From a marketers perspective... that's not as easy as it looks.
To get 1,000 True Fans to commit we probably need to expose the product to 50,000 "True Fans". Hoping for a 2% conversion rate.
To reach 50,000 True Fans we will probably have to create awareness with a larger group of potential True Fans that have a strong connection to your Fandom, maybe 500,000.
To reach 1/2 a million people you are going to have to get well beyond a few posts to your niche subeditors or making the front page on Hacker News.
If you come up with some great advertisements and eventually starting landing your $100 per year True Fans, it might end up costing you $20 each to find them. Not a huge problem... assuming you can do it. It's tough because in addition to coding your own app you now had to learn how to be a pretty decent user of AdSense or Facebook Ads. That is very possible, but it does eat into the time you have to work on your core business.
And now you need another 200 fans to pay for the ads you have been buying.
If you double your conversion rate, you halve the needed audience size. If you target a niche with a competent product, you will not need massive reach to the general audience. Gaming is a rich medium with many underserved communities that would love to pay for what they like.
To get 1,000 True Fans to commit we probably need to expose the product to 50,000 "True Fans". Hoping for a 2% conversion rate.
To reach 50,000 True Fans we will probably have to create awareness with a larger group of potential True Fans that have a strong connection to your Fandom, maybe 500,000.
To reach 1/2 a million people you are going to have to get well beyond a few posts to your niche subeditors or making the front page on Hacker News.
If you come up with some great advertisements and eventually starting landing your $100 per year True Fans, it might end up costing you $20 each to find them. Not a huge problem... assuming you can do it. It's tough because in addition to coding your own app you now had to learn how to be a pretty decent user of AdSense or Facebook Ads. That is very possible, but it does eat into the time you have to work on your core business.
And now you need another 200 fans to pay for the ads you have been buying.