A Slippery Slope
In Chris Anderson's The Long Tail, he covers a diverse breadth of topics related to the niche and the immanent change of economics. One of the facts he presented that initially caught my interest was that up until recently most media obeyed the 80/20 rule. In television and film, the distribution of profit-generating media was even more skewed.
Film production companies lose money on the vast majority of their investments. Success in their industry is solely contingent on those handful of movies that cause the public to swarm into dim theaters, more than happy to risk losing a shoe on the suspiciously sticky floors. And these films have to be so popular that their profits overshadow the loss incurred from the majority of their other investments.
The Brady Bunch was the most watched television program during its reign. Today, even the most popular shows don't come close to matching its numbers. As the public continuously has access to an increasingly diverse selection, we stop settling for what has been designed to appease the masses.
This says a lot about Internet marketing. With the digitization of products, providing a hit-product and a niche-product cost the seller the same amount. With the cost of production steadily decreasing, more and more of us are able to produce. With more and more niche products to choose from, we refuse to purchase items that aren't exactly what we want.
Since we are quickly evolving from a hit-driven society, finding specific products or information that precisely meet the demand of a few is finally becoming profitable, and soon, more profitable than searching for the hits that will satisfy the masses.
Thelongtail.com gives you a wealth of information, advice, statistics and experiences. In todays post, Anderson recounts his experience at a conference for romance novelists and how the the elongation of the tail is effecting them as well. And if this blog hasn't caught your interest about the site, maybe the picture from today's post will:
from thelongtail.com
Film production companies lose money on the vast majority of their investments. Success in their industry is solely contingent on those handful of movies that cause the public to swarm into dim theaters, more than happy to risk losing a shoe on the suspiciously sticky floors. And these films have to be so popular that their profits overshadow the loss incurred from the majority of their other investments.
The Brady Bunch was the most watched television program during its reign. Today, even the most popular shows don't come close to matching its numbers. As the public continuously has access to an increasingly diverse selection, we stop settling for what has been designed to appease the masses.
This says a lot about Internet marketing. With the digitization of products, providing a hit-product and a niche-product cost the seller the same amount. With the cost of production steadily decreasing, more and more of us are able to produce. With more and more niche products to choose from, we refuse to purchase items that aren't exactly what we want.
Since we are quickly evolving from a hit-driven society, finding specific products or information that precisely meet the demand of a few is finally becoming profitable, and soon, more profitable than searching for the hits that will satisfy the masses.
Thelongtail.com gives you a wealth of information, advice, statistics and experiences. In todays post, Anderson recounts his experience at a conference for romance novelists and how the the elongation of the tail is effecting them as well. And if this blog hasn't caught your interest about the site, maybe the picture from today's post will:
from thelongtail.com
Labels: long tail, niche marketing
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