1,000 True Friends
2025 is the year of the small creator
I thought that to be a successful writer on Substack, I’d need to hit at least 1,000 subscribers.
I don’t know where that number came from. Maybe it’s from my YouTube era, where you need 1,000 subscribers (and 4,000 watch hours) just to start earning money through ads. But it has been two years of writing weekly on this platform, and my subscriber count still hovers below the 500 mark, less than half of my unconscious target.
Yet I’ve never felt so creatively fulfilled.
Bucking the growth model
The fastest way to grow a following on the internet is to pick a niche and just go into it really deeply. This works because although people are multifaceted, algorithms are not. If you make videos about only watercolour paintings, YouTube can easily recommend your channel to people who watch watercolour videos. If you occasionally veer into photography, YouTube is suddenly confused on which of your videos to recommend to their audience, so they recommend your stuff less altogether.
I don’t have a niche, which explains my absolutely slow subscriber growth rate. But - I keep telling myself this - I am writing on Substack just for me. I’m writing to synthesise my own thoughts, feelings, accomplishments, and missteps.
This intention became clearer when I took Write of Passage, an online writing school that I would eventually work for. We were encouraged to lean into the personal side of essay writing. I began digging up stories from my past, talking about taboo topics like money, family, and my anxiety. I started sharing real bits of me that would have never surfaced without proper introspection.
Last month, I quit my corporate job in the pursuit of something that feels more aligned with myself. What showed up was, surprise surprise, a pang of anxiety. I put that story up on the internet because I wanted to showcase both ups and downs of my journey. It didn’t feel right to just show my accomplishments. As self-proclaimed memoir snob (I call her the ‘POP queen’)
says, good writers write unsparingly about themselves. I didn’t write that to gain sympathy or to get pity. I published that story just because it felt like an important step in my journey and I wanted to freeze the moment in writing.A new kind of reader
What happened after was something I didn’t expect.
A lot of my friends, who coincidentally subscribed to my Substack, started sending me messages, liking my post, and commenting on the essay. All of them showed support, rooting for this girl across the world in Hong Kong that they have never met.
I had no idea that people were reading my stuff that closely. Turns out that by sharing my story, week after week, they became invested in my journey. I became a kind of protagonist in their inboxes. They were rooting for me.
These folks didn’t feel like “fans” of my work. They felt like my friends.
1,000 True Fans
Kevin Kelly in 2008 wrote about this concept of “1,000 true fans”. He argued that if a creator has 1,000 true fans who are willing to pay $100 a year each, they can effectively make a viable career out of creating full-time.
This makes sense and was liberating. You don’t need to be big on the internet. You just need a loyal cult following of 1,000 to support you.
The math holds up. If you’re creating about a certain topic - say, minimalism or mechanical keyboards - and keep showing up with consistent, valuable content, you are very likely to have a cult following because the internet is a powerful superconnector who can bring people with very similar, niche interests together.
But “fans” imply that the relationship is one-way. A creator who delivers. An audience that consumes.
What I felt from my several-hundred-odd subscribers feels more like friendship. These guys show up week after week to send love and support. Likewise, I also (try my best to) show up week after week to their Substacks to show that I’m around and rooting for them.
It’s not 1,000 true fans. It’s 1,000 true friends.
1,000 True Friends > 1,000 True Fans
There’s a magic something in small creators that I think a lot of the internet are gravitating towards. It’s as if the small creators, the ones with less than 10,000 followers, are the creators du jour. Creators with 1,000 true friends are creators who are more multifaceted, share more about their stories versus just their expertise.
Similar to how Kevin Kelly argues that creators don’t need to be super big to have a viable career, I think creators can thrive with the additional aspects that having 1,000 True Friends can offer.
1. True friends share emotions
Perhaps it’s Substack as a writing medium that encourages more in-depth bearing of emotions, but every single comment that has said, “Wow, I really felt this” hits so much harder than a like on Instagram. Creating feels less like a broadcast, but more like an intimate conversation with a small, closed circle of people in the same room.
2. Slow monetisation, deep trust
Though people with 1,000 true fans have a clearer value proposition and therefore can sell to them a lot easier, people with 1,000 true friends have a deeper trust that’s more slowly built overtime. And if they want to buy something, they will say so.
Last month, a subscriber offered to buy a photo that I posted on Notes. I didn’t have to offer anything. They just asked. This trust to ask, I realised, is the kind that gets built overtime without the need of sales funnels or incessant pitches.
3. Friends who can vouch for you
Unlike 1,000 true fans who are all paying customers, 1,000 true friends won’t all give creators they like money, but they can bring something else.
I’ve been in people’s minds when there have been job openings. People have messaged me when they have a speaking slot on a panel they’re organising. People have said nice things in reference checks. People have introduced me to other small creators with the same vibe.
And while bigger follower counts can signal reach, smaller and deeper followers signify resonance.
4. A creative moat
The more I lean into writing for my multifaceted self, the more “human” I become on the internet. This means that I don’t feel a strong need to optimise every headline or stick to viral framings for my essay. I don’t ever feel like I’m one bad post away from being obsolete. I feel very solidly within myself, which affords me creative freedom and liberties to talk about pretty much anything I want.
The year of the small creator
I wonder if this is what other creators with a small audience feels. A tight, deeply-engaged, emotionally-close relationship with their circle of influence. The relatability. The sense of “we’re in the same position and are in this together”.
Maybe that’s what big creators lose over time. As audience size grows, emotional investment thins. It becomes harder for fans to believe in the person behind the brand. The more sponsored posts and affiliate links, the more skeptical the reader becomes: Do they actually use this, or are they just selling out?
Small creators don’t usually have that kind of access yet. And maybe that’s what makes them more trustworthy. When we recommend something, it’s not because we were paid to. It’s usually because we actually love it.
There is a sweetness to smallness, which I’m thinking is reserved especially for those in the <10,000 followers count (I’m just saying this because I’m 6k on LinkedIn, 2k on YT, <500 on Substack). There’s a sit-around-a-campfire feel to creators who are small enough.
Beyond a certain size, creators may lose their gravity (though
- please lemme know if I’m wrong). But until they hit that point, the creators still have the opportunity to become true friends with their followers by connecting and responding directly.Truth is, most of us will never break out of that 10,000 follower count. Maybe we don’t have to be creatively fulfilled and gain resonance among our circles.
A friend on Substack wrote (please @ me if it’s you!) that her husband runs a podcast just for his friends, and I think that may be what the small creator world will move into. Everyone is just creating for their friends, being real, instead of being performative to appeal to a set of fans.
And with how easy it is to create online these days, with tools that are so cheap and good, it’s a lot easier to create good podcasts, good essays, good videos with very little. Anyone can be a creator, really. It’s probably very easy for anyone to get themselves up and running in 2025, each magnetically attracting their own small group of 1,000 true friends.
P.S.
and I are cooking up something for small creators. If you’re a small creator and have problems you are encountering or questions you’d like to ask other small creators, drop a comment below.This essay was written in part with Voicepal, a ghostwriter-in-your-pocket app that Ali Abdaal is developing with his team. (Disclaimer: He’s my boss)
Update log:
👭 Finished watching Us: The Series, a Thai girl love series that just concluded. It’s a lot of fluff. I can’t believe we live in an era where lesbian TV shows are now entering the mainstream.
📕 Finished reading Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. This kind of personal narrative weaved into a non-fiction book is becoming more common. I’m a fan.
📖 Started reading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, which I bought after
said she’s gonna do a book club out of it.🪄 Finished watching season 2 of Dungeons and Drag Queens. Would highly recommend to anyone remotely interested in fantasy stories. It was magical.
💬 Was calling my brother (we have it in the calendar for every 2 weeks now) and I mentioned Dungeons and Drag Queens, and he was like “Wait, from Dimension 20?! You have a subscription to Dropout?!”. Once again - drag unites family.
📺 On the YouTube channel: How to do morning pages for instant clarity
Book a call: Have a bite-sized creative project you want to start? Let’s figure out the systems to get that going. I promise to be your earliest fan - https://calendly.com/beckyisj/
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Hi Becky, the day I stopped trying to write to build an audience is ironically when my Substack started growing. It is true that people who play single topic algorithms games might get ahead faster, and I do feel that pressure myself sometimes, but the more I try to play that game, the more disingenuous I feel. I've decided to just write whatever I feel like, whenever I like, and be as real as I'm comfortable with online. As impersonal knowledge content that algorithms typically love and can understand becomes more commonplace (and AI-able), I think we'll see a shift more towards the kind of writing you're talking about - just being yourself, sharing your real life with friends, and if that attracts a smaller group of people, so be it.
I don’t know that people lose this when they scale. It’s more that the financial opportunities overwhelm the underlying curiosity (or for some the $$ was the point). I do think you see people across all domains - music, art, writing - that are still true to what they care about. But usually it does involve leaving some money on the table.