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1-Page Summary of The Long Tail

Overview

Instead of trying to appeal to more people, you could instead create a wider array of products. For example, if your company makes beer, you could offer gluten-free and non-alcoholic varieties as well.

For a long time, only the products that made the most money were marketable. Then, with the advent of the internet, popularity started to decline as well.

Chris Anderson, former editor of Wired magazine, argues that the “long tail” is a new paradigm in the online entertainment market. He says that satisfying the needs of several niche markets can be just as successful as trying to attract everyone with one product.

In this article, you will learn what the long tail is and how it’s changing the way companies sell their products online. You’ll also discover how inexpensive personal computers have had a major impact on our access to content. You’ll see why online retailers are using auctions to buy keywords for Google ads in order to increase their chances of success.

In the current online retail climate, it’s easier than ever for a company to not only survive but to thrive.

The days of hits dominating the market are over. The long tail is here to stay.

Big Idea #1: In the world of entertainment, there are many products that are not mainstream but have a devoted following.

There’s a demand curve for any product. The most valued products generate the highest demand, while the least valued generate the smallest. This is why blockbuster movies and bestselling books are so profitable; they appeal to many people. However, businesses can thrive by offering lots of different products that appeal to small groups of people in today’s economy.

In other words, businesses can succeed by using the strategy of the “long tail.” The fact is that niche titles can compete with best sellers online.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos saw the potential of the internet to offer a wide range of books. Amazon offers approximately five million books on its website, whereas other stores can only carry around 175,000. In fact, statistics show that over 30percent of all books are not available in an average bookstore.

Why? It’s because online, it doesn’t matter if something is a hit or not. For example, music streaming service Rhapsody offers more than 4.5 million songs and each song gets at least one stream per month. Since every track costs the same amount to purchase and makes the same profit no matter how many people buy it, they don’t care if 20,000 people buy the same song or if everyone buys whatever they like.

Like Amazon, a large percentage of Rhapsody’s sales come from tracks that aren’t sold in traditional offline retail. This suggests there is demand for more music than what can be found in conventional stores.

The long tail is a business concept that’s based on the idea of selling a lot of less popular products to make up for the loss from not selling more popular ones.

Big Idea #2: Making content more accessible to everyone will generate more of it.

The amount of content available determines how much people want it. The more content there is, the longer the tail will be and the greater demand there will be for that content.

The PC has made it possible for people to record and produce music, make a film or create an ebook. For example, in 2004–2005 the number of albums released increased by 36 percent; more than 300,000 free tracks were uploaded on MySpace.

Furthermore, nowadays there are a lot of people who create content because they enjoy it. There’s not much financial motivation for them to do so, and since the production costs are low anyway, that doesn’t matter.