"Mommies' Hobbies" translate into cold, hard cash

I'll admit to being way behind the times, and a Forbes post I read this morning shows me that I need to get with the program.


In my mind, the blog world is in the same place it was eight or nine years ago, with savvy technocrats and businesswomen with good instincts getting in on what was still the ground floor of a new wave in advertising. Blogs promoted their business. But for a new type of businesswoman, blogs are their business.  And it might prove to be big business.  The so-called 'mommy blogger', whether or not she embraces the term, has learned to 'monetize' (yes, with a 'zed', whether or not one can write this with an 's' I've yet to learn) her blog.

No longer are blogs just the latest advertising media for au courant businessmen, and a stream-of-consciousness steam-venting medium for housewives stuck in their suburban ruts. Blogs are starting to become big business:  some serious names pay bloggers to write about their products.  They pay for advertising on well-trafficked sites.  They pay for reviews and referrals and clicks and all sorts of things.  Now I understand publicity blogs and advertising blogs, but the mommy blogs are still  pretty foreign territory.  However, when a rocket scientist quits his day job to create a blog community start-up, as described in the Forbes article on Blogfrog, well, it's time to wake up, smell the Maxwell House ® and take notice. And yeah, in case you missed it, that was a Forbes post on a blog.

Now, what has this to do with antiques?  Well, not all that much--yet. While I don't believe that the so-called social media, including blog communities, are netting beaucoup de bucks for antiques dealers yet (Facebook, for example doesn't even have an 'Antiques Dealer' business category), I do know that whether or not that ever happens, something will happen, and that 'something will' likely be on the Internet.

Many of our hobbies become our trades.  This is just the latest in a long enduring trend.  It's a band wagon we need to be on.