Fashion is the new business in Blog World

A picture is worth a thousand words, and if you tweet it right, you can even make a thousand bucks. How else would you explain fashion blogger Chiara Ferragni’s $9 million pay check from last year? Or that her immensely successful pursuits soon got one of the most prestigious business schools to do a case study on her?

Now a subject in Harvard Business School, Fashion Blogging is part of a unique luxury marketing course offered to Harvard students — and if you want to read through the 16-page study, you can download the same for $14 (approx Rs 940).

One of the key points of the Harvard study is that “the best of bloggers start small”. Globetrotting Ferragni was studying law and would often upload her outfit selfies on Flickr. It was only in 2009 that she decided to launch The Blonde Salad, a lifestyle blog based on travel and fashion and then took up blogging full-time.

“Fashion blogging has become serious business. And getting a degree from Harvard not just highlights that but also gives you a certain direction,” says 23-year- old Sowmya Bandaru, a fashion design student at Hamstech Institute of Fashion and Interior Design. Sowmya started her blog, So My Styles, and her USP is that she is ‘Blogger on a Budget’.

“Blogging equals money. And even though my blog is just five months old, I have had requests for collaborations already. So for me it’s not about just uploading pictures, it’s a stepping stone to something big,” she says.

Instagram is the key

We have a lot to thank Instagram for, which brought to the forefront unique talent of models Gigi Hadid, Kendal Jenner and the famous-infamous Kim Kardashian. For bloggers, too, it brings good news. The Harvard study points out that in 2013, Instagram — the most used tool in Fashion now — gave power to fashion blogger to become successful overnight.

“Instagram is a sneak-peak where users get alerts about what new is going on in the blog. It’s a platform to display your talent,” says Meenakshi Pamnani, a full-time blogger at The Shimmer Tales.

With a YouTube channel where she gets 35,000 regular hits, Meenakshi started blogging when she was studying in St Francis College. “Blogging is not just about freebies or getting a dozen hits on your pictures. If you can channel your vision in the right direction, you will have an audience that will never leave your side,” says the 21-year- old.

Some catching up to do

Rishan Shabong is a fashion design student at Nift Hyderabad and founder of the Rishanbong blog that specialises in following the current trends on a budget. “There are so many good fashion blogs but the majority is unaware of it. One needs a good platform in the fashion spectrum,” says Rishan.

And that’s where he feels such a course could come handy. “We Indians aren’t ignorant about the business of fashion, but yes, there needs to be more streamlined attention to break through to the surface,” he says.