Case study: Blog a boost for wedding business

Formerly the domain of online journal writers, blogs are increasingly making their way into mainstream business, either as marketing tools to complement traditional business models, or as stand-alone businesses.

With tens of millions of blogs, or online journals, on the internet providing commentary on subjects from food and wine to politics and local news, more and more businesses are recognising the advantages of this online medium for reaching their audience in a more informal way.

After witnessing the immense popularity of blogs while working in Singapore, I-Lyn Loo, owner of Dianella-based online small business i-weddings.com.au, decided to start a blog with the aim of drawing more people to her site.

Launching the i-weddings blog in January this year, Ms Loo has managed to bring greater volumes of visitor traffic to both the website and the blog, as well as using her blog to generate a steady income.

“The idea to start the i-weddings blog was initiated from a strategy to reduce our marketing costs and still increase awareness of our products,” she told WA Business News.

“Internet marketing has been the focus of my advertising and marketing plan. I have listed i-weddings on several wedding directories but find that they are an expensive way to market.”

With experience in blogging through her personal site, which she set up in June 2005, Ms Loo undertook extensive research on which blogs were the most successful, and how to most effectively integrate the income-generating elements.

She found the common threads throughout most of the successful blogs, or those with the most visitors, was that they were usually focused on a single topic, for example IT or weddings. They also were updated very frequently, most likely daily, and had high quality, informative posts.

Some of the most successful blogs were also geared towards making money, incorporating advertising, sponsorship and paid links.

“There are so many ways to make money from blogging,” Ms Loo said.

“If you want to make a living out of blogging, not just a little money, you have to update every day. Quality information that helps your readers.”

Ms Loo signed up for Google AdWords, which allows Google to place a certain number of advertisements related to the subject of the blog onto the page, generating income for the blogger each time someone clicks on an ad.

She also added a Google search bar to the top of her blog page, which is also income generating.

Ms Loo has paid sponsors on her site, which take the form of links to other wedding-related websites.

In addition to a monthly fee paid by sponsors, she gets paid each time someone clicks on the link.

Ms Loo said there were several companies on the web offering different advertising opportunities that bloggers could use to make money, such as Pay Per Post and Blogvertise; all of which work best if there’s high traffic to the site, she said.

Now part of an online ‘community’, involving similar themed sites joining forces for mutually beneficial advertising, Ms Loo is now focused on attracting more visitors to her site, particularly more Australians.

She believes that while blogging is extremely popular throughout Asia and the US, many Australians are still relatively unaware of blogs and what they can offer.

“Most have no idea what blogs are. They generally go to wedding directories, Google and wedding magazines,” she said.