The disclosure provides methods of reducing the range of representation levels of nucleic acid targets. The methods are particularly useful for multi-target analyses benefiting from a low variance of target representations, such as, e.g., single molecule sequencing and/or heterozygous genotyping, and pathogen diagnosis. Two general methods are provided. In Method 1, starting concentrations of probes are adjusted. In Method 2, target-specific probes are “binned,” i.e., several subsets of probes are selected based on similar representation levels. Thereafter, each subset of corresponding targets is extracted, with or without amplification, using a separate portion of the sample (i.e., separate vessels).