Absolutely doable

The comics market is roughly 1/37th the size of the book market.

If you assume then that 1 in 37 readers are going to like comics, then you have to talk to 3,700 readers to find 100 comics fans.

If you assume that 1 in those 100 fans will be RABID fans of your work, and another 9 will be casual fans of your work, which I think is fair, then you have to talk to 3,700 readers to find 1 true fan of your work.

That means 1,000 true fans should come from talking with 3,700,000 readers.

According to rough stats pulled from the Facebook ad manager, there are 672 million people with an interest in books and novels, which is roughly 33% of the two billion people around the world using Facebook.

I think that’s a pretty good sample size to extrapolate with for the sake of this argument.

If it’s the case that 1/3 of people are readers, at least casually, then you need to talk to 11,100,000 people to find 3,700,000 readers to find 1,000 true fans.

This is obviously why we TARGET to find the most likely people to be fans of your work.

That seems like a lot of people, and it is, but even if you just randomly scattershot humans, that’s not even 10% of adults in this country, let alone the world.

It would take about 3,000 days, or eight years, of reaching out to 3,700 people brand new people each day, in order to find those 1,000 true fans.

I know that seems like a LOT, but there’s a reason we call people a 10-year overnight success.

Smart marketing is all about narrowing that timeframe by showing your work to more people, who are very likely to like your work, more quickly.

That’s what targeting is for, of course.

But even with targeting it’s a lot of people.

It’s not an impossible number of people, though. There are ways to short circuit the system.

At a single big convention, for instance, you likely come in contact with 10,000 new people, even if the vast majority don’t stop at your table.

Out of that, you might get 100 sales and a couple of hundred people on your mailing list.

Out of those 100 sales, 10-20 move on to become huge fans and follow you everywhere.

Thus, if you do 10 conventions a year, that should be 100 true fans, and if you do that for 10 years that’s 1,000 true fans.

This is a way to short circuit the system. A convention has a curated list of attendees who have a much higher propensity than 1 in 37 to be fans of your work.

Another way is with ads, or joint partnerships with other creators, or anything you can do to multiply the impact of your work so you can be seen by more of the right people as quickly as possible.

It really comes down, then, to making a great thing and showing it around to people, understanding that every no brings you closer to a yes.

Not everybody will like you. The ones who succeed just show their work to more people for longer than you, and they found ways to short circuit the system.

It’s tiring, grueling work, and even if they ARE the right person to love your work, you still have to convince them to give you a chance.

The problem is you aren’t even trying to find them. You’re just hoping they come to you.

And if you are doing the work of trying to find them, you certainly aren’t doing it enough.

And if you are doing it consistently, you haven’t been doing it long enough for it to work.

It takes SO MANY people to get ANY traction. Just SO MANY PEOPLE.

On top of that, most people need to see you several times before they buy, and then it takes them time to try your product and fall in love with it.

Just look at those numbers, 11 MILLION people to find 1,000 TRUE FANS.

Make better things, package those things better to attract the right person, and then show it to more targeted people.

It took years for me to get anywhere with my career, and even now, when I do outreach every day, most days I still get nowhere.

Cuz it’s hard.

Really hard.

But it is also doable.

Absolutely doable.