Long Tail Article

At first I was very overwhelmed when reading this article. As I went through it again and again I decided to break it up into pieces. I figured during this shot at it I would try to figure out each of Chris Anderson's rules. His first rule stats to make everything available, second rule cut the price in half and third rule, help me find it. From what I make of these rules he is trying to say that to create a thriving Long Tail business you need easy accessability, make prices affordable for everyone and spread the word on how to find these things.
Easy accessability comes faster now then ever with the use of our technology. Like Anderson said you cannot get certain documentaries at Blockbuster because they are not on high demand. But a company such as Netfix's isn't a store that only has a certain amount of space to hold a certain amount of movies. If a new company comes up with a way to have something all existing companies do not have it's a Long Tail business.
Most prices now-a-days are at LEAST doubled then what was spent to make them. Anderson's second rule says that prices should be cut in half and lowered more. He uses the example of iTunes; a single song costing (at the time of the article) $.99 cents. Anderson states "ask the labels and they'll tell you it's too low: Even though 99 cents per track works out to about the same price as a CD." Before iTunes, people would normally have to buy a whole CD just to get their couple of songs they really want to hear, but the labels would still make the full CD amount. Single songs are really worth 65 cents giving the label companies a whole profit of 34 cents PER SONG! This profit is nothing compared to the content thats on the Long Tail is all the older material that had made it's money back in the day when it was a hit, or songs that were cheap to make from the beginning.
"Great Long Tail businesses can then guide consumers further afield by following the contours of their likes and dislikes, easing their exploration of the unknown." What Anderson means by guiding are companies like Rhapsody that have a seperate box next to a product or song in this instance that has "similar likes" to what you are viewing at that point. This can lead to consumer to buy more things because the credited site they trust is telling them that this is another popular item if you like the one you are viewing. This is just one of many tatics to network your business' products, but also proves that this drives the demand down the Long Tail.
I have to agree with Chris Anderson. The secret to surviving a Long Tail business is answered in these three rules; make everything available, cut prices in half, and help me find it. It had never crossed my mind why and how Netflix's did so much better then Blockbuster until reading this article. I didn't realize why the local bookstore in my town closed 5 years ago until Anderson showed me that there's more to offer in online bookstores... The Long Tail is what the world has come too!