Apparently There’s No Money In The Long Tail of the Blogosphere
A recent article examined the reasons that people feel compelled to blog. From the post and the comments it received, it became clear that quite a few people are blogging to make money. Apparently, however, it is difficult to make money in the long tail.
The bigger question however is “who defines the long tail”?
The blogosphere is a broad and amazing place and while there may not necessarily be money directly in the long tail of the blogosphere if you are properaly leveraging your assets then the long tail might just be a mechanism for driving people towards the true money making venture. Given all of the different options that are available for monetising blogs and capturing web surfers attention.
A friend who is just launching a new barbeque site (http://www.charcool.com – I’ll give him a free plug) said to me, “it doesn’t matter how many people walk past your shop, until you have got them in the door, you have no idea if they will want to buy or not”.
I think he hit the nail on the head and in the blogosphere, part of your challenge is getting people to look at the sign in the window and walk through the door. Only then can you start to worry about converting them to customers.
If you look at the long tail of the blogosphere and expect to find money there, then you will probably go home disappointed. However, if you look at the blog as an advertising medium designed to get people to at least pay attention, then you have achieved the first part of a difficult challenge. There is a lot of good content on the internet and there are a lot of people. If you have good content then you just need to attract the people and the blog is a very effective way of doing this.
Monetise you blog if you can but don’t expect to make your fortune from it. Just look it as a tool in your marketing bag of tricks.
