Long Tail of Software Publishing

I think its very important for ever business person, regardless of role and scope, to constantly educate themselves on the changing business environment. My personal favorite is web 2.0 concepts. The long tail idea is one of those concepts that galvanizes some of the main concepts of web 2.0.

Long tail has several key points of relevance in business but within the publishing world, it provides some unique opportunities to delve into how a publisher can create incremental value by not concentrating on the core users or functionality of their product.



So how can you capitalize on this concept? It starts with taking a close look at how your product is used by your customers. Take the graph above and tailor it to your own business. What are the core functional interactions (TBYB, purchase etc) and what happens after these interactions are completed? What further interactions can you leverage to create more value for your customer and yourself? Even if the purchase might be the most important part of the interaction, it’s the everything else that happens after the purchase that is important to the user. The interaction should not end with the transaction, but in fact it should be the start of a long-term relationship that allows for multiple revenue generating interactions.

Ultimately, you goal is to crate more opportunities with your customer and the long tail gives you a starting point to understanding these opportunities. Here is a great blog from Joe Kraus on software and Longtail.

- chris