The long tail has been getting a lot of press lately. The basic premise seems to be that there is a larger market of those willing to buy unpopular items (or services) than all of those people who buy the “hot” items. It puts aside the traditional wisdom to only focus on items that can be sold many times because you may be missing an even larger opportunity. Instead, the long tail theory is to sell a few things to a few people at a time, but many times over. According to Joe Kraus, the same is true for software:
- every business has multiple processes
- processes that are similar in name between businesses are actually often highly customized
- there exist a large number of processes unique to millions of small clusters of industries.
Said another way, there is a long tail of very custom process problems that software is supposed to help businesses solve.
It’s like being a specialty bookstore, but with the right software development processes you could create niche software products and be able to sell just one at a profit. Look at his slide presentation for more details on this.
Seth Godin also talks about the long tail and how to approach it as a budding entrepreneur:
- it’s okay if it doesn’t happen fast
- don’t worry so much about getting the approval of those who came before and are farther along the curve
- keep costs as low as possible so you can do this without panicking when it doesn’t work so fast
- surround yourself with friends and colleagues who “get it” and root for you, even when it’s not going so fast
(variant: fire the friends and mothers-in-law who aren’t supporting you so much!) - realize that it’s not about you or the way you look or what you wear. It’s about the tail.
His advice is to be patient, persistent and keep your costs low – pretty good advice for any business.
and continuing on this theme …
You can also see the effects of the long tail in academic course blogging, and how the moderator can work with it to support the learning goals in The Learning Blogosphere(2): The Long Tail.
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