Midjourney / Prompt: "Create an illustration that represents focusing on a small part of a whole"

The Perils of Niching Down

The way creators are taught to pursue 1,000 true fans is broken

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Gil Friend about 2 years ago

Who says "1,000 true fans" has to be ultra-nichey? Certainly not Kevin Kelly; he favored "the niche is you."

@maxmore01 about 2 years ago

@gfriend I don't think Rob makes that claim. True, he is writing about that approach exclusively which can easily create that impression. But it seems clear to me that he thinks you can have a true fans strategy without being committed to a niche focus. "Turns out, there's a stark difference between creating true fans around one narrow, rigid aspect of yourself, and creating true fans of a dynamic, evolving human."

Rob Hardy about 2 years ago

@gfriend you're definitely right! i don't think kevin kelly ever said anything like that. but the whole internet marketing/creator economy industrial complex that's emerged over the last 10 years has treated niching down like an inviolable rule of success. it's become a cultural norm, which makes it harder to see the tradeoffs we're making or how they impact our ability to play the long game.

@alex.m.beaulieu about 2 years ago

I fucking love this! Thank you! I think this is a message more people need to hear. Another aspect of this is -- these tech platforms are constantly changing. Tying your personality, brand, or income to them can be such a slog. You're adapting to a machine that is being tinkered on to maximize ad revenue, not for connection (I worked inside a few of them). Being truly yourself in that context can be, funny enough, a revolutionary act and what a lot of us need to see. Thanks again for the piece.

But then how do you make a living? That's the part I'm missing in all of this. If the point was to find/create a niche in order to build a following and make $, then how does un-nicheing yourself change that?