Audience Quality > Audience Quantity.

This simple statement is quite often overlooked by people trying to be a success on the internet and is quite often thought about in the reverse. But I have had much greater success in my endeavours since I considered things this way.

Myke Hurley’s guest post on 512 Pixels

I’ve written before about our bias towards big numbers of eyeballs (or ears, in this case), but Myke Hurley expresses it far better than I could. A smaller, more engaged audience is more valuable. They’re more likely to give you money, and they’re worth more to advertisers because they’re more likely to give them money. Most importantly, an engaged audience gives you, the creator, the most valuable thing of all: the knowledge that you’re creating something that resonates with people. A number is just a number. An email, or an @-reply from an audience member is something real, tangible, and powerful.