One of the big debates about online media has been the concept of ‘long tail’ distribution. For those that are not familiar with this concept, it loosely implies that the web allows creators to distribute their niche product to a wider audience over time.
For example: If you have a video, it may not generate 1000 views in the first day. However, it may generate 10 views per day for X number of years.
Many web video producers have used this model to distribute their content across the web, by posting their content on YouTube, Blip.TV, AOL, Vimeo, Viddler, etc.
However, publishing on these platforms takes time and in this case, is the long tail worth it? Through my company, Visual Avenue, we produced a show called Craving Confidence. Our primary source of traffic was YouTube and it did OK. However, when we compared YouTube numbers to our other distribution channels, we were disappointed.
YouTube stats:
Blip.TV stats:
As you can see, we’ve generated more views on the top 3 videos from YouTube than we generated from all the episodes on Blip.TV.
However, that is not to say that Blip.TV is an inferior system. In fact, it is one of the best publishing systems out there. But, if there are no viewers on the platform, do you spend resources publishing video?
If you’re a video publisher, I’d love to hear your take on this matter.
