By now, we have all heard of Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory. As someone who has promoted independent music, used to own a record label, and who still does a spot of music making himself – The Long Tail has been a particular interest of mine since the original article was published October 2004. I’ve been processing the concept ever since.

A post entitled “An independent filmmaker’s lament” appeared this week on the LongTail blog. A independent producer of kayaking and canoeing DVDs wrote in, and expressed some of his frustration with working with the Long Tail concepts and trying to apply it to their particular project.

The post resonated with me, as. Even though he is working in the paddlesports arena, and I am in the experimental music world, I would venture to say that our niches are probably about the same size more or less, relative to our mediums. And while the mechanics of our segments, and the demographics of our markets may differ, we are still working with numbers that don’t go ever seem to add up to a full time income; the potential fan base is just to small.

This is the dilemma of the Long Tail publisher. Its perfect for the filters, and aggregators, as Long Tail content is the fuel for their algorithms. These niche artists have it much tougher.

Jeff Bach at Quietwater Films says:

But the reality at this time for me and my company is that I need to find multiple large national distributors if I hope to even come close to making a living at this game.  And I need to produce fresh content on a reasonably frequent basis.  In short, I am a much smaller and more struggling version of the giants that have preceded me.  I have the same issues and problems my predecessors did.  The only thing that has changed is that I am trying to do it with an awareness of Web 2.0 and The Long Tail…

And later goes on to say:

…I’m not seeing a change in the economics of selling enough to support yourself.

I know what you’re going through, and over the years have evolved a Long Tail informed position on producing and selling niche content. I shared some of these thoughts in the comments of the original post, but feel it deserves a longer response than that. This is that response.

First off, If you are making Long Tail content, you yourself have to become sort of a Long Tail too. This works on a couple of levels. As a publishing entity, you will want to diversify your offerings into a number of products working in the same niche, as well as other products working in different, but related niches. In a sense, become a Long Tail aggregator yourself, so as you put your products out in the market, you will have more items bringing in small returns – but when combined, they can add up to be a notable income stream.

As Jeff himself says:

One piece is not enough, you need pennies coming in from lots of different angles.

Yes! This is one of the points I was making, but doesn’t paint the whole picture. If you are the producer and the publisher, than you have to be able to put your publisher hat on and look at what it means to have a bigger catalogue. The cost to sell these products online remains constant, and as a whole is about the same for 2 products or 10. However, the cost to market the products grows exponentially with each product you add, and at some point can actually be a drag on your earnings, if the products aren’t moving.

But the real meat of the issue was actually in Jeff’s own words:

I think you are fortunate it (The Long Tail Book) was one of the “hits” and that you do not need to depend on its Long Tail sales to make your living.

Its not just your product holdings that require Long Tail thinking, but your own income. If one project is not enough to support the kind of lifestyle you want, the need to add other streams of income is imperative. In fact, most experts agree when looking to create financial freedom, multiple streams of income is key – the more passive, the better. In other words, if your product is not in a market that has any cross over appeal (which I define has having enough accessible qualities that a well produced product has a chance to capture the attention of the mainstream) than you may need to keep that ‘day job’. If your product is any good and has staying power for your niche, you can at least count on a trickle of income for as long as you keep the product available.

I believe this is the fundamental flaw in Jeff’s thinking. That being a Long Tail producer was going to mean that you could make a living since the filters are getting better and showing people what they like, and people are more apt to explore further down the tail (with the help of such filters), than they ever were. This isn’t guaranteed, but should not discourage anyone. The promise of the Long Tail is that independents could compete with the incumbents, not that they would compete and win.

Jeff’s not alone in this thinking – I fell into this trap at first too. But if you want a snowball’s chance in hell at moving product, you have to put a majority of your energy into marketing, because your audience still needs to discover your product before they can pay you for it.

Jeff also shares a summary of his online strategy (or lack there of):

Discovery is a very good word to describe a critical issue in this specialty content business. Social networking is another good one, although to me, I kind of put that in with blogging on the topic and producing an email newsletter. Any or all of them, if done well, can only help. Google AdWords is probably a necessity.

It seems to me that he’s got some of the concepts of the Web 2.0 ‘movement’collapsed, and its muddying his online strategy. Since many of these concepts are covered in a lot more depth elsewhere, I will only attempt to help him un-collapse these concepts so that he can start developing a strategy for each one.

Social Networks

Social Networks are a great places to connect with other like minds. New networks are started each day, and they are growing more and more particular. And while ‘generic’sites like Facebook offer the ability to create groups around any topic, niche-specific social networks are springing up to service small, but unusually loyal fans. Blatant marketing is frowned upon on by just about every social network – except maybe myspace. So keep your conversations to the topic at hand, and don’t try to push your product too hard. In other words, be a member of the community first, a provider to the community second. The more you interact with other like minded people, the more they will respect you. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of opportunity to tell people about your product. Can’t find a social network that fits your market? Start one.

Blogging

Blogging is a great communication channel for speaking to your customers, potential customers, and the world at large. You can use it as a platform for talking about your products, discussing the niche in general, sharing the goings on at your company, and just about about any other relevant topic you can cover.

However, blogging takes commitment. You can’t throw up a few posts, leave it alone for months, and then expect it to be a success. So if you are going to start a blog, think about what your intentions are, how much time you have to put into posting to it, and how much knowledge about the topic you have. In other words, if you only have a little bit of time to devote to it, then do a company blog, and only post product and company news.

If you have more time, and a interesting point of view about your niche, then you can make the blog more generalized. Talk about issues that affect members of your niche community. Share the news that interests them. This will make you more of the go-to place for info about your niche, and will help build a bigger audience. Slip in product and company news, when you have it. The respect and goodwill you’ve built up already will spill over and have people act on these more direct posts.

The bottom line is, let people know up front what to expect on their blog, and stick to it. Regular posting builds audiences, and the more blog posts you have the more google and the search engines have to chew on. I recommend hosting your own blog on your own domain, but if you must, turn to a high profile service such as WordPress.com or Google’s Blogger to host your blog.

Newsletter

Email Newsletters are good ideas, and can show up in a number of different ways. But if you’re blogging, then you may have most of what you want to say being said already, and by using a service such as FeedBurner, you have have all of your blog posts delivered by email, as well as RSS. I feel that a better strategy is to offer the newsletter to customers only. Use it as a cross-promotional tool. The old adage, its easier (and cheaper) to sell to an old customer, than acquire a new one. Give them exclusive deals, information about upcoming products (before anyone else), and other perks reserved for customers. That way you don’t have to repeat content from your other initiatives, the customers feel special, and you have a direct channel to people that are statistically more likely to give you money.

Adwords

The only thing I’m going to say about AdWords is that it is vital that you know have a solid way to measure the results. Google Analytics is a great free option, and has tie ins to AdWords that other products (probably) don’t have. I use it on all of my sites, and find it to be a valuable asset. The reason it is so important is that you want to have a way to determine if one keyword is performing over another, which ones are actually leading to a sale, and collect info on where at in the check out process they are abandoning the site. That way, you can balance the amount of money you spend with AdWords with the amount of money you’re making from it. You will also want to segment this traffic and revenue, so that you can see it as a direct cause and effect, and not get it muddled up your other efforts. Google Analytics can help you do all of this, and helps illustrate the very basic point: Without metrics you won’t know what’s working and what’s not.

Discovery

The suggestions provided above are by no means exhaustive in any way, and are provided merely for inspirational purposes. I wanted to get you facing in the right direction, so to speak. I’ll wrap this up by saying that no matter what strategies you adopt to work with the Web 2.0 concepts covered above, you will still have a problem with discovery. You still have to do something bigger and better than the next guy in your niche and in your medium. Don’t count on your product alone. Develop a good story about it – something that really communicates what you’re all about, and then find a way to tell it really loud. Come up with a way to make a big splash, something that people in general would want to talk about, and the attention will come. Sell the experience, not the product.

Focus your self on a few key marketplaces (such as Amazon) and figure out what it takes to get noticed there. Expand as you master each marketplace in turn, and can build automated, or semi-automated processes and systems around them to free up your time and energy. Go where your people are – don’t expect them to always come to you. The filters are great, but at first you need to seed it with excited people looking for your product.

Good Luck!