Is there any money in 'The Long Tail'?

Christmas is over and it's time to get back to work.   For years, I used to work for companies that shut down between Xmas and New Year.  So, typically, this time was spent on taking day trips or visits with out-of-state family and friends.  Since I left the posh company life and started my own consulting company, I no longer have that luxury (by the way, major changes are coming to the website and services offered.  More on that project later).  With only 3 days to go until the radio show, I thought I would pass on some information about couple of interesting marketing concepts that have been floating around and could easily apply to any small business doing online marketing but could be particularly useful for authors, musicians, sculptors, painters or artists in general.

The first concept is called the 'Long Tail' of marketing.  This was a concept first proposed by Chris Anderson, the previous Editor-In-Chief of Wired Magazine.   If you want the details, check out a very good read on Wikipedia on The Long Tail.

If you are in a hurry, here is a summary.  The concept is based on some academic research that shows demand curve for markets with a high freedom of choice (like the Internet) favor the top 20% of the most popular items sold -- these are considered to be the 'hits' or 'blockbusters' products.  The 'non-hits' make up the other 80% of the market.  This portion (the yellow in the graph) is the Long Tail.


Most traditional retailers, especially the brick & mortars, focus on the 20% since the cost of storage and distribution to carry the other 80% would be prohibitive to be profitable due to relatively low volumes of sales.  But in a market like the Internet, this 80% could represent millions of underserverd customers.   Businesses like Amazon and Netflix as well as social media sites are successful mostly because of the Long Tail.  Keep in mind, these are aggreators of the work of many authors or film makers, not just a single person trying to sell a book or short film online. 

So does this model apply to individuals selling a book, photographs, music or other creative works of art online?  Possibly yes.  But as with most things in life, there are caveats.  The Long Tail does not guarantee financial success and it is not a get-rich-quick scheme.   That is because even with the large numbers of potential buyers online, the number of people who will search a specific non-hit item, land on the right site with the right information and eventually make a purchsing decision is still relatively small and will require considerable committment from the creators of those products (see the definition of strategy in the previous blog - a successful one requires goals, plans and committed resources).   Unless you know you are going to be featured on Oprah's Book Club, you should plan on getting your viral marketing plans in place and get ready to go to work.