In Defense Of Exclusivity
This post was originally published on the IslandOfSignal blog.
“I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”
— Groucho Marx
Would you rather be shot by a shotgun or a sniper rifle? I’ll let you ponder the gruesome details while I explore the analogy.
The Web looks to be splitting over multiple dimensions — ad-supported vs. subscription based, giant corporations vs. the IndieWeb, as broad as possible vs. exclusive. Spoiler alert: they’re all related. But I want to focus on that last one: what does it mean to be exclusive online?
Exclusivity has gotten a bad rap. The very word reeks of elitism, not to mention of leaving money on the table. If your creation is (for the) good, why not have it reach as many eyeballs/ear drums/brain cells as possible?
Bigger Isn’t Always Better
Consider scale, this great engine of progress. Near-zero marginal costs of an extra byte or one more REST call have made scale the main driver of profit on the Internet. You create your product once, then frantically try to make your userbase curve look increasingly exponential. But as a wise friend once told me — scale is a double-edged sword.
I want you to challenge the assumption of scale as an undisputed good. Scale is not innocent. It’s not neutral. It affects the content, makes you risk averse, and colors everything you do. Writing for an audience of 10 (or 100), is not the same as writing for 10,000 or 10 million. As your readership grows, you will try to appeal to as much of it as possible, and it will change how and what you write. Bob Dylan echoed the same in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:
As a performer I’ve played for 50,000 people and I’ve played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried.
How Many Eyeballs Do You Need?
As Seth Godin writes in The minimum viable audience: “If you aim for mass (another word for average), you’ll probably create something average.” I couldn’t agree more. To get back to exclusivity for a second — getting the attention of the right people should be your goal. 500 people paying $100 a year are enough to make a comfortable living. Bump it to 1,000 people, and you’re in the top 15% of income earners in the US.
You don’t need to reach everyone. Stepping out of the numbers game allows you to:
- Focus on bringing real value to a small audience
- Avoid the perverse incentives that come with scale (clickbait, anyone?)
- Create something you could be really proud of, that will stand the test of time and will delight your (small but dedicated) audience for years to come
Keeping your audience modest comes with the added benefits of opportunity and serendipity. This might sound paradoxical at first glance — having a bigger following should improve your odds, not diminish them. But this is not how either crowds or communities behave. Being a part of a small, exclusive group makes you much more likely to reach out to your favorite creator with a business proposition. And to actually get a response in return. The private club, even when residing online, is more akin to an intimate show in a tiny venue, as opposed to a giant stadium. Where would you rather be, given the choice?
Finding Your Village
Now, this post wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t talk about Volume, Signal and Noise. You can read Anti-Content to hear our concrete thoughts on the topic, but let’s just agree that there’s too much noise online. Creating your exclusive enclave of the web paves the way for a quiet place.
At one point, the Farnam Street Learning Community was mine. When I joined it a year and a half ago, it had about 1,500 members. The signal-to-noise ratio there was incredible. The best I’ve seen online, before or since. Discussions ranged from books to philosophy, productivity and technology — and they were real, thoughtful, multi-faceted discussions. There was no yelling, and pretty much any point of view was allowed to be heard. We reveled in each other’s intellectual curiosity, and at belonging to the same exclusive club. Its exclusivity was undeniably a feature, not a bug. It cost $150/year to join, and you were mainly paying to keep the community small. It has since grown tenfold, and I chose to not renew my membership. Maybe a village can raise a child, but a metropolis can’t.
Did I leave the Learning Community because I’m such am incorrigible hipster that I can’t enjoy anything that’s getting popular? Maybe. I do love me some good ol’ indie music. But no, that’s not it. And to be fair to FS, it’s still undoubtedly one of the best communities available for a curious mind online. But some of the magic is gone. It’s not that the caliber of the members in the community declined, or that any new rules were externally imposed. It’s that the inevitable law of big numbers kicked in, bringing about a change in the dynamic. When you have a forum with 1,500 people, maybe 10% of them will be reliably active and engaging. We manage well with several dozen people. Dunbar got that just about right. But when the pool is 15,000, that 10% becomes 1,500 people, and the paradox of choice prevents us from forming meaningful bonds. The shotgun we left loaded in the first act raises its smoking barrel in the second.
Be The Sniper
Time to bring the bullet-studded analogy home. My proposition to you is — be the sniper, not the shell-spraying shotgunner. Choose your audience as carefully as you would craft your art. Enjoy the benefits a small community brings — the ability to intimately know its members, the freedom to experiment without the fear of alienating sections of the membership, the confidence that the people are there because of you, and not because an algorithm sent them your way. The algorithm giveth and it taketh away. A member of an exclusive community is, by definition, there by choice.
As for me, I’d damn sure rather be pierced by a marksman’s well-aimed round. I want to have this almost intimate relationship with creators that I respect. I want to know that the person whose creation I’m consuming is, in some small measure, accountable to me. I want to feel that for me to choose their content says as much about me as it does about them. The truly discerning creator has given a lot of thought to the character of their audience, and I want them to feel they’ve chosen well.
This Article wouldn’t be possible without the amazing collaboration of Ellen Fishbein. Check out writing.coach to schedule 1:1 coaching for writers.
