The Long Tail
The Long Tail is a term brought into popularity in 2006 by Chris Anderson, the Editor of Wired Magazine. Chris wrote the article explaining that “products that are in low demand or that have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. “ (Wikipedia)
And given that the Internet eliminates the need for physical space, and that it creates unlimited distribution, majors barrier to carrying inventory is removed. So it is possible to sell less of more – which is the subtitle of the book, The Long Tail, the expanded version of the article.
What is it?
The term long tail, is a statistical term used to describe distributions – you’ve seen these before, the classic bell curve.
The long tail is the area under the curve to the right of centre. This might be customers on the x axis and the products you are selling on the y.
You can see that in the long tail, you are selling fewer of each product, but more product overall. In a bricks and mortar store you’d never be able to survive if you had to carry hundreds of different products knowing that you’d only ever sell one each day! But if you are selling in a niche - your slice of the long tail, you can create quite an empire because your costs are very low and you know that there are interested buyers out there (assuming you’ve done your online market and keyword research!). Talk about building a niche empire!
Anyone who is serious about transitioning a business to the Internet or starting a pure online business MUST read this, first the article and then get the book!
We see this as being one of the most important phenomenon that is critical to online business success. Learn to wag the long tail and you’ll be one very happy puppy indeed!
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