There is no money in the long tail of the blogosphere

Below is a translation of the article “There's No Money In The Long Tail Of The Blogosphere” , which is devoted to a review of the mechanisms and criticism of existing ideas about the profitability of the “long tail”

In 2004, Chris Anderson wrote an important book, The Long Tail . In it, he argued that the future of the business would in one way or another be sales. Its main prerequisite was that things, the demand for which is quite low, together can give a significant amount. This is because the “long tail” is a huge number of people who cover a large range of possible needs.

A classic example of a successful long tail policy is Amazon . A significant part of their sales accounted for little-known books. Amazon both stores rare books on its own and distributes them through numerous online partners. The network effect is a large amount of sales falling on the "long tail". This phenomenon is best described by a quotation from an employee: “Today we sold more books that we didn’t buy yesterday than books that we bought yesterday” ( the books that did sell yesterday ).
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In the last article, we figured out the reasons why people love blogging. From her and her comments, it can be established that people very rarely start blogs to earn money. The blogs they start live in the “long tail” of the blogosphere, however, the truth is that making money in the “long tail” is quite difficult. According to Anderson, money is earned on the sales of this “long tail”, and not on the existence of it. In this article we will look at why this is happening, and also take a look at other aspects of the economy of the “long tail”.

Rule 80 to 20

There is a popular proverb ( Pareto's law ): 80% of world wealth belongs to 20% of people ( 80% of people ). Although we know that the number of very rich people is closer to 2% than to 20%, but the proverb turns a well-known mathematical formula, known as power dependence , into popular wisdom. On the Wikipedia page, located at the link above, is full of mathematical formulas, but the essence of this law is extremely simple: the rich become richer.

To better understand this concept, just look at the well-known news aggregator - Digg . It is obvious that there are popular users with significant power. How did this happen? The simplest explanation: they were the first users of this service. As Digg grew due to the infusion of new people, and new connections were formed at random. As in any other network (which is experiencing an influx of new nodes, and between which random connections are established), nodes that were originally become significant centers over time.

Therefore, the basis of this apparently complex phenomenon, as a power dependence, is based only on the concepts of time and chance. The reason for which the “long tail” is formed is absolutely analogous to the formation of significant centers - this is the time. The greater the number of people in such a network, the less likely it is for a new member of the community to contact a particular member.

Traffic issue

Now imagine that our network is the blogosphere, in which new blogs appear every day. Apparently, these are all new and new bloggers who are eager to earn their own penny. They start a weblog, choose a unique topic, research Google ads and various affiliate programs and start writing notes. But here they are disappointed: in order to earn money through blogging, they don’t have enough good original text - they need traffic.

As follows from a power law, the blogosphere’s “long tail” is very large, and getting on an individual blog is not so easy. The likelihood that a random user of the Internet will go to a particular blog from the "long tail" is almost zero.

Therefore, the earnings of the author of the blog from the "long tail" after installing it Google AdSense or Amazon code becomes significant only with large volumes of traffic. AdSense works for Google because probability plays into its hands: it combines small pieces of traffic across the entire Internet, based on the large size of the network as a whole. This, of course, is also true for large sites with high traffic, but it breaks off for resources whose attendance is not very large.

Earn money on the "long tail"

You can earn on the "long tail", but not in the "long tail". The exact formulation of Anderson's argument was reduced to the collective power of the “long tail”, because only it contains real volume. The benefits of sales and advertising are precisely in volume. You can earn as much traffic on one popular site, and on the amount of a large number of minor and much less popular.



What can you say about companies that rely on the “long tail” of the blogosphere? Due to the fact that there are not so many advantages for each individual blogger, running a business on the “long tail” of the blogosphere is quite risky. This applies, in particular, to companies specializing in widgets that hope to gain significant distribution by attracting long-tail bloggers. This, of course, may only need to be borne in mind that the encouragement of authors cannot be exclusively monetary.

As soon as bloggers become disillusioned with the opportunity to get some return on their diaries, then companies that do business with them will have to pay a lot. The price can be quite high due to the fact that in the "long tail" is hidden a large enough amount of money. If it falls into separate parts, then the blow to the business will be appropriate.

Conclusion

It is often forgotten that money is made on the “long tail” as a whole, however, being a part of it, it is very difficult to earn something substantial. The blogosphere is a huge number of blogs that have very few readers. It’s rather naive to expect blogs to start making money for their creators. As soon as the authors of the “long tail” end their enthusiasm and nothing will stimulate them, how much will the business that uses this abyss of sites collectively suffer? Apparently, quite significantly.

Thanks to all who took the time to read this note. I will be glad to your comments.

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