1000 true fans: A bodhisattva with a pig head and a nose

This week we are trying something new. Let’s take a Cantonese class and talk about the proverb “Bodhisattva has a nose even with every pig’s head”.

"葾" means stink, "葾葾rotten" refers to an unpleasant odor, usually originating from rotten food. Different from Mandarin "I write by hand and I speak", Cantonese has many spoken words, and most people don't know the original characters. If they really want to write them out, they can only use words with the same sound but unrelated meanings, which are so-called borrowed words. "葾" is one of them. It is usually written as "injustice" that everyone knows. Some people say that the orthographic version should be "wilt", which is the Cantonese pronunciation of "smoke".

"㒼" is usually written as the borrowed character "meng". Some people think that the orthographic character should be "blind" or "齆". There are different opinions. "㒼" means obstruction, "㒼 nose" means difficulty in breathing. I am particularly qualified to talk about it, because most people occasionally have nasal congestion, but I occasionally have smooth breathing, and most of the time my nose is more or less congested.

Cantonese people like to use pig heads to worship gods. The weather in the south is hot and there were no refrigerators in ancient times. It is not surprising that the food goes bad and smells. However, it does not matter. Bodhisattvas are made of wood, stone or clay. In short, they do not have nostrils. "Nosed Bodhisattva" means that even if most people hate something, there will always be people who appreciate it. It is usually used in relationships between men and women.

After reading this, I believe you can also understand that Cantonese is not only a long-standing language, but also has a rich sense of humor. Many proverbs are very "slurping to death", which makes people laugh. Okay, that's all for this issue... Just kidding, let's get down to business.

To cater to the public taste or to find a niche of intimate friends?

If you are a serious creator but no one appreciates your work, you will:

• A: Change the style, route or creative medium in order to cater to public taste?

• B: By accumulating and organizing works, interacting with audiences, promoting, and selling, are you working harder to find close friends?

The music you compose is not catchy enough, so write a melody more suitable for karaoke; the video you shoot is too serious, so change it to a light-hearted and funny one; you want to express it in words, but the new generation puts it in more than a hundred words. Updates are marked # Long Articles with caution, so use TikTok to create content instead. In business, A seems to be the correct answer no matter how you look at it.

I won’t say that A is absolutely wrong, but if all composers write K songs, all YouTubers follow a witty line, and everyone uses TikTok to express their feelings, then who will satisfy the non-mainstream people? Since we are talking about business, let’s put aside ideas. It’s none of my business if no one meets the needs of the niche. However, no one can satisfy the niche needs. In business, isn’t it just a business opportunity? On the contrary, if everyone rushes to meet the most popular needs, wouldn’t it be a very crowded and highly competitive market?

You might say that my works are too niche, and if I don’t adopt a more mainstream style, there won’t be enough people to pay for them. That's certainly possible. However, before drawing this conclusion, let us first count our fingers and see how high the music must be before the harmony is too low.

Suppose you ask fans to subscribe or support your work for a monthly fee of 50 Hong Kong dollars or 200 Taiwan dollars. The goal is to have 1,000 paying fans, which means a monthly income of 50,000 Hong Kong dollars or 200,000 Taiwan dollars. After deducting the assumed 20% credit card and platform handling fees, Support staff and other costs, 40,000 Hong Kong dollars or 160,000 Taiwan dollars per month, is still a reasonable income, especially considering that you are doing something you like and believe in.

So what is the concept of finding 1,000 fans who are willing to pay to support you? If the population of Hong Kong is used as the base, one soulmate is found for every 7,000 people; if the population of Taiwan is used as the base, one for every 23,000 people; and for the world, one soulmate is found for every 7,000,000 people. .

If the above arithmetic is correct, when you say that your work is too highbrow and does not have enough supporters, you are basically saying that out of 7,000,000 people, that is, the entire population of Hong Kong, not one person is willing to pay for your work. . Really? Or are we not looking hard enough?

The bodhisattva has a bodhisattva nose on a pig head, let alone a carefully crafted creation? Unless your style, topic, and creative medium are just testing the waters and have not yet been finalized and can be changed at any time, otherwise if you create seriously and truly believe in your work, instead of trying to follow the crowd, you should work harder to find your soulmates among the crowd. Step by step towards 1000 fans.

1000 true fans

In order not to steal the halo of my predecessors, I must emphasize that these insights are not mine, but come from Kevin Kelly, also known as KK. KK wrote the short article 1000 True Fans as early as 2008, which inspired thousands of readers, many of whom later became very successful creators or entrepreneurs.

1000 true fans is obviously not a path that has been applicable since ancient times. After all, before the birth of the Internet, it was difficult for a single person to sell a product within a radius of ten kilometers, let alone find close friends around the world. The establishment of 1000 true fans is inseparable from the development of the Internet.

In 1993, WIRED magazine was founded, positioning itself as "The Rolling Stone of Technology" and has been at the forefront of information technology and Internet culture. As the first editor-in-chief and also the editor of The Whole Earth Catalog (yes, the magazine with "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." printed on the back cover), KK has a profound understanding of technological trends, especially its impact on society and economy. Insight, published the famous trilogy "Out of Control" , "What Technology Wants" and "The Inevitable" .

In 2008, the Internet had experienced more than ten years of development. Even before the iPhone was launched, KK had already observed a new paradigm, wrote 1000 true fans, and promoted it everywhere by another famous writer and investor Tim Ferriss. By 2016, some details of the original text were out of date. With the publication of Tools of Titan , a collection of articles by Tim Ferriss on 1000 true fans, KK rewrote a new, more concise version.

Although the two articles are eight years apart, and the latter is close to eight years ago, the fundamental discussion and initiative of 1000 True Fans has never changed: as a creator or entrepreneur, if your goal is not to make a fortune but to make a living, you don’t need to Targeting millions, tens of millions, or hundreds of millions of customers, you only need to find 1,000 loyal fans, continue to be yourself, and produce excellent content and products; the Internet not only allows authors to interact directly with the audience, but also allows easy charging, which is the key to finding and maintaining relationships. The best medium for soulmates.

But I must add an important footnote. Even if the goal is not just to make a living but to become famous, 1,000 true fans is the only way to start. Successfully find and satisfy 1,000 loyal fans, and then consider horizontal or vertical development, it is better than thinking that the market is too small from the beginning. Not enough, much more reliable. Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, has put forward a lot of pragmatic entrepreneurial advice, one of the most important is " it's better to have 100 people love you than a million people that sort of like you ."

My 135 nose bodhisattvas

Although my kin ko is also a KK, except for Cantonese, I am afraid that nothing can compare with Kevin Kelly. I can only pick up his wisdom and use "Bodhisattva with a pig head and a nose" as the 1000 true fans to supplement the context of this time and space and share my practice process. experience in.

Some people think that I only write articles and publish books even though I know that words are no longer popular. The communities I hang out in and the products I support are inseparable from words, articles, and books. I am unwilling to transform into a YouTuber or a podcaster, or to make products that are more in line with the times. To put it nicely, he is insisting on L, but to put it badly, he is just an old stubbornness.

Stubbornness is indeed a point, and persistence may be a point, but that is not the point. The core reason is actually that the trend is always changing. Even if you learn to cater to it, it is easy to plan and fail to keep up with the changes. Instead of trying to catch up with the changes, it is better to maintain a consistent style, choose the good and be stubborn, and save the effort of catering to continue to create, promote and follow the trend. Reaffirm your views from various angles and find 1,000 true fans who know how to appreciate you.

This is completely different from the "dead cow with one neck" who refuses to listen to opinions. Listening is good, but who you listen to and when are key. If I say that the classical music you create is a bit old-fashioned, what you should do is ignore me and focus on finding a close friend. Even if Mozart is reincarnated, I will still think his music is old-fashioned, and I am not your audience at all. Even within the potential audience, Alice tells you that it is too left, Bob tells you that it is too right, and Carol tells you that it is too far. It is logically impossible and a dead end to follow all opinions; follow other people's opinions before locking in your personal characteristics. Changing it again and again is not listening, but it means that it has not found its own characteristics. Listening is a process of interacting with fans. It is similar to the "from the outside in to the outside" method mentioned in "The King of Comedy". First, the creator needs to show his personal characteristics to the outside world. After finding an initial close friend, the feedback received can be It is the most valuable opinion, which needs to be carefully considered, incorporated into personal style, and presented to the outside world again.

I’m not saying that it’s easier to lock in your personal style and find soulmates than to go the popular route. I’ve experienced just the opposite. It’s not easy to find 1,000 people who are willing to pay for your work. It requires a strong will and perseverance. perseverance and firm belief.

Since the middle of last year, I have published every article and related old articles as Writing NFT for readers to collect. Until last week, the number of NFT holders had just reached 1,000. At the time of writing, there were 1,002 people in total. Originally, 943 readers purchased the book "The So-called "I Don't Invest", That's All in Legal Currency" published last year. However, many readers were too generous and were satisfied with the text or even support alone, and never came to receive the application. I have to temporarily keep the NFT I obtained for these readers, and I might have to carry this responsibility into the grave.

However, NFT holders are only single-time customers. Selling a thousand books last year was indeed enough for me to live for a month. The problem is that I cannot publish a book every month. It is good to publish one book a year. According to KK, the definition of true fans is fans who will always buy your new works. They are real fans because they are considered a fixed income. With this fan base, creators can focus on maintaining quality and continuous output.

From this perspective, only paid subscribers of the "Blockchain Sociology" weekly newspaper can be called loyal fans, and I only have 135 "true fans" (Thank you all from the bottom of my heart🙏🏼), and the progress of reaching the standard is only 13.5%. I have accumulated 135 loyal fans in 122 issues of the weekly newspaper, with an average of 1.1 fans per article per week. If I maintain this pace, even if no one unsubscribes, I will have to write for more than 15 years to accumulate 1,000 true fans.

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👉Okay, let me think about it👈

The poor progress is not only due to my insistence on opening up all popular science articles, which makes it difficult to persuade readers to pay, but also because LikeCoin canceled its Hong Kong registration a few years ago, causing me to dynamically clear and lose more than a hundred subscribers at once. However, the above are more or less just excuses. The most important thing is that I don’t work hard enough to promote it. I am introverted and socially anxious. Although I work hard at writing, I don’t let it go when it comes to promotion. I am Buddhist and follow the circumstances.

Even if I overcome my personality and improve my promotion, finding thousands of loyal fans will be a chore no matter what. Not to mention, even if I naively get 1,000 true fans, if by then my body and mind can no longer maintain quality or output, even if readers are willing I am too embarrassed to continue charging just for the original cost, and would rather stop publishing. Speaking of this, the most respected electronic newspaper in the Taiwan and Hong Kong technology circles is the discontinued " Tech Island Reader ". I am also a loyal fan of "Ke". I have read all the articles and listened to all the podcasts, and I have benefited a lot. , but what I appreciate most is not the insightful analysis, but that when Mr. Zhou Qinhua felt that he could not maintain high-quality output all the time, he resolutely decided to suspend publication during the peak period and refund proportionally without any delay.

Creation is inherently hard work, and in addition to creation, you also have to promote, operate, and sell, which is even more complicated; 1000 true fans is not a recipe for getting rich quickly, and it does not provide any secret techniques to make creation and promotion easier. Besides, if you want to be relaxed In life, one should not make a living by creating or starting a business. The 1000 true fans theory simply tells us that if you truly love creation and believe in the value of your work to the world, you don’t have to worry about being too high-spirited. You just need to create to your heart’s content and at the same time try your best to find your 㒼 nose Bodhisattva, no, 1000 true fans.

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