Reading Reflection No. 3

Reading Reflection No. 3

“The Long Tail; Why the future of business is selling less of more.”

1. The theme of this book is the insight that, thanks to digitized marketing, it is now possible to make a great deal of money selling to very niche markets. In my direct experience this has been borne out by the incredible success of Indie titles on Steam. Thanks to the online marketplace it is now possible to sell a product in so many markets that all it takes is one percent of the population buying it to make a profit. The success of Cuphead as opposed to the recent and spectacular debacle that is BF II EAtm. Further proves the author's point that the real money is in selling a lot of niche products directly to their market regardless of distance.
2. This book points out the importance of specialization to any new entrepreneur, especially if you're good or service can be effectively sold across any distance online. This book makes the point that, in today’s truly global market, it only takes a fraction of a fraction of the full population being interested in your product to make a profit. Furthermore, if it is possible to specialize your product easily to meet a wide variety of needs, no matter how niche, this is worth doing because enough people will want it to produce a profit.
3. Honestly, the existing market discovery exercises with a greater focus on niche markets would be perfectly suitable. Simply have the students search out people to interview, as per usual, but do this at (or near) the beginning of the course and ask the students to try and find niche markets and determine what kind of product they want specifically.
4. Honestly, this book mostly clarified something I already knew on some level. There was no point at which I thought “aha!” or “eureka!”. However, all throughout I thought “oh, this makes perfect sense, why didn't I see it this way before?” This book is no great discovery, it just clarifies a reality that we have all inhabited for a while now and reminds us that, not too long ago, things were very different indeed.

Anderson, Chris. The long tail: why the future of business is selling less of more. Hyperion, 2006.