The Business Of Blogging: Garance Dore
Introduction Garance Dore is a 37-year old blogger, photographer and writer of Algerian and Italian descent. Dore’s blogging career was inspired by her desire to be an artist. Consequently, she quit her job as an assistant programmer and started drawing illustrations for art publications and magazines. The Growth of Dore’s Blogging Career However, she soon realized that her drawing, which fetched $200 per page and took her a week to complete, could not sustain her financially. As a result, she started blogging on the side; drawing one illustration every morning that she published in her blog in the evening.
Her blogs drew responses from readers and viewers, who commented on fashion topics like dressing styles and her daily activities (Amed 2013). Soon enough, her blogs caught the attention of the French fashion magazine, L’Express, which ran a feature article about her. It gave her publicty and opened up new opportunities in the fashion industry, such as using her blogs to advertise fashion products. In 2007, Dore moved to Paris, where she met her boyfriend and blogger Scott Schuman. Schuman encouraged her to use her blog to showcase her photographs and drawings, which featured fashion trends. The combination of blogs, illustrations and photographs drew many fans because they featured what people do not often see in magazines.
Publishing photos was particularly successful because it transcends language barriers (Amed 2013). She further expanded her audience reach when she started to have her blogs translated from French into English. Her blogs became a forum of frank conversations with her fans about fashion and other personal topics.Generating Income Dore generates income from her blogs through advert sales, sponsorship deals for her video series and corroborations (working on projects with clients and charging a fee), which include brand endoorsements, commissions from illustrations and photo shoots. For instance, she has a sponsorship deal with Net-a-Porter for her video series Pardon My French (Amed 2013).
She has recently diversified into short videos, where she documents her experiences during fashion week and events. In addition, she runs an online boutique where she sells her drawings and prints. The Connection between Blogging and FashionThe popularity of blogging in the fashion industry is explained by the emergence of an internet-savvy generation that uses the internet to access information and for entertainment. As Dore observes, video streaming will be the major use of the internet in future in light of the habits of today’s 13-year-olds, who spend hours on the internet looking for video contents to share. She has positioned her blog strategically to capitalize on this possibility by starting a new video series called Trending, where she talks directly to the camera about her fashion week experiences.
