Be Your Own Long Tail Aggregator

When Chris Anderson coined the term ‘The Long Tail‘, it was generally interpreted to mean that large aggregators such as Amazon can make money by ’selling less of more’ – having millions of titles for sale of lesser known authors, bands/musicians, etc. The relatively small sales of each product can add up to huge dollars.

This is great news for Amazon, but how can the long tail benefit us? The common wisdom is to have a niche, and find 1,000 true followers which is great advice. But you can also be your own long tail aggregrator, selling hundreds of products to your following. It’s certainly less sexy than selling millions of copies of your new CD, but is much more practical.

For example, I teach rock guitar lessons and am building my own following of guitar students. While I attempt to get them to sign up for my online guitar coaching program, I also use Amazon to build my own long tail of products related to the topics I teach. People are buying from Amazon every day, so why not get a piece of the action for recommending quality products to your following? Instead of just focusing on broad terms like ‘teaching guitar’ or ‘learning guitar’ there are so many smaller niche products within the guitar lesson niche such as:

• -books/DVDs for specific keywords such as ‘chord tone soloing’, ‘CAGED system’, ’soloing over changes’, ‘fretboard mastery’, ‘guitar scales’, ‘pinch harmonics’
• -music gear – guitars, music software, amps, effects
• -backing tracks or drum/bass loops for sale
• -third party lesson products – eg. Jamorama, Learn and Master Guitar (be an affiliate and earn commissions).

Imagine having hundreds or even thousands of products for sale and making just a few sales of each product to hundreds or thousands of website visitors!