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

[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.