Another example of the long tail in action

When looking at the DVD rental industry, a company such as blockbuster usually holds around 3000 titles whereas a company such as netflix, which does not has bricks and morter limitations has around 40,000.

Refering back to blockbuster the top 600 titles make up 80% of the sales with the tale making up the other 20% due to each title only selling either once or twice a month, but if the tail is extended to say 40,000 like Netflix, then the really sales figure generated by the long tail is around 50%.

 Therefore for a company such as Netflix, which doesnt have the limitations that Blockbuster do, there is a great amount of revenue to be made out of the long tail.