there was Grechen’s Closet. Now there’s grechenscodes.com, Green Grechen, free!grechen and this lovely gem you’re reading right now.
I launched Grechen’s Closet (LOL, check out one of the very first incarnations) in April 2004 while I was working full time for the Israeli government doing business development for high-tech companies. I started that job in 1998 and it was really exciting for years, but lost it’s luster in 2004, so I started doing “other” stuff at work (read: online shopping). In my quest to find the Ella Moss dress Carrie wore on her date with David Duchovny (do you remember that dress? I couldn’t find a picture online) I started noticing that a lot of tools I needed were missing. And I had an idea to create them…
I set out with three main goals:
- to create a designer directory where visitors could go to find ALL the online boutiques where a certain designer was sold. I got so frustrated searching google, wading through pages & pages of irrelevant data, trying to find THAT Ella Moss dress. so I started with Ella Moss and now, the Designer Directory features more than 1,000 designers and where to buy them online. Incidentally, I didn’t start with fancy directory software, I did it all using HTML and webpages. It was so much work, but exciting…most of the time
- to create a place where I could review contemporary women’s fashions and “model” pieces on my body. When I started posting pictures of my outfits online, there weren’t any other “street style” sites out there, people mostly posted their outfit pictures on message boards. I was members of several fashion forums, but never saw girls my size posting outfit pictures (I’m a size 12). I wanted to show that non-model-type women could wear some of the new contemporary styles
- to create a place where I could share what I learned about dressing for my body-type, some of my favorite designers, and cool stuff I found to buy online.
I didn’t think about making this my full-time job, or even that I would make much money. But one year after I started Grechen’s Closet I was able to quit my full-time job to work part time for an R&D fund from home and continue building the website. By this time, I was making good money from Grechen’s Closet from selling advertising (my first advertiser came to me four months after I launched) and google ads. And then, in April 2006, nearly two years to the date after I started Grechen’s Closet, I quit my part-time job and devoted all of my energy to the website.
And the rest is history….
Take what you want from this, but I guess I shared it to illustrate that making money online isn’t a short term proposition. Building a successful brand and presence online takes a lot of time and energy – and devotion. It wasn’t easy when I started by any means, but I would argue that it’s even more difficult now. The fashion/shopping blog space is overflowing with blogs (not all of them good, honestly) trying to get a piece of the action. Making money online is definitely not a zero-sum game; there’s room for everyone, but the more saturated the space becomes, the more bloggers you have to compete with, and eventually share the revenue with…
So, what’s the answer? How can you capture a bigger piece of the proverbial pie?
(seriously, I’m asking!!)
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