I’ve always loved writing.

But I never took it seriously because I didn’t think there was any money in it.

I’m a capitalist at heart.

As much as I want to pursue a passion, I’ll always think about the money aspect.

I grew up without money.

That’s a powerful motivator to want something: simply by not having it.

It wasn’t until I got a job at a Web3 startup because of my writing that my mind shifted.

Previously, I had always envisioned writers as starving novelists who wrote their masterpiece in a coffee shop on a laptop they bought with their rent money.

But after the mental shift I realized there was more than just one type of writer.

The more I looked around on the internet the more I saw people writing about things they enjoyed and making plenty of money.

The deeper I went, the more examples I saw of people successfully writing online. To be honest, some of it wasn’t even that good.

I could do that.

Shit, I could do better than that.

Then one day I was re-reading the Almanack of Naval Ravikant and it hit me what I had been missing this entire time.

I didn’t fully understand leverage.

Leverage

Leverage is such a fundamental aspect of true freedom and yet I had been sleeping on it for years!

Since I have a finance background, I always think of debt when I hear the word leverage.

But that’s not the leverage I’m talking about here.

The technical definition of leverage: “the exertion of force by means of a lever.” or “to use (something) to maximum advantage.”

So in this case our lever is the Internet.

There’s almost 5 billion people on the internet.

That’s a HUGE lever.

At any moment you could create something that millions, even billions of people can see.

But Savant, it’s not that easy to just create something and get it in front of millions of people.

True. It’s not that easy.

But the great thing is you don’t need to reach millions of people.

Daft Punk is Playing at My House

In 2008, Kevin Kelly wrote an essay called 1,000 True Fans that changed the game.

In the essay, Kelly says to be a successful creator you don’t need millions of customers or millions of views or millions of dollars - all you need is 1,000 true fans.

A true fan is something that will buy pretty much anything you’ll produce.

If you can create and sell $100 worth of something in a year, that’s $100,000.

Not too shabby.

Think about someone that fits that category for you.

One that comes to mind for me is Daft Punk.

I was always a fan growing up but when I saw them perform at Coachella in 2006, it cemented true fandom for me.

It was the most incredible live show I’d ever seen.

After that show I traveled thousands of miles to see them six more times in concert.

They never disappointed.

Daft Punk could sell almost anything and I would buy it.

Does that mean we can all be the Daft Punks of our niche?

Probably not.

But the lever is so big you don’t have to be.

There’s 5 billion people on the internet.

That means for every 5,000,000 people you just need one to be a fan.

Those are pretty good odds if you ask me.

Web3

So how does Web3 fit into all this?

The next phase of the internet (Web3) allows people to own digital things for the first time in history.

This adds another layer in which people or fans can interact or purchase your work.

It used to be that you would write an article or create a song or piece of art and you had to go through all these middlemen who would take their cut.

But now, with the help of new computers (blockchains) those middlemen are irrelevant.

For example: Mirror is a Web3 writing platform. Writers own their content and can sell it using NFT technology.

Fans can buy an NFT that verifies they own copy of an article you wrote - like it was a piece of art (writing is an art form after all).

This can be applied to any creative endeavor.

Human beings are collectors. Since the dawn of time we have been collecting things. It’s in our DNA.

Web3 supercharges that DNA.

Action Items

Here are some Web3 tools that can help you find your true fans and cut out the middlemen. 

Check out for writing online with true ownership:

Check out Readl for literary NFTs:

Check out DeSo for Web3 social media where you own all your own content:

Thanks for giving me space in your inbox. I know it’s a crowded field. Any questions feel free to reply!

-Savant