Emergence Of Blogging As New Career Option

Blogging makes space for women with popular catalogs such as lifestyle, fashion, etc.

What was perceived as a hobby has now been transformed into a medium to earn money. With easier accessibility laden with visuals, Blogging has emerged as a tough competitor to magazines and newspapers.

Implications from surveys

According to latest findings by India Blog Trends 2016 Survey, 60 per cent of Indian bloggers are full timers and have made an earning out of blogging. 90 per cent of them have admitted that they charge brands for their services. 97 per cent are okay if brands reach out to them with engagement ideas. Content remains the least success parameter for bloggers.

Influencer Marketing Trends 2015 Survey conveys that ‘Influencer marketing in the online space has flourished at an unbelievable pace. Mumbai and Delhi are the two metros where most influencers and bloggers are based out of.’

Most of them are young and fall within the age range of 20 to 40. Also, 84 per cent of the influencers in India believe that the bloggers consider their hobby as a full-time career option.

The most popular category of blogging or micro blogging is Lifestyle and Fashion. At present, the industry is mostly dominated by women influencers (55 percent as per the survey). Other popular categories are Travel, Food, Entertainment followed by Healthcare and Technology.

Platforms which are highly used by the influencers are Facebook, Twitter & Instagram. The personal blogs account for almost 77.25 per cent popularity among the other channels. Moreover, a blog drives traffic from search engines on a sustainable basis.’

From Top Indian bloggers

1. Malini Agrawal

Malini runs the Top Bollywood blog in India, missmalini.com. She has 4, 64,000 followers on Instagram and 71,464 followers on Facebook. “Just like magazines have ads or TV shows have commercials, there is obviously a financial aspect to this business, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with that,” she replied in an interview to Aastha Banan in the OPEN magazine.

2. Akanksha Redhu

Akanksha, a Designer, and Fashion, Lifestyle blogger has worked with brands such as Dior, MAC, Vero Moda and Burberry among others. Her blog akanksharedhu.com encompasses writings revolving around fashion and lifestyle. She has her own designer label named ‘Cirare.’

“Everyday brands are waking up to the immediate need of social media marketing and a lot of brands focus on the number of followers currently because the industry is new, but slowly they are learning to pay more attention to the amount of engagement a blogger may or may not have and how well the tonality of their content goes with the core values of the brand itself,” she said.

Akanksha concluded by stating, “It’s almost always a commercial tie-up where the blogger or influencer is commercially compensated for providing their services.”

3. Kritika Khurana

Kritika Khurana is well known for embracing bohemian fashion genre at its best. Her blog thatbohogirl is followed immensely on all social media handles. In her opinion, reliability and trust has opened gates for her huge following. “With tons of information available we need someone reliable to look up to and that’s what blogging does,” she said.

4. Aanchal Sukhija

Aanchal, a Fashion Journalist and Blogger runs her own label named Mission Pluto, which works towards making jewelry out of household trash. Her work was also showcased in New York Fashion Week.

“It is true that blogging in yesteryears was not considered a true blue profession and today it’s a full-fledged business; it is also amazing to see how as a by-product of the modern means of communication, blogging has acquired its fair share of attention,” she asserted.

5. Shivangi Singh

As mentioned above in the survey, content remains the least success parameter for bloggers. Shivangi Singh, a Fashion and Travel Blogger prefers to differ. “Blogging allows individuals to invest themselves into compelling story telling, insightful interaction with their readers and gives us an opportunity to create absolutely unique content,” she opined.

6. Anshita Juneja

Anshita owns her blog named Vanity No Apologies. She has also won ‘The Best Blog Award’ in make-up and beauty category at the BlogAdda Blog Awards.

“One of the reasons due to which blogging has gained such huge momentum is the name that you make for yourself,” she said.

According to India Blog Trends 2016 Survey, 63 per cent bloggers consider traffic as their top success indicator. The marriage between social media platforms and bloggers will get strengthened in the coming years with increase in the number of digital literates.