As I’m sitting here, I’m thinking specifically about e-books and how easy distribution to a large, but geographically diverse, market can help knowledge specialists focus on the long tail. E-books offer an interesting opportunity for those with specialized knowledge to share, and sell, their knowledge to a niche market. We’re using this strategy with our e-books on effective writing.

The business model looks like this: Perhaps only 0.1% of English-speaking book buyers want a guide for improving writing. Of all book buyers, these people are in the long tail. However, one person in every thousand still represents a large number of potential sales when you consider the number of English-speaking book buyers globally. [As something of a footnote, we sell quite a few copies of the Precise Edit Training Manual and our 100 Days to Better Writing to buyers in India, which seems unlikely for printed books but is possible with e-books.]

In this way, those with specialized knowledge or abilities can target the long tail through e-books and Internet technologies.

At the moment, I’m thinking specifically about eBooks and how easy distribution to a large market can help writers focus on the long tail.

Internet certainly helps people with long tailed interests (if i may say so) in finding out their obsolete or tough-to-find or rarely/scarcely liked products.

All the enthusiasts already know this and use internet extensively to find out those cornered products in a box (i call them cornered because they were in the mainstream box eversince and now they have been cornered). Once in a blue moon, someone comes out in search of them creating the famous LONG TAIL.

Another definition is to develop a website with a long tail. In this case the long tail was lots of content, with some non-standard words, so that you can catch searchers using unusual combination of words.

In reality the more content you have, and the larger selection of words you have, the bigger target you are for searchers. Then playing the other SEO techniques, such as freshly updated content, makes you very attractive.

This was an argument for longer posts and posts that are not tightly written for a specific set of search words. One site years ago, which was fairly successful, targeting car parts advertising, wrote the same, or similar article, for every make of car.

So a general article – how to check the oil level on a Ford Focus, would be cut and pasted for every version of Ford Focus, eg Ford Focus GTI, then a new article for Ford Focus GTEi, etc, with just a little bit of detail describing that particular version. (This was no doubt cut and pasted from Ford’s website).

He would then use the specific make detail in a whole range of other articles, such as how to replace the exhaust pipe (muffler) on each of the models. Which would be identical.

His site could therefore be described as having a wide tail, ie a large target, in his niche market.