Hey Steve, Great questions.
I am operating in a niche market: Dog Frisbee and Positive Dog Training. 2007's not been as fantastic as I thought it would be either, but it's not all bad. 60,000 views on blip. Another 5,000 on You tube (11 videos), 33,000 on YT if you add the dude who swiped my video and posted it. We get quite a bit of mileage out of our internet presence. Our radio show is rocking 60 live listeners last week, k9disc.com is kicking ass with 415+ members, our business site is active. We're getting more access to more people. Many of our viewers are from Japan and Europe, so we're totally international. I believe that our web presence has given us great access to people across the world. We spent 35 days touring Europe running 8 discdog seminars, largely because of our internet presence. Apryl is, right now, picking up a German girl at the airport who will be staying with us and traveling to the USDDN International Finals in Kentucky. I think our videoblog is great marketing and social tool. I think the main problem with niche markets is generating revenue. I refuse to put google ads on k9disc.com because I find it terribly tacky, this despite the fact that my buddy says I could earn upwards of $10k on the traffic. You've all heard my 'people are more important than profit' rants, and I'm sticking to my guns. Although I'm not too sure that big corporate would be interested in pushing little old me with any kind of money. The numbers just are not there. We've been looking for small, philosophically similar companies to partner up with, but as of now there have been no takers. Small companies don't seem to have the money to spend on niche market advertising. Such a bummer. We've yet to tap into our broad support within our little niche with our training DVD and/or training wiki, and while we've sat around and tried to brainstorm a pay per view scheme, another guy in Colorado has started a venture in our market. This is tremendously disappointing, as we've literally given away tons of knowledge, I would not be surprised if some of that knowledge winds up being sold by our new competitor, which is fine, but what I am afraid of is that we've put our selves into a bad position by giving things away for free. It seems that people don't really respect and desire that which they have easy access to. I could really see people getting excited about paying our competitor to give them inferior instruction just because we've been so accessible and been 'giving things away. Our only defense against this is that we've built a large community, and have broad respect across the world. The Europeans have taken instruction from us and from other professionals and we're consistently a better draw and get strong compliments for the quality of our instruction. Anyway, I've prattled on long enough. I'd like to finish with a couple of questions: 1. Pay per view schemes for instructional video: Anybody have any ideas? 2. Mediawiki on DVD - Any ideas? Cheers, Ron Watson http://k9disc.blip.tv http://k9disc.com http://blogtalkradio.com/k9disc http://pawsitivevybe.com On Nov 6, 2007, at 12:19 PM, Steve Watkins wrote: > Some people probably thought the net would change the sorts of > things that go > mainstream, that it was just rubbish being force-fed to people, and > when given more > choice they would choose different, en mass. > > Some thought that 'personal' was where the promised land lay. > > Others antsed to stick to formulas more similar to existing media, > but with some different > rules of the game, and more freedom. > > For others, creating quality & community centred around specific > niche's seemed like the > fertile plains of the future. > > We'll now years have passed, many people have proved that they got > what it takes to make > good content of many different types, but in all other aspects it > seems reasonable to think > there may be a few shattered dreams out there. > > For sure we've heard of the success stories, although the level of > success may not be what > was first imagined. Around a year ago the futurehype seemed to > reach a peak, and a > series of announcements made it feel like a new commercialised era > was unfolding. During > 2007 I would go as far as to say that this did not turn out to be > the case, on a few levels > the honeymoon is over and stagnation has set in. But in others the > foundans are getting > firmer and people are gettting a lot of gratification, either > through creating or watching. > > So, Im rambling, hopign to elicit some conversation on any of these > things. As per the title > of the thread, I am particularily interested in how many people > have managed to carve out > a living in a specific niche. More or less people than you think? > Still feels like international > aspects are untapped, and that most poeple who may be interested, > never get to know a > site or series of videos exists in the first place, let along stick > with it. And I bet that > unfortunately, if I took a lot of time to go back through this > messageboard and look at > every ambitious project that was announced, many will have fallen > well short compared to > their expectations. > > Meanwhile on the technology front, the explosion in portable video > devices seems to have > made relatively little difference to any of the above so far? If I > look to any upcoming > technological developments to further things, I think there is > probably more room for > video as part of social networking, and I will be fasinated to see > if google's open thingy > project somewhat overcomes the 'walled garden' problem with social > networking & other > net services, there could be some amazing possibilities. > > The right tools on a whole series of loosely connected sites that > are tailored around the > social aspects of humans, combined with video, could perhaps > succeed where vlogging > has failed to live up to dreams, or at least those dreams require > more humans? > > Cheers > > Steve Elbows > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
