The Long Tail Fallout

I have read it. Many of you have read it. Chris Anderson's much-talked about visionary business book, The Long Tail, has captured the imagination of many people. It's about the new marketing niches and sub-niches. It's about the limitation of yesterday's market choice and the economics of abundance in today's marketplace. And thanks to the Internet phenomenon for that.

It's all about the consumers of the future, their shifting demands, moving away towards the niche markets of the "Long Tail" and why the major media giants are feeling the effects.

Social media such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and others are getting the spotlight. The new consumers know what they want and that's not so good news for those depending on the traditional "Top 10 Hits" lists.

TV ratings are heading south, newspapers and magazines are losing circulation, Hollywood box office is slipping, sliding away, and top-selling albums are figuratively down by the millions.

So where do we go from here? Well, slide down the "Long Tail" where it straightens out at the base. That's where the niches are and they are gathering momentum if statistics, facts and data are any indicator.

How about a niche like Blogkits?

Imagine Adsense is not generating enough dough for you these days. Assuming you want to ditch Adsense, then who do you turn to for your new web income source?

How about Blogkits for starter? Blogkits who?

Entrepreneur Jim Kukrai created Blogkits in 2004. It was acquired by global affiliate marketing company Forge Corporation early this year. and it was launched recently.

The promo says it's the "world's first true performance marketing network built just for bloggers."

Your blog don't have to be a high-traffic one to get approval. Blogkits is based on CPA (cost per action) so the bane of click fraud does not arise. If you still want to retain Adsense on your blog together with Blogkits that's not a problem.

You have to sign up your blog and get approved. You grab a tracking code and place it in your blog template. And you'll be earning whenever a sale is made.

It looks like this is one of those new niches that are positioning themselves at the tail end. This may well be an alternative to Google Adsense for website publishers with low-traffic blogs to get an extra piece of the online pie.

> The man behind Blogkits and his blog

Contextual Ads and New Players

If you have been watching the Internet marketing scene like a good watchdog, you would notice that lately contextual ads are no longer a monopoly held by Google.

Although Google are still way ahead of the competition, website publishers should start noticing that there's a growing list of new players coming on or planning to hit the contextual ads arena sooner or later.

We already have Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN), Kontera and Chitika and some other smaller players in the field. Next, watch eBay and Microsoft as they work on their betas.

IntelliTXT, with their unique brand of contextual ads that appear in a "video balloon," have caught the eye. Pioneered by Vibrant Media, IntelliTXT launched in 2004.

How would this affect website publishers? My take is that there'll be more choices (obviously) and just in case you get banned by Google, you still have somewhere to go. Oh, what a thought!