Boutiques.com: Downunder's biggest fashion blogger buddies up with Google

gala darling

The countdown is on to tonight’s unveiling of Google’s new Boutiques.com fashion portal. After revealing the name and details of the site’s looks-matching technology, frockwriter thought we would hone in on one last, local, element: New York-based Kiwi Gala Darling. Frequently cited as one of the world’s most influential fashion/personal style bloggers - who calls her blog "The playgirl's guide to radical self love” and claims it boasts close to a million individual page views per month - Darling is one of a dozen fashion bloggers invited by Google to curate their own virtual fashion boutiques. Update 18/11: Now launched. Click (here) to check out her boutique and see who else is involved. Not bad for a magenta haired, tutu-rocking, tatt-emblazoned self-help dilettante, who launched into the blogosphere in December 2006 with a post entitled “Fashion help for recovering Goths”. Those in her native Wellington might know her better as Amy Paape. Reportedly a graduate of that city’s Chilton St James and Samuel Marsden Collegiate Schools, she moved to Melbourne in 2006, legally changed her name that year, then decamped to New York in 2008. Retail, as it happens, runs in the Paape family. Darling’s mother, Janet Paape, operates a Lower Hutt fashion boutique called She Designer Excitement, while her Porsche-racing uncle, Digby Paape, sells highend audio equipment at Bose Wellington. 

Darling is far and away the most successful fashion blogger to emerge from Australasia. 

Not surprisingly perhaps, she has attracted plenty of haters along the way. Their biggest beef? Just how she earns her income.

A backlash began in 2008, after a series of blog profiles on her attracted a large volume of negative commentary. The more charitable observations slammed her as “shallow, selfish and a user”, “a FRAUD” who “lives off her parents money”, “a spoiled rich hypocrite” and “a trust fund ditz”.

Darling has responded by saying she is entirely self-funded. 

gala darling

No doubt it is difficult for some to grasp just how much money successful fashion bloggers and other online personalities are currently able to command.

The higher the traffic, of course, the higher the ad revenue. However advertising is just one facet of their revenue streams.
 
Darling started selling podcasts in March 2009. The series is called Love & Sequins and costs US$12 per podcast, including a 10,000-word transcript. Darling told the Evolving Influence fashion blogging conference at New York Fashion Week in September this year that at the time she launched the series, podcasting began generating more income than any other blogging-related activity she had previously undertaken. 

Darling also does commercial collaborations. On her blog, she discloses that in 2010 alone, she has worked with Estee Lauder, Juicy Couture, Coach, JC Penney, Ralph Lauren and Jeff Silverman - last month, unveiling a shoe she designed for the latter manufacturer. Here she is in the Coach Christmas campaign:





Then there are public speaking and appearance fees. Frockwriter has heard of day rates starting at US$2,500 and going as high as US$15-20,000 being offered to some of fashion's new media-specialist high profilers in various markets around the world.

As one of Boutiques.com's invited blogger curators, Gala Darling may be earning, we understand, a one off (low) five figure fee. 

Suck it up, haters. Then shop her look. 


 

Cash for comments: The fashion blogosphere's liquid bonanza

stella mccartney for target australia launch, sydney, october 1st/little black book

They are literally throwing money at bloggers at the moment in Australia. Not in the traditional advertising sense, whereby a marketer pays to take out clearly-delineated advertising space in your publication. In fact it’s almost impossible to find many, if any, bloggers who are earning a living out of legitimate display advertising. No, affiliate marketing (pay per click or pay per buy) and sponsored, advertorial posts are the way of the world right now (although not on frockwriter, just to clarify once again). Westfield is currently recruiting a blogger for a 12-month, $100,000 contract. One of the finalists is 19 years old. That’s an extraordinary salary for a teenager. We mentioned the recent Target Stella McCartney launch for which six bloggers (pictured above, details below) were flown to Sydney and paid to write approved copy. 

Remuneration in these situations usually depends on web traffic, but in general terms frockwriter understands there are Australian fashion bloggers earning up to $900 per sponsored post under these sorts of deals (and just to clarify, there is usually a sponsorship disclosure eg "Sponsored by Nuffnang" at the top of the posts). With your average blog post not exceeding 400 words, many a mere 200 words, that’s potentially $2-4 per word. The average freelance journalist would be lucky to get $1/word for work in Australia at the moment, with even some prestigious newspapers offering as little as 50c/word for the privilege of having your byline in their publication. 


The latest blogger cash bonanza is a project called Lustable from online payment service PayPal. According to PayPal, five Australian bloggers including Matt Jordan, Phoebe Montague and Candice DeVille are each being given $1,000 cash a week for 12 weeks to spend at their discretion on PayPal – and to talk about it on the Lustable website. 


The bloggers are not, we understand, under any obligation to write about the project on their blogs.

PayPal is referring to the bloggers as "editors", disclosing that it has "cashed them up" and that there is no copy approval.

The money is being deposited into their PayPal accounts and we understand that what the bloggers purchase, they get to keep. What happens if they don't spend all the money and siphon some of the funds out of PayPal into their bank accounts, like a salary? Good question. Apparently there is nothing in writing stopping them from doing this.

But just a reminder that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

PayPal will presumably be writing your names down on its books as suppliers and the ATO will presumably regard this as income. And needless to say, if you were to blow 12K on non legitimate business expenses such as clothes, cosmetics, jewellery and accessories, then you could ostensibly wind up with a hefty tax bill on the other side. That will of course be of little concern to PayPal.

Happy shopping.

Main image: L to R: Style Melbourne, Fashion Hayley, Little Black Book, Drop Stitch, Sassi Sam, Karen Cheng.