The same people who pay thousands of dollars for self-help seminars and MLM schemes. You're missing why people are buying a product. All of the video streaming services out there combined won't help people get better at love or their career. That's why they're not willing to drop $1k on streaming services.
But a charismatic YouTuber who shows you how to bodybuild and gets you motivated? People will drop $1k on that per year.
I’m not sure I’d pay that for an online trainer but if there are probably things a step or two away from workouts where I would pay for an internet mitigated version.
But that’s not being a fan, that’s buying a service.
And its a steal.
Now this may be because the buyer is a true-believer or whatever, but equally likely because they're now able to drop a name around the dinner table, tell their friends that they're in direct dialogue with a 'name',... Status signalling, in a phrase. Tell me why some (rich!) people are willing to pay millions of dollars for a painting that looks like a couple of wet blobs on a half-plastered wall. Same forces at work, I suspect.
Problem is, you can only drink so many fancy starbucks coffees per day. There are many more content creators around.
What will the customers do when everyone wants a starbucks coffee per day? Pay one? Pay no one?
Also don't forget that not everyone is living in the HN well paid tech ivory tower. Even in the US, there should be a lot of people who can't afford a starbucks coffee per day...
One of the root ideas in the True Fans essay was a fan would be willing to spend a day's wage for a year's worth of content from a creator. A large portion of the population at large can pay a day's wage for say 52 hours (a creator spitting out and hour of content a week) of entertainment. Out of that population, argues the essay, a creator needs to only find a thousand True Fans out of the population that can afford the $100 in order to make a living.
That's not only workable math but something that's doable. The market can support the model, it won't always and in every situation but it can. At the reasonable "day's wage" level many people can afford to support multiple creators. Spending $200 a year for content is still in the affordability range of a large portion of the populace.
A far far smaller portion of the population at large can afford $1k for 52 hours of entertainment. It's definitely not a tenth of the $100 population, it's more likely a fraction of a percent. So any given creator isn't likely to find 100 True Rich Fans, they're going to find maybe one if they're lucky. The market isn't going to support a model where a few dozen hours of entertainment costs a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars will get you a game console, a TV, subscriptions to a bunch of streaming services, and a ton of games. Even fewer of these whales could support multiple creators so very few creators could ever possibly survive of the whale model.