All this Long Tail talk had me thinking. Was my rather unscientific hypothesis, based on absolutely no empirical data or case study, correct in guessing the weight of the Long Tail at 20% of a total given market? O.K., I confess I was zillowing the Long Tail. I’m in real estate, what did you expect?
To get a better footing, I contacted Professor Michael D. Smith, Information Technology & Marketing professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who, while at MIT wrote, together with Profs. Brynjolfsson & Hu, the oft-cited research paper Consumer Surpluses in The Digital Economy: Estimating the Value of Increased Product Varities at Online Booklsellers (2003). This paper was influential in Chris Anderson’s formulation of the Long Tail. I hoped the professor could give me the answer to my question, to wit, “How much does the Long Tail weigh?” In other words, if the total area under the line in the graph equals 100%, what percentage of a market does the Long Tail cover and should I really be chasing my tail if I can’t get it all in the Amazonian way, i.e carry (or have access to) every darn long tail item.
First, let me say that Mike (we’re on a first name basis) is a great guy, willing to bear my numerous questions and what-ifs with patience and grace. He was also kind enough to share his research papers with me. I could only offer him An Engineer’s Guide to Romance, written for MIT frosh, which I found in the comments section of a post by my blog buddy, Brian Clark of the famed Copyblogger. But I digress.
Here’s what I’ve learned from Mike:
1. The total area in the graph under the line equals 100%. Yes!
2. There is “no precise definition for what is the long tail portion“. Drats!
3. Amazon’s long tails sales (obscure titles not stocked by brick & mortar bookstores) were somewhere between 30-50%. Not enough to answer the question, but close. (personal note: perhaps 40% of sales comes from Affiliates, according to Wikipedia. If so, I’d argue the case of the Long Affiliates as a more valuable marketing strategy)
I still need to know: in the world of book sales, for example, what percentage of total book sales (every seller counted) is attributed to obscure long tail sales? (I’m still wagering only 20%) Is it that I have a bias toward Italian economists like Pareto because of Italy’s World Cup? But I digress again. If the percentage is 20%, you’ll need to be an Amazon to take full advantage of long tail scaled economics (did I just say that?) or have Long Affiliates.
So that’s where I am. Does anyone know how to weigh this monster’s tail?
