How to Spin the Web into Gold

Style and beauty bloggers get business advice from the pros at conference 

By Booth Moore for The Los Angeles Times 

They came to the Annenberg Beach House in Santa Monica wearing spring’s flourescent bright colors, floral jeans and sky-high wedge sandals, their rainbow-manicured hands clutching iPhones at the ready to tweet, Pin and Instagram tidbits to their fashionable followers over the Internet.

Their goal? To learn how to make it–not in Hollywood, but in the fashion blogosphere–and earn up to $20,000 a month doing it.

“I want to help you quit your day job.” That was Lucky editor-in-chief Brandon Holley’s message in her introduction to FABB, the Fashion and Beauty Blogger conference, a meeting of old and new media hosted by the glossy recently.

Now signing with agents managers and publicists, bloggers are securing lucrative deals as models, stylists and brand ambassadors.

We have bloggers who make more than $20,000 a month,” said Amber Venz, jewelry designer, blogger and founder of RewardStyle, a company that helps set up affiliate deals for bloggers to earn commissions just as personal shoppers do, for purchases made through their blogs with brands including TopShop, Net-a-Porter, J. Crew and Zappos.

Style bloggers have a surprising amount of credibility in the fashion world.

Vanessa Flaherty, a former fashion publicist who is now director of brand development for Digital Brand Architects, a New York-based agency that represents bloggers, emphasized how new-media darlings can build their careers beyond the digital space through TV, book, licensing and manufacturing deals.

This is an excerpt. Click here to read the full article from The Los Angeles Times.