Climbing an Elongating Tail
The Long Tail, The Big Moo, Million Dollar Home Page and Viral marketing rolled together. It’s fun to watch.
For those who aren’t familiar with some of these terms, a quick recap.
Chris Anderson, who’s editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, wrote an article titled The Long Tail talking about changes in the economics of businesses. Mass Market economics of production and logistics implied that only products that appealed to a large number of people, could make profitable sense for the producers and marketers (Gillette is a classic example. Most other shaving products manufacturers work with much smaller volumes and profits). Niche marketing was profitable only if the niche provided a premium return (Rolls Royce for example). The advent of digital products and the internet as a distribution medium meant that niches which were previously considered unprofitable now became a rich source of differentiation and profit. (To understand the Long Tail better, read the article and Chris Anderson’s blog.)
Seth Godin is a powerful, thought provoking writer whose books have become highly popular. His latest book The Big Moo brings together essays from 33 of the best writers on business and marketing.
The Million Dollar Homepage is a website set up by Alex Tew, to try and make some money before going to University. The idea was unusual but simple - he created a page that had a million dots (pixels), and offered them to advertisers at a dollar a pixel.
Viral marketing is a term used to describe the phenomenon where users or others pass along a marketing message to others whom they know or interact with. Hotmail is usually cited as being the classic example - the small message below each email sent by users talked about Hotmail, the free web email.
Ok - so what do all these have to do with each other?
I was reading through one of the essays in The Big Moo called “The Power of Dumb Ideas”. It starts off about the growing complexity of marketing :
Ten years ago, the challenges were merely:
the advance of the ï¬ve-hundred-channel universe reconciling the historic tensions between marketing and sales calculating the return on advertising investment keeping abreast of ï¬ckle public taste Today, a quick look at Google indicates that we’re grappling with an eight-billion-channel world.
Yep - that sounds a lot like the Long Tail. A little way later :
Imitation Across Industries Is More Efï¬cient and Effective Than Blue-Sky Creativity and Innovation …..Appropriating existing marketing concepts is cheaper—and certainly quicker to implement— than developing new ones. The secret is bringing a great idea from another market or industry to your market or your industry.
So let’s take a look at the Million Dollar Homepage as a business. In my view, that’s a good example of a Long Tail Business.
Part of the reason why there has been a lot of news media interest is because of the quirkiness of the proposition. After all, who would think that anyone would advertise a dot at a time? Certainly not big time advertisers. The people who’ve advertised here have been the smaller websites, who might not have gone for too much of big time advertising anyway. Long Tail enough?
Ok. According to Alex’s blog, he started this on August 26th, 2005. A little over 2 months ago.
Since then, a whole lot of other such websites have cropped up. Imitation is easier than innovation. And if you’ve got the skills to create that kind of website, it doesn’t take too much time. Or money. Or skill either, for that matter. If you google “Million dollar homepage” without the quotes, you get over 7 million links. Some of them (including the first link as of an hour before this post) are the look alikes.
Next, a posting on Getacoder asking for developing a similar site. Obviously, someone without the skills to develop the website, but interested in cashing in on the new “dot” com craze.
Seeing the interest in these “pixel pages”, and the requests for site development, a whole bunch of folks are now offering “Million dollar scripts” or “pixel scripts”. Google “million dollar script” and you have over 1.65 million links. Plus a bunch of ads / sponsored links. Buy one of these, load it up on a hosting package - and you’ve got an automatic money making dot machine.
So here’s another business. It doesn’t sell the dots. It sells the automation that sells the dots.
If so many of these “pixel pages” have started up, how do you know where they are? Enter the Pixel Directory. And the Top Sites. Two other businesses that support the dot sellers. They make money through conventional advertising. Google Adsense, banners etc.
Meantime, a different “Directory” approach. If there are too many pixel pages, which is the right one for a small advertiser? Enter the Classified Pixel Pages. Pages for Art. Dating Services. For the UK. So help me, there’s even a pixel page for pixel pages!
And in the midst of all this, some of these businesses getting sold. And bought.
This isn’t just a Long Tail. It’s an Elongating Tail.
Segment the market. Find all profitable niches. Develop supporting services. Buy and sell these. Related to a business that was thought of as a quirky niche two months ago.
Back to Alex Tew now. He’s crossed the half million mark, a few days ago. That’s a rate of a quarter of a million, per month. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tops the million within the next month. Because this thing is snowballing.
The news media reports gave it the first viral push. Because it was quirky. And maybe, some because they thought it so implausible.
The blogs (a viral medium like none other) picked up on this. Neville’s blog sells a small square, not a page. Yaro Starak tried advertising on the Million Dollar Homepage.
And all this media attention attracted “competition”. The other wannabe pixel pages. Followed by the scripts and the directories. I wouldn’t call this competition. Because each of these have added to the viral nature. In the process, making pixel advertising more and more acceptable. The prices have dropped - some offer pixels at a penny. Some do it for charity.
I wonder - if these hadn’t happened, would Alex have hit the half million so fast?
And I wonder - from being a Long Tail business way down the line, pixel advertising has now climbed up. It’s still Long Tail - but higher up the tail now. Given the speed at which it’s climbing, it might climb up quite a way, becoming an accepted alternative to some forms of mainstream net advertising. With all the ancillaries chipping in, the totals start adding up.
If it does, what would you call that transition? Long Tail to ……
Written by 2cworth on November 5th, 2005 with
7 comments.
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#4. December 19th, 2005, at 7:19 PM.
My hat goes off to Alex Tew, he certainly found a unique idea to sell ad space. I actually took his idea one step further… selling ad space by the BYTE! There are so many “pixel pushers” out there now that I needed to put a spin on the pixel advertising concept. Check out www.buckabyte.com for more!