Recent Blog Entries
The Real Longtail of Publishing
Written by Scrivs on November 21, 2005
If you ever keep up with the writings of Weblogs, Inc. CEO, Jason Calacanis, you will often hear him mention that he is proud that his blog network represents the longtail of publishing. I always found that quite interesting because to me it really doesn’t represent it at all. Just because you have a site that writes about nanopublishing (or doesn’t in the case of that site) it doesn’t mean you are representing the longtail.
We here at 9rules have the ability to represent the longtail though in my opinion because our model allows us to take multiple sites under the same niche. This week we already have 16 sites lined up for announcements (and I think we have only gone over 100 or so from the Round 3 submissions) and you will see that some of them fill niches that I don’t think any other content Network would be willing to fill because economically it makes no sense. However, we here at 9rules believe that quality content stands out no matter what the niche of the site and therefore everybody deserves their chance.
Sure there are probably going to be more people interested in our Web Design blogs then maybe our Role-Playing ones, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fill both niches up for the fans of each one. We hope that you enjoy the sites that we have in store for you and maybe introduce you to ones that you have never seen before and niches that you never even knew existed.
Welcome to the longtail of online publishing.
November 21st, 2005 at 12:54 am
[...] ; add your own. View other entries in Member Sites. When I spoke of the longtail of publishing I definitely had Treasure Tables in my head. I admit to be [...]
November 21st, 2005 at 12:55 am
As far as the size of different audiences goes, I suspect that there’s a sort of “one-way overlap” effect that also comes into play.
While the “average” blog reader is more likely to be interested in popular topics like gadgets, web design or cars than they are in a niche topic like roleplaying, the “average” reader of an RPG blog is almost certain to be interested in one or more of those three other topics, as well — all of which are offered on the network.
If quality RPG content (for example) hooks a reader for one or more other 9rules blogs as well, the whole network benefits. That’s not to say that I disagree with your overall point, Paul (I do agree, very much so) — I just wanted to explore a different aspect of it.
November 21st, 2005 at 3:53 am
I think it’s great. I may be a webdesign geek at heart… but if there was a blog about concrete design, I’d subscribe in an instant.
I think it all comes back to highlighting the best of the web… People’s interests aren’t focused on only one thing and one thing only.
November 21st, 2005 at 2:42 pm
Hey, did you notice he delisted it. Did you steal that bit of info from me Scrivs?
Anyhow I agree.
November 21st, 2005 at 5:13 pm
We have the whole long tail, but you are right that we focus on the big fat part of the tail first and surf are way down it.
For example, we started with Engadget being all tech. Then we did Joystiq, HackADay, PVRWire, DownloadSquad, Droxy, and HDBEAT.
Now Joystiq has http://www.xbox360fanboy.com.
The next step would be for Xbox360Fanboy to launch a blog about just one game. Not sure we will go that far, but if you create a blog about one of the XBOX360 games we will certainly link to you!
The fact is that the big and medium sized part of the tail is the easiest to monitize. However, I would discount us going further down the long tail.
November 21st, 2005 at 8:06 pm
[...] their front page than their members. What’s up with that? EDIT: I came across this comment from Jason. Jason, I luv ya but it’s been done, years ago. What to [...]
November 21st, 2005 at 8:58 pm
Than why did you quit publishing the ones that people used to read?
Do people actually read xbox360 i mean where are you getting your readers for this stuff. i suppose there are people out there. but that content just doesn’t excite anymore.
November 21st, 2005 at 9:36 pm
>> do people actually read xbox360
Over 35,000 people so far today!
There will be between 5-10M XBOX360s in the market over the next year… I think our blog could pull in 5-10% of that market–the top 5-10%. That’s 250k to 1M people… and these folks buy 2-3 video games a month.
So, that’s a great audience to have.
November 21st, 2005 at 9:52 pm
see there you go about quantity again. i don’t care if 5 people visit my site. its not about quantity. what are those readers doing. yah, you had 35,000 visits so what. of those people what are they to you?
just another dollar in your pocket. its about selling ads.
it seems like to me you create blogs just for the sake of creating money. using visitors as money. i don’t see a lot of quality, uniqueness over at WIN.
i just dont think you have the quality that 9rules has and i don’t think you have addressed that. and I don’t think you ever will.
you want to be the fast food of the blogging world and thats fine. 9rules isn’t fast food, I don’t ever see it being fast food. It’s about quality content. and i am not a member of 9rules. i am a reader. but this is biased because i blog for fine fools. again another network based on quality unique content.
why did you sell out? because it was and is about the money with WIN. It always will be.
i don’t understand why you haven’t taken your splogs down. what i mean by splogs is sites that sit in google’s search rankings high but never get updated. again because of the money.
i doubt you will respond to your splogs being on the web, nor do i think you will respond to your lack of quality. weblogsinc is just the newspaper of the internet. that’s fine. someone has to be. other folks will be the independent magazines. you can be black and white and we can be color.
November 21st, 2005 at 10:38 pm
I understand that from a business standpoint you have to do the numbers but to me, it seems like it has gotten to be only about the numbers.
If you were “really” into the numbers you would have this launched right on time for E3. By the time Xbox 360 launched your network of gaming sites would have been “the” place to be. Pure content. Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero, PGR3…they would all have blogs. Popular games under development – they would have had blogs. You would give your readers quality – they would be happy. The readers would give you the numbers you love so dearly – it would have been a win/win situation.
Instead you blogged E3, launched a blog just prior to the launch and you’re riding the wave.
So my question to you – why are you so late in the game? To a gamer, that’s like a slap in the face. The only thing you can do (unless you have connections with game developers) is report what’s already being reported.
And what’s up with fanboy? “Dear Fanboys,” or “fanboys are simply deeply informed and passionate about their console of choice… like women were thrown in as an after thought. Being a female gamer I’m not very inclined to subscribe.
So give me a reason to subscribe. In your grand plan for this site why should a female hardcore gamer subscribe when most of the sites you link to I already subscribe to and woman are thrown in as an after thought?
Jason, don’t take this personal, we’re cool (unless I’ve really pissed you off this time LOL) but I’m not understanding where what the strategy is or why you are so late in doing it.
December 6th, 2005 at 7:06 pm
[...] . What did I say? It starts with my response to this post about the The Real Long Tail of Publishing. Jason explained Xbox 360 Fanboy. In m [...]
August 18th, 2006 at 3:23 am
[...] Back in November, Paul talked about 9rules being The Long Tail of publishing, where our model lets us have multiple blogs on the same subject while in other content networks that would be considered a no-go. That’s one part of our model that fits into The Long Tail, but there is a deeper and more profound aspect to our business that I find more interesting, but before we get into that I should explain what this “long tail” thing is. [...]
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:46 am
[...] We can only hope that the writers of Divester and PVR Wire don’t get too discouraged with how the big dogs play. This concludes our annual entry about the Long Tail. [...]