Is the Next Martha Stewart a Blogger?

Posted on July 30, 2006

Here is an interesting topic coming out of Day Two of the BlogHer conference. BlogHer co-founder Elisa Camahort asks the question, Is the Next Martha Stewart a Blogger?

When we launched this new site and people started listing their blogs I was blown away by the blogs about cooking and knitting and crafts and gardening and everything else having to do with what goes on inside (and immediately outside) the home. Blogs with huge followings and sense of community; blogs with amazing visuals; blogs that brought back the feeling I had when I first bought my little house...that I wanted to be the next Martha Stewart. (That would be Martha the maker of beautiful things and very good business, of course, not Martha the felon.)
Much as eBay provided a path to profitability for a whole new breed of micro-business owners, blogs have created a similar opportunity. And food and arts & crafts bloggers are leading the way among bloggers who are building businesses.

There are tens of thousands of blogs covering arts, cooking and crafts. The panel included several BlogHers that are using their blogs commercially. The panel included Maggie Mason, author of the Mighty Goods blog; Pim Techamuanvivit, who created the Menu for Hope charity for Kashmiri earthquakes victims; author Gayla Trail who blogs at You Grow Girl; Andrea Scher who sells hand-crafted jewelry and blogs at Superhero Journal; and Marnie MacLean who blogs and also sells knit and crochet patterns.

These BlogHers are just a small sample of the many bloggers who use their blogs to sell items like art, books, crafts and music. We mentioned an interesting artist the other day who is using his blog to sell paintings of tech gadgets. Will the next Martha Stewart be a blogger? It certainly seems possible. Of course, Martha Stewart is launching a social networking site next year. Maybe a blog written by Martha will be included.