{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://frankhecker.com/2023/02/05/patreon-earnings-per-patron-and-1000-true-fans/",
  "description": "I look at Patreon earnings per patron, and how possible it is to acquire 1,000 true fans.",
  "path": "/2023/02/05/patreon-earnings-per-patron-and-1000-true-fans/",
  "publishedAt": "2023-02-06T04:32:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n",
  "tags": [
    "Patreon",
    "Life in Patreonia",
    "creator economy",
    "1000 true fans",
    "Kevin Kelly",
    "Patreonia",
    "Cohost"
  ],
  "textContent": "\\This post and its associated comments were originally published on [Cohost.\\]\n\nThis is another brief follow-up to my “Life in Patreonia” post, based on this analysis. It can be summed up as follows: there is no significant correlation between the number of patrons of a Patreon project and the earnings per patron, although the earnings per patron does decline very slightly as projects become more popular.\n\nThe numbers: across almost 130,000 projects reporting nonzero earnings from monthly charges in December 2022, average earnings per patron was $6.83 and median earnings per patron was $4.50. Fitting a simple linear model predicts that each additional patron is worth $3.98. There’s a fair amount of variability, though: one project earned less than a penny per patron, while another earned over a thousand dollars from just one patron. (As you might have guessed, it was an NFSW project.)\n\nI also looked into the (in)famous Kevin Kelly claim that creators aiming to make a living in the Internet age just need to find “1,000 true fans” willing to pony up $100 or more per year. How’s that working out for Patreon projects?\n\nOnly 31 Patreon projects (about 0.02% of all projects with nonzero monthly earnings) met the specific criteria of having 1,000 or more patrons _and_ per patron earnings of $100 or more per year (assuming December 2022 earnings were representative). If we use the looser criterion of earning $100,000 or more per year (regardless of the number of patrons), 238 projects met that, about 0.18% of all projects with nonzero monthly earnings in December 2022.  I think finding 1,000 “true fans” is a lot harder than Kelly thought.\n\n  *\n\nMightfo ([@Mightfo][]) - 2023-02-07 19:54\n\ni literally just watched an overall good video that pushed the 1000 true fans thing as a partial solution to the issues of the attention economy, this puts it into a lot of perspective...\n\nFrank Hecker ([@hecker][]) - 2023-02-07 20:56\n\nThanks for stopping by! Yeah, Kevin Kelly in particular has been dining out on the “1000 true fans” thing for years; it’s still the most popular post on his site. (But to give Kelly his due, his “scenius” post is excellent and I think essentially correct, even though he didn’t invent the term himself.)\n\n[@Mightfo]: http://web.archive.org/web/20241220042856/https://cohost.org/Mightfo\n[@hecker]: http://web.archive.org/web/20241219224313/https://cohost.org/hecker",
  "title": "Patreon earnings per patron and “1,000 true fans”"
}