Statistics, Niche Markets, and Bigass Numbers

[forsyth]

Let's say you have an idea for something that seems really cool to you. But you're different than most people, so only 1% of people are interested in your great thing. Is it worth making it? Is that enough of an audience?

Probably. The US population is almost 300 million. 1% of that is 3 million. Barely any books or movies or CDs sell 3 million copies.

The world population is around 6.5 billion. 1% of that is 65 million.

And that's why niche market stuff is getting along great now, with the Internet and millions of cable channels and things. Because even less than 1% of people buying your thing is still a whole lot of people.

And lots of comic books barely manage to sell a thousand copies. Which to me says the problem isn't the comics, the problem is the distribution.

Comments

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

The trick is getting to the eyeballs of that 1%, and even if that 1% think it's cool, how many of them think it's enough of an improvement over what they're currently using to plunk down money for it?

You'd be lucky to attract the attention of 1% of that 1% in a year, even with a massive advertising campaign. Now 30,000 customers a year within the US is not too bad, especially if you're making at least a couple of bucks profit per customer per year. But unless you've got something unique and nigh-uncopyable (or the most heavily-marketed brand name ever), you're probably not going to make massive cash.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

Hmm. You have a point. And that brings us to the realm of evil, with marketing and advertising. And why there's so many of them. And why so many ads suck so much, because they're not aimed at most people, just the specific subgroup that's been declared the most marketable for whatever product's coming out.

So...to make marketing less evil and annoying, the best way is to make it more efficent and work better. But most of the ways to do that are evil as well. Hmm.