I’ve talked quite a lot about the Long Tail economy while explaining our Linkua‘s business plan.

I’ve been reading the famous book, even though it dates from 2006 , it’s already a classic in the internet literature.

Let me focus on the book’s last chapter. Anderson tries to summarize the rules of the long tail economy.

According to Anderson, the secret of a long tail business is:

1.- Make everything available: OK. That’ s what we do at Linkua, we make all languages available. Any language can be taught/learned at Linkua. With just one teacher, we can offer a language course to many students.

2.- Help me find it: At Linkua, with just a click you have all the tutoring offer of a specified language.

Linkua allows recommendations, ordering the searches, teachers’ rating,..

Long tail business rules:

#1. Move inventory way in … or way out: no problem, at Linkua talk about services, no stocks!

#2. Let customers do the work

#3. One distribution method doesn’t fit all (Think niche): this gives me ideas to develop at Linkua, not only one-to-one online classes, but also include learning contents, contacts of local schools….

#4. One product doesn’t fit all.

#5. One price doesn’t fit all: agree! At Linkua we have classes from 3$ to 30$.

#6. Share information: That’s what we try publishing students’ comments, etc. Work to do tough, like creating forums, blog, etc. Anderson’s right: “transparency can build trust at no cost”

#7. Think “and”, not “or”:

#8. Trust the market to do your job. Don’t predict: measure and respond. That’s what we did with Linkua. We launch it and we are reacting according to the users.

#9. Trust the market of free: YEs! About this we are preparing something really innovative to allow students to try out the teachers for free.