Online Economy Direct-to-Market Distribution is making millions for some resourceful individuals

Most are familiar with the various Marketplaces which exist on the web; e.g. Amazon Marketplace, eBay and Google Products - and how individuals are making use of these resources to set up their own personal retail bussinesses, even though many of these are really just extended online garage sales. Away from physical products, there is a growing digital retail industry also.

Several people are making money from posting home-made videos to sites like YouTube; home-recorded studio productions being sold via Beatport, home-developed games and apps being sold via the Apple App Store and now increasingly - personal book publishing by way of Amazon’s Kindle.

A great example of this is recent multi-millionaire 26 year old Minnesotan - Amanda Hocking, who has so far self-published 10 novels on Amazon Kindle - all at a low price, or under the $3 mark. She cleverly targets the ’Twilight’ demographic with low cost teen vampire novels and novellas, and the teens are lapping them up with around 900,000 units of each volume sold.

I have often cited the amazing $0.99 / £0.59 price point of the Apple App Store, and how Rovio managed to make millions off the very low-cost ’Angry Birds’ game through enormous volume sales. Conjoint analysis leads you to the ideal price point, but obviously the more direct you sell, the less overheads you have, and therefore the cheaper you can sell your goods - be they eBooks, applications or music. I referenced Radiohead recently in their pricing their new ’The King of Limbs’ album at a very reasonable £6.

It’s of course a frightening proposition for traditional middle-men industries like book publishing and the music industry - when individuals can by-pass these institutions and avoid paying for significant marketing exposure. In the case of Amanda Hocking, it’s obviously a degree of right product at the right time, but she has of course done very well do take full advantage of prevailing trends.

It will be interesting to see what the landscape will look like in a year or two for the more traditional reseller / distribution marketplaces; I foresee several different competitors on the scene, as well as individuals selling Kindle-format eBooks from their own websites. At Comrz we believe in independence as well as utlising the full force of the online ecosystem. Fledgling digitial entrepreneurs can sell through their own sites, as well as feed into the larger social hubs and marketplaces that already exist or will soon evolve ...