When your product is good enough, you will get fans. However hard you market the thing, you won't 'find fans' unless the thing you're marketing is up to scratch, so instead of trying to lasso in fans, concentrate on making consistently high quality product.
I half agree with you. Yes, your product has to be top-notch, or as best as it can be (because let's face it, a lot of sub-par stuff becomes profitable and/or popular). But just because what you have is good doesn't mean you will get fans. You've got to work, and work HARD. I can think of dozens of bands in my area alone that were as good or better than a lot of stuff out there, but they never made it anywhere because they didn't market themselves well. They didn't find the fans, and engage the fans in a way to make them want to share it with their friends.
This sort of stuff has been on my mind lately, but from a different perspective (trying to market
a band). Our music is good...weird, but good. Lots of different people when they hear us actually like us. But as it stands, not a lot of people know us right now. We've been discussing who our core audience might be (people who read urban fantasy novels, for example) and how to reach them (we're playing the Pittsburgh Pagan Pride fest this year, and going to try to get into DragonCon next year). We've made recordings as good as we can right now (I have no doubt that our next ep/album will be better), identified what we're lacking (band/promo photos, a video would be nice) and are trying to find where our potential fans discover new music. We're looking at online communities (though you don't want to drive-by-spam them, because no one likes that), seeing where and how to advertise (we're trying facebook ads right now) as well as looking at local opportunities (shows, radio, etc).
Anyway, babble/self-promotion aside (I need to be less shy about that, too), you could make the best movie in the world, but if you're not pounding the pavement, so to speak, no one will care. And you could likewise make a mediocre-to-bad product (for example, films by The Asylum), market it well and make money consistently. MDM, I do agree with Nick that you can improve your work (and you have been, one step at a time), but definitely work on building buzz. Find your potential fans, and let them know about it. Then when you're 100% ready, you can remind them that you're there. Marketing never ends.
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