Is it OK to be an outsider?

Who will we call an outsider expert, speaker or author? Anyone who chooses a topic that is not popular, often not in demand among a wide audience.

For example, you like to explore rivers. You know everything about them and their inhabitants. But even if you try, you won’t find enough interesting queries in google that could be used in Adwords to sell the services of such an expert. Any producer will tell you that creating an online course in such conditions is not promising.

For example, if you are from South Africa, there will be about 1000 people that are also fan of rivers. If we use the average conversion by market, then this is 2-3 sales per month. 10% will click – 2-3% will buy.

And what you should do if the love for rivers, beetles, bipolar disorder, building houses from garbage and other unique topics does not let you go? There are two ways.

The first is to find a motivational aspect or philosophical subtext in the topic that can be extended to a wide audience. You cannot enter the same river twice. People and insects. Bipolar disorder for creativity. Why do you need to stop littering right now? All of these topics come from a very narrow, specialized topic, but are formulated in such a way that they will be interesting to a wide audience. Consequently, your speech will become less expert, and more broad and airy. But this does not change the fact that it will be paid for.

There is a second way. Learn English and use the long tail rule. Despite the fact that there are many rivers in Africa, there are thousands of times more of them in the world. This means that there are thousands of times more people who are interested in the topic in one way or another. For example, Google tells us that in USA alone, about 10,000 people are already interested in rivers. This is already 20-30 sales per month. Extrapolate to the world and go up to 200-300 sales. This is already decent money.

Of course, on the topic of “job search” you will potentially reach several tens of millions of candidates worldwide. But competition there will be higher, as well as the elasticity of demand. Thus, the top tier experts, authors and speakers will receive all the cream and the outsiders may not get even a dime.

And in the case of rivers and, in general, highly specialized topics, the elasticity is lower. Therefore, average customer uses services from several experts. So at least, you will have a chance to sell after your competitor has already sold.
The broader the topic, the more likely a consumer will use just one source of information. The more complex and narrower the topic, the more likely it is that the client will turn to all possible sources of information at once. They will buy and competitors product and yours.

This is the long tail rule. It’s good when you have hits in your pocket that generate 80% of your revenue. But making a hit is extremely difficult. On the other hand, if you choose low-frequency topics and expand your audience world-wide, then you can get the same revenue, but taking less risk.

If you look at the market as a whole, the volume of “hits” is less than the volume of “outsiders”. And this rule works for experts, speakers and authors even better than for regular products.

Don’t be afraid to be an outsider on the topic. But always remain a hit for quality. We wish you all the victories!

Hidden Hero Team