He said the long tail it's not just about the money you earn, but also about the reputation. Anyway here is the video interview in English with Italian subtitles, in case you want to watch it: http://tinyurl.com/3a6lm7

Between 1980 and 1998:

- 44,000,000 people lost their jobs in the US

OOh, terrible, the US economy must have been really shakey to have that many people drop out of their employment...

But over the same period:

- 73,000,000 people found new jobs in the US

=> 29,000,000 MORE people were working at the end of the period

The long tail's of the blogosphere like that - many, possibly MOST bloggers below a certain threshold will lose enthusiasm, and drop out.

The question is whether they'll be replaced by a newer generation, willing and eager to interact in the same way.

BTW - the same analysis also disproves "The Rich Get Richer"... the ACTUAL answer implied by the Pareto principle is:

"Some of the rich get richer, some get poorer. Others, who previously weren't rich, become rich, but the overall proportion of people we call 'rich' doesn't change much."

... but that's not nearly a good enough soundbite, is it :-(

Mark

[Source for US employment figures: Tom Peters, www.tompeters.com]

I usually refer to the 80:20 rule as Pareto's Principle who observed that 80% of Italys' wealth was held by 20% of the population.

I'm guessing that there are hundreds of other bloggers attempting to provide money-making tips to their readers. Some are undoubtedly scammers, some are probably struggling entrepreneurs, some may even be altruists. Who knows?

The thing is, scammers will eventually be caught. Incompetent, though possibly well-meaning "experts" will eventually be ignored. And people with decent skills but limited audience will either transition from the trailing mass to the lead. If it's not too late. Plus, if tastes change or else someone else innovates with an effective monetization method, the little guys must adapt or die.

What concerns me is that you are making a potentially frightening description of pro-blogging as an activity painfully similar to multi-level marketing or network marketing, whereby the people at the top of the pyramid take advantage of the "rich grow richer" rule.

I'm not suggesting that the three bloggers that I mentioned above are doing MLM. In fact, they are more like mentors or examples to their audience. Plus, they have credibility: Maki writes excellent content that has a large audience while the other two gentlemen give their readers insight into how they make money.

I'm not really in a position to argue whether or not the long tail of the blogosphere is solid or unstable; I'm too new to the game. All I can suggest is that as long as people can meet the needs of the "long tail" AND make themselves known in the process, SOMEONE can earn money from it if they understand those needs, adapt as they change, and fulfill them.

Another excellent post, Alex!

Also, I really take umbrage at the assumption that all blogging is for money. There's a great deal that can be accomplished with a blog beyond making money that can trigger other outcomes.

The big winner is the regular blog reader, who has more options, and can choose reading blogs that offers him the information that he needs. And the other winners, this time in a financial way, are those who take advantage of the long tail, and offer services for the bloggers (widgets, or blog publishing systems), or for the readers (by helping them to find interesting blogs).

In Donald Trump's book, in the future, there would be only the rich or poor whereby the middle class would shrink into extinction.. while the present rich people would get even richer! Perhaps there would be a trillionaire in the future?

Sure, I'm just your average lawyer entrepreneur real estate investor web2 evangelist bankruptcy blogger with a Mac, but I long before people were calling it the 'long tail' I had to find niches-within-niches to level the playing field against better funded rivals competing for limited resources. Is that the long tail or just the result of relentless competition? Or are they the same thing?

Thanks for your input.

Imagine it like inertia: to get the thing moving, you need enough energy to shift its initial state. What this means for the business is that only a model or platform with enough clout can really enter the field at this stage.

Startups seeking to expand into the long tail would need to be building on existing revenues, just like Amazon did.

One point you fail to mention is that profitability on the long tail only works if distribution costs are low.

That is way retailers like eBay,Google and Amazon all really benefit from the long tail.

The long tail will not work for Barnes and Noble or Wall-Mart for instance due to physical nature of the distribution medium and cost to transport these low volume goods to the stores.

Regards.

Augustus

Surely the next iteration of web commerce must be aggregation and filtering? When anyone can create a shop and sell goods, how do they get discovered?

Despite the blog network example I'm not an advocate of ad based business models, when did we all expect everything for free? Would I pay $1 per week to have access to a filtered 'Best of Web on Travel etc', where the content creator shares in the revenue alongside the person who discovered the content? Yes, in an increasingly spam heavy world, the return of the subscription model has validity. When everyone can publish how do we know what is worth reading in a world where time and attention span are under constant assault?

People will always seek information and stuff to read. If the source is found in blogs or in media called something else there will always be ways to monetize. I think the number of people in the long tail to make money on will always grow, as long as the population of the planet does.

Thanks for a good read!

Indeed, the only way you can make money from the long-tail is to not be a part of the long-tail. Making money from the long-tail simply takes frequency, quality and good search marketing (link building). I actively run SEO campaigns and use tools like Raven http://ravenseo.com to help me keep track of my link building and how my blogs are doing in search engines.

1. Many bloggers are in it for the money. A huge wave rushed in when people like Rowse, Pavlina, etc. started writing about the hundreds of thousands of dollars they make blogging.

This was realistic for early entrants, but with the influx of competition it is becoming less likely by the day. The tail is so skewed toward the short end, that even sites with several thousand RSS subscribers don't make much money.

Most bloggers never have a chance. Blogging is a bad way to make money and people will soon realize this and quit.

2. The people that do it for reasons besides money are presented with new opportunities every day that give them the same benefit without the hassle. Twitter, Facebook, etc. are all allowing people to share the same things they would blogging, except they are already linked into a network.

I think a lot of folks get sucked into blogging because they think it is a get rich quick scheme. Not that they are really interested in exploring some niche, or want to contribute to the community.

Most of the long tail depends on what the real reasons you blog are. Most "labour of love" blogs do ok, most get rich quick blogs, well they peter out. The continual churn can be difficult to manage, but being persistent pays off. That is probably the message that more "get rich quick from blogging" schemes need to make people more aware of.

The long tail is still about volume and cost. If you can find enough volume, with low distribution costs, there is the potential to be successful. The entire point is that the web enables you to reach consumers that would be impossible to get to otherwise because the cost/return would not be worthwhile in a brick and mortar world. Because the additional costs are relatively low, or there is enough volume in one or more segments away from the head, there can be good business reasons to build a business there.

Just my very watered down $.02

For instance, a blogging network, like B5Media, can make money from a long tail of blogs.

But one individual blog in the long tail will make very little money. The incentive is to either rise up the tail to become a prominent blogger, or to benefit from the interaction and networks you can now reach.

Chris

Alternately known as "strings woven together are stronger than the sum of their parts". Twenty blogs on a variety of topics that get 10k unique visitors/day each aren't worth as much as a blog network on a variety of topics that gets 200k unique visitors/day total. Managing a network to create a circle of different but related blogging topics allows you to use blogs with topics that are interesting but don't have companies paying high-value ad prices to drive more traffic to blogs in your network that do.

For instance, a cooking blog offers great tips on recipes, techniques, grocery savings, etc. But let's say there are few ads for cooking topics. So the blog network that invites the cooking blog also invites a parenting blog and a productivity(Lifehacker-like) blog. Now, mothers brought in by the cooking blog are more likely to visit the parenting blog if they're a nuclear family mom, or the productivity blog if they're a single working mom, both of whose topics have plenty of ads available.

Thanks to the network's revenue-share, the cooking blog gets a good chunk of the change it couldn't have gotten from selling ads about its own topic, as well as the fact that being part of a network makes it more likely for the cooking blog to be discovered by someone that wants to make them a cooking TV show or book offer.

Alternatively, skip ads and sell memberships to the network that gets you premium content, like video podcasts. A blog that produces 1 video/week on a topic won't make much selling memberships. A blog network that produces 20 videos/week on a variety of closely-related topics has a much better chance.

1. Many blogs carry no adds whatsoever

2. There are other ways to make money from a blog other than Google adwords

3. If I am in the long tail as a book author on Amazon.com, I might not be getting rich, but I am making *more* money than I would without Amazon.com

4. If you are using ads, one good post and consistently decent content can have a long term impact. Not enough to retire on, but enough to break even on hosting costs.

5. The old adage of the "Internet routes around stupidity" has a flip side: It routes to brilliance (even if brilliance is occasionally found in the extremities of stupidity) sometimes that takes a while, but it does happen.

If marketing people will start to understand this and technology provider will make use of small-world networks there will be a profitable long tail in less obvious networks. I'm quite sure that the reading ratio for readwriteweb blog entries somehow follows a power law.

The future challenge will be to predict which nodes in which networks will move in which direction, upwards to the head or downwards in the tail? And where are the tipping points?

More here:

http://www.jimkukral.com/fun-is-the-key-to-marketing-to-the-long-tail/

The possibility of success is a huge driving factor. Think about rock stars, movie stars and professional athletes. Horrible professions unless you're successful, but it doesn't stop a ton of people from trying for a while. If time and randomness are factors, well we can't control randomness but we can control time but sticking around in the long tail for a long time.

Being in it for the reputation is equivalent with being in it for the money. If you don't see actual money transferring hands it could be happening more obliquely, or it could be that someone hasn't figured out how to monetize it yet-- it does require different strategies in the long tail, and there's nobody around to throw more money at the problem. But there are a lot of bright individuals coming up with personal solutions.

On the one hand it's very had for an individual blogger in the mid-thick/long tail to make money. On the other hand, that's where we make 80% of our money, and see 90% of our growth.

Considering make 2M/year largely off the thick-mid tail, you'd think I'd strongly disagree... I think the reason I agree is that because we own so many "thick-mid" blogs, in aggregate we're much farther towards the head of the tail than the blogs would be on their own - so we benefit enormously from ad deals that evade 99.999% of bloggers.

Long tail value is all about the quality of the long tail network, and the site aggregators generating a compelling offering, not blanket long tail content activation.

There are many many good blogs out there in the long tail with dedicated useful followers. Aggregate them together, rate their traffic, and then compare them to the fat belly properties. Just because a blog has few readers, doesn't make it insignificant or un-actionable. Better knowledge collection and activated targeting will make this long tail compelling. Just because we don't have this yet today, doesn't mean the long tail of blogs are forever useless.

Think what it was like before: Printed materials, Web Sites that needed cumbersome updates for a serialized format, and horrendous media wrangling.

We have come a long way. The are models beyond advert monetization, and if your traffic build to such a point, go have at it.

Seems to me there is a huge opportunity for creating services that strengthen the Long Tail's cohesion in financial terms.

However, it seems that AdWords (not AdSense) from Google was a long tail success from the beginning; basically any small business could buy any search result.

You note this likelihood:
the enthusiasm and the incentive in the long tail begin to wear off

But this opens an opportunity for those who stick it out. If persistent long tail bloggers become the most authoritative in their niches, their content will have high value to advertisers. Bloggers who blog without much hope of profit often are *better* and more authoritative. As the money-focused folks drop off in favor of "passionate experts", highly focused expert content streams develop in the long tail, and are likely to create substantial advertising value.

... but I don't recommend bloggers hold their breath while they type and wait for this to happen ...

I guess I may have to rely on some Internet trickery to get in on the money making path. AdWords seems to be a way to do it but I think I want to get some cash flow in place before I experiment with this gamble of words.

There's been a ton of reports about this kind of stuff - I'm surprised that people are only just starting to realize how hard it is and will be to make money. Maybe covering the every breath and move of Facebook has everybody looking at the wrong stuff :)

Blogs that want to be businesses should see themselves as - and operate like - media companies. It's the only chance, in my personal opinion, for real survival in the market. That means smart structure, good management, the right kind of writers that fit the audience, caution in practices, etc. I've never ran my company StyleDiary like a blog, even though it started as that, and I would say it's been pretty successful :)

Either way, a successful blog must have a specific and unique voice and produce great content regularly to maintain a consistent audience.

My understanding of the curve as stated before on http://www.felgner.ch/2007/11/th_long_tail.html for this case (ad revenue of bloggers):

The abscissa is the number of bloggers, one standing next to the other, sorted by their ad revenue, Michael Arrington somewhere upfront, myself completely to the right.

The ordinate is the ad revenue of a single blogger.

Imagine my authority in the blogosphere would grow, then I would simply move to the left in the curve, my revenue above me. And the other way round. Positions of all bloggers relative to all others changing constantly to keep them sorted by revenue.

Now we have two variables here which could change for whatever reason, the number of bloggers and the total sum of ad money spent.

1. Ad money spent is the area below the curve.

- In case the sum remains constant, my gain might be Michael's loss. And the other way around.

- If ad money increases, all or a few could win. Ad money decreasing, all or a few loose.

2. The total number of bloggers is how far the curve extends to the right. There is a shear infinite potential of zero-revenue bloggers to the left who do it for fame or fun and who do not contribute to the area below the curve.

- If people join and want to make money, someone will loose unless total money spent increases at the same time.

- In case people leave and the money spent remains constant, someone will gain market share.

Now here come those making money ON the collective long tail, the widget-makers, the access providers, the telcos, etc. They are not depicted in the same curve! And as we have revenue on the ordinate and not profit, the tail does not cross the abscissa as a consequence. We cannot deduct the widget makers revenue from any area below or above that curve. What is clear though is that those widget makers depending on those leaving the game will loose their business model.

But as at the same time the number of zero-revenue bloggers might as well exceed those leaving, predictions of what will happen are unclear. Everyone has some expenses adding up in another long tail curve depicting widget revenue versus number of widget makers.

"It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future."

Harry Potter is a commodity and requires a large discount to be competitive. Rolex Watch Collectors Guide is specialized and will have little or no discount. Comodities deliver volume and Specialities (the tail) deliver profit.

Blogs are the same way if you put them on a graph. The most popular blogs (closest to the Y Axis) can drive lots of customers of a wide demographic to Amazon, but blogs in the tail (less popular/more specialized) will drive the RIGHT customer to the site.

The Right customer is the one who has specific interests beyond Harry Potter and other commodity books.

Long story short - Amazon should pay more to smaller blogs that are engaging and referring the RIGHT customers. That will keep the blogger interested and hopefully profitable so they can continue their work.

Internet media, in any format, is not that much different than traditional print media, but few (and I mean, few) understand this yet, particularly in advertising. In traditional print media, it isn't expected for a niche or trade magazine to have the same circulation as a major national magazine like Business Week, and the same goes for internet media. The problem is, nobody knows or understands this. The first thing out of everyone's mouth, be it blogger, advertiser, etc., is traffic volume. You never hear anything about session times, rate of return visitors, etc. I mean, people are still referencing Alexa as a traffic source. That should say it all.

It surprises me that more people don't look to old media to learn about what will happen with new media. In two years, people will finally understand it but not now.

Wow, 51 comments, I find myself in the long tail again :-)

Follow the non profit homeagain.com and create a Charity Affiliate Shopping network.

The blog monetization market is flooded, but there are other rivers you can forge. People love to make a diference and help humanity, and by becoming a non profit your blog instantly creates value on a personal and spiritual level.

One example is the endless list of charity events for Hollywood stars - giving never gets old, and people are much more likely to click on affiliate links/banners/ads if part of the proceeds are going to charity.

I do not agree at all with your statement that the power diggers on digg were original diggers. There are many top diggers who came late to the party and there are a ton of early diggers who never went anywhere. Flawed perception does not reality make.

I do agree with the fact that AdSense benefits Google and high traffic sites ONLY but that is just stating the obvious.

I AM part of the long tail of blogging and I make more money off of posts that I have written in the past than I do on posts I am writing today. But, if you look back at what you said about Google AdSense, there are a lot more of my old posts than their are of my new posts.

http://martysmind.com/2007/11/28/who-is-the-long-tail/

If you were going to blog anyways, and making $100 a month is just a nice bonus to you, than it's not hard at all to 'make money' in the long tail with a decent quality niche blog, especially if you have a revenue stream that's well suited to your audience.

But if you're referring to making a full-time income, that's a lot harder.

Iskold's analysis of why it's difficult to make money in the Long Tail makes sense, but there are other reasons why Long Tail content on the Web is in trouble. Yes, as many others have mentioned, most Long Tail content producers don't do it to make big bucks. There are indeed other, more compelling incentives to contribute online. What Iskold didn't say, and he may or may not agree with me, is that those non-monetary incentives such as recognition and reputation that used to motivate Long Tail content producers are being threatened as well.

Unlike Andrew Keen, perhaps, I believe strongly in the value of the "amateur" producer on the Web, but am dismayed by the shift of attention away from amateur experts (who independently publish original research) towards megasites (e.g. Wikipedia) that aggregate and/or duplicate content. On these megasites, individual authorship and accountability (whether it's amateur or professional) is deemphasized in favor of the "wisdom of the crowd". (Lately, however, it's good to see that Wikipedia is placing more value on including content from "reliable sources", though that still marginalizes amateur expertise)

In an age where "too many outbound links" are considered detrimental to the popularity one's webpage, are there any signs of hope for those who remember the Web as a highly networked community of diverse sources of knowledge and opinions? I wrote more about this in an article I published last year: http://www.cjas.org/~leng/lainspotting/2006/03/counteracting-sameness-on-internet.html

Amateurs will never own the web because it is intended and will become a SINGLE communications channel and there is no way in hell that major media, phone companies, etc. are going to hand it over to the amateur.

The only reason why there was a small foothold in "user driven" and "user created" is because very few companies were putting anything - money or otherwise - into the web. That has changed.

Social media and social networking WILL take a back seat to passive usage as audiences are migrated from interactive/communications platforms to watching things like TV. This could take years, but it is likely to happen.

That no one ever references what the internet as a technology in itself is poised to do, and what the carriers who run it plan to do, should say it all about the depth of everybody's thinking. How can you analyze what is up top without looking at what the network in itself will be doing?

This stuff pangs me. Seriously!

In the case of the Web, despite the large amount of investment and growth in Web users, the economics still do not support niche content in any serious way. Small publishers have not made a living off of their content, depending on VCs or large distribution networks for investment to stay afloat, or publishing despite the lack of money. And even the most popular blogs on the Internet make a tiny amount of money compared to any other publishing medium like books, magazines, TV, etc. For example, Boing Boing is estimated to bring in $50,000/month in advertising revenue, which sounds like a lot until you consider that a single full-page ad in a local magazine like New York generates the same amount of revenue. Traditional media companies like AOL and Yahoo! have tried to aggregate many small publishers and sell ads across all of them, but despite getting a lot of traffic for this content, the rates for ads remain low (and at flat growth rates). The money remains in search text ads. Jaron Lanier pointed out in an Op-ed that this model doesn't work for content authors.

In the case of newspapers, their audience is falling steadily and won't sustain the costs of keeping the staffs of reporters and editors working (let alone the costs of publishing in print). They have had some success working with internet networks like Yahoo!, but this is likely not sustainable nor will it replace enough revenue to keep things going at current spending levels (magazines haven't had the same problem, but that's another topic).

So given that the cable model supports a number (not a huge number, but a number) of niche content players, and given that the Internet functions well as a big lab for new ideas but not for building content businesses, maybe what's needed is a sort of content consortium, or at least association of creators, with thresholds for membership and the ability to bargain collectively for better compensation. This would be different from a union, more like the Author's Guild or Screen Actors Guild, where plenty of work is done outside their auspices, but productions that generate a lot of revenue must conform to standards of pay. The cable model shows that if companies seeking to exploit content have to buy in to a collective pool of content, content costs are lower while allowing even niche content to thrive. This model doesn't need the cable networks to work for the author's benefit.

In a rough environment for content creators, where the economics are against them (but no one wants them to stop creating), the authors and makers should hang together more than they are. Some kind of association would re-balance a business that is out of kilter, draining the money out of a very valuable part of the culture we live in.

Jennifer Laycock outlines her method in starting a business with just $100 and some spare time. She engaged a passionate and outspoken part of the Long Tail ("lactivists"), and pinpointed her content directly to them.

Of course, you could call me out for cheating the concept here, because her first focus was a Cafepress store, not a blog per se, but I think that's an important point: AdWords engages and monetizes huge amounts of traffic well, but you can also profit by offering a passionate audience a wide variety of monetized content. In this case, all the products Cafepress can slap an image on.

So, the Long Tail isn't dead, but it can be misused. The days of saying just because you have a web site that your content is "available to the world" are gone, but only because that's a misused statement. Having a targeted, engaging web site with focused content CAN turn a profit from the passion of a niche audience.

Read more on my argument:
http://chitika.com/blog/?p=333

- Tessa

Making money from The Long Tail is both about using it to aggregate value, or catalyze it, as well as sell to it. Google did both. So is glam.com. The lone individual gets real money from being part of Google, Glam, and Threadless.

So, I think the whole eco-system exists and should continue to get stronger and deeper.

However, if you are interested in how to make more money in the blogosphere, check out www.MightyBlogger.com or www.SocialRank.com, a new discovery engine for the blogosphere.

There are two problems applying this concept to blogs. First, if you are a blogger, then your place in this example would be as just one of the albums that only sells a handful of copies a month. You're not iTunes or the aggregator who makes all the money. You only get your small cut of the small volume you do.

Second, a blog isn't a make-once/sell-many-times product. So some of the costs of production are low, digital distribution in particular. But there is an ongoing time and effort cost. So I can resell an old album over and over; the musician doesn't need a lot of compensation for his work. After all, at this point he's getting money for no effort. The blogger, however, is more likely to want a larger amount of compensation. After all he's putting a lot of sweat into his blog, and forgoing other opportunities. If he's not making enough back, he's going to give up and go do something else. And at that point the game collapses. Not many people are going to want to pay for advertising on an old blog.

In the end blogging requires a lot of effort for it to be a financial success, which works against the long tail effect.

That is precisely why businesspeople can rely on this segment being there.

Otherwise there would be robotic blogs about payday loans and 0 percent credit cards only.

According to Pew Internet, 48% of bloggers do so for an audience -- the rest blog for themselves, family, friends, etc. Money or not, I doubt that's going to change much.

Most bloggers aren't paying the bills with their blog. Some are. 98% of bloggers have fewer than 3 inbound links. It's not like all of a sudden the blogosphere is going to wake up and find their vast revenues drying up.

Today there aren't many advertising models that have been fitted to the long tail. But bloggers already know that their audiences can be worth more than the clicks they get credit for...

Let's consider the macro-view at this moment:

1) Long tail advertising is real. AdSense accounts for $4B/year to Google (2007). And it's the faster growing side of their business. 5 years ago that was $0.
2) Meaningful value can be created for advertisers on smaller (niche) sites, through AdSense and other programs.
3) Marketers are embracing social media (blogs, interest sites, social networks) where they seek engagement and voice.

Ultimately blogs as a more nuanced, subtle, perspective-ized media (that are also more personally relevant) are here to stay. In fact, blogs can create a safer, more receptive environment for marketers. The filter that social media provides may be part of the very fabric that helps it develop into viable marketing channel. It’s true: Threadless.com and HypeM.com “stretch the fabric” to re-invent traditional businesses. As with any new media, the models that use the fabric will be most successful.

So I’d argue that still new models will emerge for long tail advertising. It may not be advertising as we define it today, but certainly, AdSense is more useful to measure the potential of the market, at this very moment, and less useful for projecting the demise (or non-development) of a powerful, new media that promises to expose deep niches of content, hard-to-reach audiences, and webs of connections between people and ideas.

For those who's skills lay in the long tail they have little choice, but if their passion and enthusiasm is focused on the long tail rather than making money then theirs will be a long tale indeed.

But let me re-emphasize... no amount of cleverness will make the current model work. Some fundamental innovation is needed. I am working on one idea and several people are working on others. For precedent, remember that online advertising in its early days was a disaster until Google invented AdSense and shifted the industry from cpm to ctr at which point the value proposition became clear.

For blogging, there is going to be a different outcome, but one thing is for sure. The technology is not standing still.

More recently I have started a bangle business http://www.banglebangle.co.uk and I plan to write a regular blog on all interesting issues relating to the development of the site and bangles in general. When driving traffic - content is king as they say :)

It's misconstrued because I don't think Chris Anderson's book had much to do with content. Amazon sells stuff, not content.

To make money in the long tail you need to make something that not everyone has and that enough people want. For example, you can make X Gourmet food product that not enough people want for Safeway to sell, but that now people can find you through the internet and buy your , , .

One of the comments that hints at this is from Augustus at #13 above.

There is no 'long tail of content' way to make money if you unless you have content that no one else can get.

You're saying that just because you're in The Long Tail (as a blogger or whatever else) doesn't mean you'll make money on The Long Tail.

And that isn't saying anything about the validity of The Long Tail, and its money making potential, simply that (if you want to make money) you shouldn't confuse the two.

True enough.

How depressing. Actually, there are more effective ways to make money by online writing than just blogging for blogging sake.

Anyway, my longish answer to your question is on my blog. In sum, it's that blogging is a huge bundle of MLM's, and MLM's don't often die, even if they get really boring and unattractive.

Best,
Max

Prior to internet it was difficult for people to cater to or get serviced in their own niches. Internet provided the infrastructure - a very low cost and hugely reachable one. The companies like google and amazon - who provided the next layer of infrastructure with Supply chain and ads made money. So making money comes from aggregation and definitely you are ON the long tail

Second point is you can connect with people of similar interests and form communities and even lead an alternate life style. In this case its a niche and it is called a niche because its not in the main stream and probably very few people follow it. Unless you are in a niche such as 'Making atomic reactors' for example, chances of you 'making money' is very less. People connect with like minded people for the sheer excitement of it and not for the money.

So anyone who read the long tail principle and tried making money by 'being IN the niche' maybe they got the idea wrong. Thinking in the same lines, I wonder if RWW also got the idea wrong (IMHO :-)) by naming the title as "There's No Money In The Long Tail of the Blogosphere" as there isn't any in the first place and hence the whole article - i feel - is out of context.

Second: Nothing is certain. Our site or blog is in the long tail (based on the number of visitors) but it can be a popular head in our own niche.