Long Tail From Iceland
"Long Tail" is an interesting book by Chris Anderson. It is about the new reality that is emerging in the world economy because of the abundance of "shelf space" in cyberspace. Led by companies like Amazon.com and NetFlix.
The long tail is of course made of lots of other long
tails in a recursive or fractal way. This phenomenon applies of course well to
websites and here I jusst wanted to share some numbers and thoughts that applies
to the webs I make.
As you may know Iceland is a small country with only about 300,000 people. All
speaking the ancient language Icelandic that nobody else understands much in. It
is also an island isolated from the rest of Europe. That makes it nice for all
sorts of market testing I guess but it also gives some insight into the Long
Tail - at least for me, since this is so close.
Like most SBIers I look at my traffic HQs for the newest numbers. Also I can
look at a measurement of the most popular sites in Iceland. As it turns out I
rank about the 11th place overall:
Numbers for the week: 16.10.2006-22.10.2006
Here is the link to see the numbers:
https://login.modernus.is/?_a=212&_m=35&_serviceType=1&_serviceId=0
Impressive - right ?
The shape of the curve is just like Chris talks about in his book.
Mbl.is and visir.is the top two sites are news sites and
also number 9, ruv.is.
Eve Online is an internationally popular multiplayer game.
Ja.is is the online phonebook for Iceland.
leit.is is an Icelandic search engine.
leikjanet.is is a gaming site.
b2.is is a links farm.
hugi.is is an online community.
fotbolti.net is a soccer site.
As you can see there are more than 200,000 visitors each week for the most
popular sites. That tells me almost every single individual in Iceland is
visiting these sites once a week or so.
The main point is that these sites have pretty much exhausted their growth
potential. They "own" the market but they can't grow much more!
Another point is that these sites all have a lot of staff. Even fotbolti.net has
22 people working with gathering news, taking pictures etc. Maybe not all are
paid but still...
4x4OffRoads.com is really not competing against these sites (and you won't find
it under the icelandic counter). It is simply not in the same market - or the
same TAIL. Possible growth is WAY greater than this. It will just need to 10
fold to get to the first place. Perhaps I should consider adding to my staff :)
I am counting on SBI! and
all its wonders like Content 2.0 to help me reach that goal.
In a similar way you can make your digital photo web fit into a long tail with the goal of eventually creating your own niche with your own long tail.