The Aggregator Blog Model: How a Blog leverages Long Tail Economics

Long Tail Economics is a concept defined by Chris Anderson to describe the business model employed by the majority of Web sites and ecommerce stores, which effectively operate in an economy of abundance. Anderson's thesis has become well-known, but he focused largely on ecommerce stores such as Amazon, and Content Aggregators, such as YouTube and Flickr. In contrast, this paper seeks to identify the effects of Long Tail Economics on an individual blog. Blogs have become increasingly important in the dissemination of information for academics, organizations and individuals alike. By modelling the blog as an Aggregator of search terms and analyzing usage data from a live blog, the paper shows how Long Tail Economics can be applied to a blog to reveal the forces that both drive and constrain its growth.