facebook page or sending them a personal Tweet can really make that fan's day, which would influence them to buy your product when it is released later.

For bloggers, this means they should update their page at least on a daily basis. By continually updating a page every day or several times a day, a blogger can drive traffic to their page and give True Fans the new content they are craving. This practice will then spur fans to remain loyal to a blog, thereby helping to increase ad revenue to keep the blog afloat. Furthermore, a blogger should respond to comments if it's possible to do so. Of course, in the case of a story that generates hundreds of comments, it would be impossible to respond to them all. For a blogger just starting out, however, it could help to turn a Lesser Fan into a True Fan by responding to their personal comment.

Read a Review & Hear the Music!

Last week, I was bored and surfing around the Net, and I stumbled upon Fluxblog, which calls itself "the very first MP3 blog." I'm not sure how accurate that statement is, but for what it's worth, I've never come across another one so far. Fluxblog reviews albums and singles from well-known, emerging and unknown music artists. Unlike print media and other Internet sites, however, this blog actually provides readers with playable MP3s so that readers can hear the music for themselves. Readers can then use the review, as well as the actual song, to decide if they'd like to purchase the entire disc. (The songs cannot be downloaded and only remain on the site for a limited amount of time in order to protect the artists from piracy.) I've always wondered why more music sites didn't provide clips of songs with reviews or news articles. With the technology available today, it seems only natural to provide people with as much information as possible. In the case of a music Web site, that means providing actual music to accompany the text. Fluxblog is just another example of an independent site using the technology available to provide its readers something not found elsewhere in the mainstream.