To many people, Jane Aldridge is a typical high school senior. The North Dallas teen is applying for college, goes to movies and pizza with friends on the weekend and has begun the search for the perfect prom dress.
To others, though, she’s an arbiter of style. The 18-year-old has a personal blog about shoes that is reaching fashion conscious readers across the world. She blogs about her passion for shoes on SeaofShoes.com, her site that she launched in 2006 as a hobby.
Since the time of Aldridge’s Sea of Shoes creation she has developed cult-status with daily hits sometimes reaching more than 60,000 and Twitter followers massing to more than 10,000.
As magazines fold, blogs boom. Independently run fashion blogs like Fashionista.com receive 1.5 million hits a month. Retailers like Forever 21, Barney’s and even EBay have tapped into the concept and each run a blog promoting merchandise on their Web sites.
Local newspapers and magazines have hopped on the blog bandwagon and are counting on its online presence to secure their existence into the future, and why not? Even everyday people are making money from their personal blogs chronicling their day-to-day lives.
“The future is online,” Maxine Trowbridge, CEO and founder of PinkMemo.com, said. “I rarely read a newspaper and can’t remember the last time I really read a glossy magazine.”
2009 was a dismal year for magazine publishers. Condé Nast Publications fared the worst; closing six titles this year including Domino, the home décor magazine with a circulation of more than 1.1 million, and Gourmet, the 70-year-old food magazine with a circulation of almost a million.
Condé Nast’s remaining publications aren’t doing much better. Fashion and beauty magazines are being hard hit and advertising revenue is down by as much as half at W, Vogue and Allure.
Over at rival media conglomerate Hearst Communications, America’s first fashion magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, has seen an ad revenue decrease of more than 22% from 2008 to 2009; resulting in a loss of more than $34 million for the publication.
Aldridge resides in rural Trophy Club, Texas, not Manhattan or Milan, yet she has been featured in the pages of Vogue and Elle, made guest appearances on the popular television program “The City,” has a shoe-line with Urban Outfitters and most recently she was invited to make her debut at the most exclusive debutante ball in the world: The Crillon Ball in Paris.
Dallas resident and stylist Valerie Elizabeth jokes about the similarities between herself and Aldridge.
“I totally would have been her if I was in high school,” Elizabeth said after hosting a holiday fashion segment for WFAA’s “Good Morning Texas.”
Elizabeth is founder of SocietyStylist.com and has developed a brand as a fashion expert because of her blog. The 32-year-old has been featured on the “Today Show,” was awarded second place in AOL’s “America’s Most Stylish Blogger”contest and is a regular commentator on Dallas news programs, dishing the latest trends.
“There are so many things that have happened that I couldn’t even imagine,” Elizabeth said. “I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be able to meet all of these people and go to New York Fashion Week because of my blog.”
Elizabeth has been blogging for a little more than a year, but Society Stylist really took off in August when she conducted “The Little Black Dress Experiment.” – Elizabeth’s venture where she wore the same black dress for 31 days, 31 different ways.
“By the third day we started getting calls from the press and by the sixth day I had been interviewed for video and print by the Associated Press,” Elizabeth said. “On day 17 they put it out on the wire and that’s when it really went insane.”
Hits on Society Stylist skyrocketed over night, literally.
“We had to make a dedicated server that night because my traffic and views went through the roof,” she said.
Now Elizabeth is focusing less on her styling career and more on her blogging career. Personal blogs, like Society Stylist, are creating new media job opportunities and journalists are being forced to evolve with the changing technology.
Pink Memo’s CEO and founder believes that blogs are just the beginning of what she calls the “new online media wave.”
“The future is about a touch screen online magazine,” Trowbridge said. “TV and online media merging into one, with our experience becoming more interactive, more customized and a more segmented niche.”
Trowbridge attests that, “the media shift and consumer consumption from print magazine to online editions is a fact of life.”
This year D Magazine cut its fashion and beauty publication, D Beauty, shifting the topic to its blog, Shop Talk.
“Blogs give our editors a regular, immediate avenue to reach readers, by both loyal subscribers and newbie’s who find us through search engines,” D Magazine’s director of online media Julie Kinzie said.
D Magazine’s seven blogs not only allow the editors to reach the readers, they give the reader the opportunity to interact with the editors.
In addition to leaving comments and opinions, Kinzie said readers can access information that was not printed in the magazine, like interview transcripts, video, mp3s and pod casts.
F!D Home and Dining Editor Christopher Wynn, blogs daily on the Dallas Morning News shopping blog.
According to Wynn, there are big advantages to blogs that print publications can’t provide.
Along with providing immediacy for timely content, compared to print, blog posts are more relaxed as far as topic and tone.
“The blog enables the writer to let more of his/her personality to show,” Wynn said.
“Readers can get to know you better and feel a stronger connection to your work.”
SMU senior Carolyn Angiolillo started her blog, Freckles and the Golden Goose, to do just that – express her personality.
“I don’t worry about who reads it or how many Google followers I may have,” Angiolillo said. “I blog for the fun of blogging.”
Angiolillo describes her blog, hosted on blogspot.com, as random things that make-up who she is.
“It’s whatever I am feeling, come across or go through on a certain day,” Angiolillo said.
Despite typical enterprise barriers like location and budget, Elizabeth is confident anyone can start a blog and gain a following.
“It is a way for someone who doesn’t necessarily have a ton of resources, to get their word out,” Elizabeth said. “It’s about finding your niche, writing what you like and finding those people that connect with you.”
