Long Tail Keywords and Home Businesses
Understanding This Idea Underpins Network Marketing
Mar 23, 2009
Just three years ago Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson wrote a book which exposed a powerful idea about Network Marketing. Strangely enough the book barely mentions network marketing but its ideas are critical to the success of most home based businesses.
The core of the idea is that modern distribution systems are giving consumers almost unlimited choice. This choice is fuelling greater demand for products and services in a myriad on niches. This is especially true in two huge industries of the twenty first century, namely books and music. However, the ideas behind the long tail go well beyond those super industries.
Just What is the Long Tail?
If you record the number of sales of each title made by record company you will find a few products dominate - the hits that sell millions. But at the other end of the scale there will be hundreds of thousands of titles that sell only one or a few copies. This is the long tail. In a record company the hits are the head, the long tail includes titles from obscure artists and music genres - names that 99.9% of people would have never heard of.
The particular insight exposed in Chris Anderson's book is that for many companies sales of long tail items make up a significant or the major proportion of their revenue.
In the past companies had limited capacity to produce, market and distribute titles from the long tail. They were just lopped off, like the tails of certain breeds of dogs used to be. Modern marketing and distribution systems have allowed companies to lengthen the tail of their inventory to include more and more tiles.
This is the story for physical products. It gets even more interesting when we consider digital products.
The Long Tail and Digital Products
Anyone with a computer and a couple of software applications and peripherals can easily produce digital products. The barrier of start up costs has been removed. Combine this with internet based marketing and distribution and we see huge long tails growing before our eyes.
The second advantage of digital products is that the storage cost is virtually zero and producing another digital copy to sell costs nothing.
The Long Tail and Your Business
So far this discussion has centered on large businesses and industries. Small businesses have also much to gain from the emergence of the long tail. Market niches follow the long tail principle as well.
There are thousands of businesses, large and small competing in the popular niches, health products, travel, relationships, sex and gambling. But there are millions of long tail niches available.
The Long Tail and Keyword Searches
There is yet another twist to the long tail. Keyword searches follow the long tail as well. The head is health products, sex, celebrity names etc. But the long tail consists of millions of searches every day, half of them unique.
An Interview With the Author
Web entrepreneur Ken Evoy has recorded an interview with The Long Tail Author Chris Anderson. In it they discuss ways in which small and home based businesses can use the ideas of the long tail including such topics as
- Why your traffic and money lie in the long tail, not in the "SEO'd" words.
- How do you use filters to push demand down the long tail.
- Where in the long tail should you compete.
- Where are the next great long tail opportunities?
- What should you do to be there?
You can read more about long tail keywords and listen to the interview from this page
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