It’s possible for a smart adult to pretty reliably make a good living in any job as long as they’re willing to put in about 65 hours a week for about 5 years building their skills/credentials/business. Making more money in less time typically requires tradeoffs in terms of intrinsic talent/assuming risk/doing unpleasant work. The idea that the average person can do more with less is less plausible the more extreme the edge is supposed to be.
I think this paragraph is contradicting itself. It begins with “possible for a smart adult” and then concludes with “the average person”. The average person is not a smart adult.
The point of 1000 True Fans is not about averages, but about comparative advantage. Focusing on a niche audience that values what you produce to the point that they’ll spend 1000 times or more what the average person would. (i.e. $100 year vs. a few cents for a non-fan for the same music).
Catering to a niche is not a violation of the EMH (which for some reason I always initially read as “the Emergency Medical Hologram”). Effective marketing is also not a violation of the EMH. Both are ways to increase demand, or at least shift it to a different target, for a subset of the market. (They also scale up: you can have 100 superfans who spend $1000, or 10 super-super-fans who spend $10,000 -- though probably not if what you sell is music. But for other types of product this is certainly possible.)
If someone reads this article and interprets it to mean that they should just take whatever random job making roughly the same amount of money, it could be a disaster for their utility (and maybe that of the world), depending on what they value. It is not easy to make lots of money, but there are many ways and circumstances under which “make money on the internet doing something you love” is both more easy and more rewarding than working a job would be.
I quit my last corporate gig in part because I couldn’t bear sitting in another meeting arguing the same things over and over and never getting any conclusion to them… when over the weekend prior I’d made five figures by talking for around ten minutes.
I am, of course, leaving out the years of work that previously went into being able to give that talk, what I spent to be in the context where I gave the talk, etc., but all of those things were still rewarding in ways that a corporate job wasn’t. In particular, a sense of personal meaning in overcoming challenges to do things I wanted done, vs. the oppressive sense of having to shovel shit to get things done for one company or another.
Can the “average” person do that sort of thing? No. Absolutely not! I have attended internet marketing courses and observed how little the “average” person comprehends or is able to reproduce what they are taught with regard to marketing. (And I’m not claiming to be particularly good at it—I’ve always considered myself awful at it, only to recently realize that the vast majority of people are even worse!)
Are LWers “average” in general? Maybe. But ISTM that a lot of very non-average people congregate here. I would guess that the main ingredient a typical LWer would lack at being able to take advantage of existing market inefficiencies and civilizational inadequacies is either the ability to think like a marketer, and/or the willingness to act like one.
I would guess that the main ingredient a typical LWer would lack at being able to take advantage of existing market inefficiencies and civilizational inadequacies is either the ability to think like a marketer, and/or the willingness to act like one.
Even without that willingness I think there’s a good chance that Scott Alexander could make more money as a content full-time content creator then as a psychiatrist without following the standard marketing wisdom.
In another recent thread there’s discussion about Peter Limberg from TheStoa. Within the last year he managed to build up a 2k/month income while ignoring the traditional marketing wisdom on Youtube. He doesn’t tell people to subscribe at the end of his videos. He deactivated Youtube comments because he believes them to be a crappy medium. It’s quite plausible that another year of doing TheStoa would bring him to 100k.
There are plenty of niches that call for people who have high standards and if there’s value provided they can support a person.
I think this paragraph is contradicting itself. It begins with “possible for a smart adult” and then concludes with “the average person”. The average person is not a smart adult.
The point of 1000 True Fans is not about averages, but about comparative advantage. Focusing on a niche audience that values what you produce to the point that they’ll spend 1000 times or more what the average person would. (i.e. $100 year vs. a few cents for a non-fan for the same music).
Catering to a niche is not a violation of the EMH (which for some reason I always initially read as “the Emergency Medical Hologram”). Effective marketing is also not a violation of the EMH. Both are ways to increase demand, or at least shift it to a different target, for a subset of the market. (They also scale up: you can have 100 superfans who spend $1000, or 10 super-super-fans who spend $10,000 -- though probably not if what you sell is music. But for other types of product this is certainly possible.)
If someone reads this article and interprets it to mean that they should just take whatever random job making roughly the same amount of money, it could be a disaster for their utility (and maybe that of the world), depending on what they value. It is not easy to make lots of money, but there are many ways and circumstances under which “make money on the internet doing something you love” is both more easy and more rewarding than working a job would be.
I quit my last corporate gig in part because I couldn’t bear sitting in another meeting arguing the same things over and over and never getting any conclusion to them… when over the weekend prior I’d made five figures by talking for around ten minutes.
I am, of course, leaving out the years of work that previously went into being able to give that talk, what I spent to be in the context where I gave the talk, etc., but all of those things were still rewarding in ways that a corporate job wasn’t. In particular, a sense of personal meaning in overcoming challenges to do things I wanted done, vs. the oppressive sense of having to shovel shit to get things done for one company or another.
Can the “average” person do that sort of thing? No. Absolutely not! I have attended internet marketing courses and observed how little the “average” person comprehends or is able to reproduce what they are taught with regard to marketing. (And I’m not claiming to be particularly good at it—I’ve always considered myself awful at it, only to recently realize that the vast majority of people are even worse!)
Are LWers “average” in general? Maybe. But ISTM that a lot of very non-average people congregate here. I would guess that the main ingredient a typical LWer would lack at being able to take advantage of existing market inefficiencies and civilizational inadequacies is either the ability to think like a marketer, and/or the willingness to act like one.
Even without that willingness I think there’s a good chance that Scott Alexander could make more money as a content full-time content creator then as a psychiatrist without following the standard marketing wisdom.
In another recent thread there’s discussion about Peter Limberg from TheStoa. Within the last year he managed to build up a 2k/month income while ignoring the traditional marketing wisdom on Youtube. He doesn’t tell people to subscribe at the end of his videos. He deactivated Youtube comments because he believes them to be a crappy medium. It’s quite plausible that another year of doing TheStoa would bring him to 100k.
There are plenty of niches that call for people who have high standards and if there’s value provided they can support a person.