On the internet today, people seem to be able to buy just about anything. Have you ever stopped to wonder about that? I mean, I’m not buying personalized garden gnomes, are you? How do these vendors survive? The answer is simple: they’ve put their faith in Long Tail economics and I think its time that we all started to do the same. Why? Because selling more of one thing may not be as lucrative as selling one of more things- and we can show you how to do it. Better yet, we can show you how to let your customers do it for you!

Let’s start with a little history: years ago, before the internet, we went to the store to buy everything. Shelf space was limited so stocking popular items was the best way to make money. Today however, online vendors have an unlimited amount of “shelf space” allowing them to stock not only the popular items, but also the not-so-popular items whose individual sales taper off to create that eponymous Long Tail. These items might not sell like the latest Justin Timberlake album, but the theory behind the Long Tail tells us that you’ll always sell at least one- which means that if you sell one of enough of these items, you could make more revenue than if you DID just sell the latest Justin Timberlake album. Plus, your profit margin and customer satisfaction is much higher with these unpopular products than the popular ones. Take a look at your own site; you’ve got your own long tail too- but are you making the most of it?

The key to tapping into your own Long Tail an achieving a double-digit lift in revenue is to make on-target product recommendations to shoppers and identify your up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. This is done most accurately and easily by understanding like-minded peers and the Wisdom of Crowds. This Wisdom of the Crowds is garnered by observing a site’s invisible crowds or silent groups of like-minded peers whose intent is determined by their implicit behavior instead of their explicit feedback. Just think of it like taking those annoying magazine surveys…do you really exercise daily or watch less than 2 hours of TV a week? We didn’t think so. But by harnessing the implicit wisdom of these invisible crowds and essentially letting your customers sell for you, retailers can understand true buyer preferences and intent rather than using misleading clicks to inaccurately determine their interest. This way, vendors can tap into their own Long Tail.

We’ll be speaking more on this topic as well as giving some helpful tips you can use right away to tap into your own long tail at our session, Profit from the Long Tail: Let your Customers Sell for You, at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Please stop by to listen or visit us at booth #5 in the expo’s LongTail Pavilion.