Commercial bloggers – a new cottage industry?

I’ve had the good fortune to spend some quality time with Loïc Le Meur in Madrid, and will be spending some more time with him next week in Paris and Berlin.

It’s fascinating to listen to him talk about blogs. Each time, he seems to pull up another fascinating example of what folks are doing with blogs. Of course, many of the examples are French, but that’s not the point. I think his examples point to the creativity people have with their own blogs.

He pointed out two, this last time in Madrid and it struck me that people are figuring out ways to use their blogs as commercial tools.

The bead-trotter webjournal belongs to a talented craftswoman who makes really cool jewelry. The interesting thing is that she has used the basic photo album on the blog to show her creations and sell them via Pay Pal. Go check it out.

Another one Loïc talked about was La Fraise, run by a guy who is nuts about printed t-shirts. The blog gets an amazing number of comments. He uses a photo album to show designs and get feedback. People can even submit their own design, in true community fashion. Go see for yourself.

But, the key thing that struck me when I saw these sites is that blogs have become true tools for a new kind of cottage industry. Sure, we’ve had individual online stores for many years now, but the stores and the sites related to them were not interactive. Here, we see folks interacting with their customers in a way not possible without such ease of use.

What also struck me is that 5 years ago, when I worked for myself and hadn’t given my brain and energy to a large corporation, I was struggling to build elements of an interactive website that would allow me to publish and sell and interact with visitors to a high degree and so on. I am almost sure that if I had a blog then, I would be doing something entirely different from what I do now. If I had a blog then, I would likely have been doing something along the line what these folks have done: an easy to update blog, with good interaction with the customers, and an easy way to offer my products.

Sigh.