Content Curators: How Blogging Has Turned Into A Lucrative Business For Gen-Y

A blog is a blog is a blog. True, but there’s definitely no shortage of them -- or people looking to read them.

According to SocialMediaToday.com, 6.7 million people are currently blogging. On the leading platform, Blogger, there are approximately 46 million visitors each month. Clearly there’s a market here, and based on the steady demand, the supply keeps growing.

Blogging is now a business, and despite whatever end of the transaction you’re on, you’re contributing to our generation’s answer to information with a pulse.

As someone who has recently delved into the world of blogging, I have seen firsthand just how saturated the Internet is with these information hot spots. There is very little to be done or discussed that someone isn’t already doing, with a loyal mass following, to boot.

Fashion blogging, for example, has become a first point of contact for fashionistas, making a quick check-in at his or her favorite bookmarked sites a regular part of morning routines. Blogging has ingrained itself in our culture, now forming an organic part of our information-seeking process.

Compare, for a moment, the pursuit of information on a site like Wikipedia to some blogger site promoting whatever subject matter it is you’re after. Wikipedia is a point and shoot operation: Type in your specific search and it spits out a neatly compressed and categorized sum of information.

With a blog, you’re made to do a little more work; you need to first narrow down the no-doubt countless blogs covering what it is you’re after, and then skim through to settle on the blogger voice that resonates with you the most.

So why do the work? Why bother hunting for someone’s personal opinion when a site like Wikipedia can serve up the verified goods, fat-trimmed and all?

We do it because blogs have provided us with the answers to questions we didn’t know we had. In a world operating in pursuit of maximum efficiency, the human element has all but been wiped out.

Paying for groceries with a cashier has been replaced with self-checkout stands; bank tellers are a rare sight when ATM’s and online banking alternatives are the norm. When’s the last time a real person answered your customer service call on the first try?

However, blogs have an edge. The right product paired with the right blog can be magical. We are a generation constantly seeking answers and information, but struggling with the loss of the human experience.

Enter blogs: Personal accounts of everyday things, typically updated with new content regularly, with most bloggers making themselves super accessible to their followers via comment boxes, live chats, etc.

When I first started my page, I didn't (and still don't) have the intention of gaining followers. More so, it was meant to be a place to store my interests and exercise my passions. This is still true, but what's changed is the realization that, even amidst a heavily saturated sea of blogs and like-minded people always beating you to the punch on fresh content, there is still room for everyone.

If you blog it, they will share it. The information will be consumed, re-worked and, undoubtedly, re-blogged as something new. Blogs give us the information on a slant -- a summary of something with a side order of personal opinion -- and if we don't like it, it's on to the next.

Personally, I have never felt compelled to rush out of my house and buy a product based on the summary presented on the company website. For some reason, though, watching some other 20-something woman demo a new gloss on her similarly hued skin can get me curious enough about the product to bite the bullet and make the purchase.

It’s not that this blogger is necessarily a professional in the field, or that she has some access to information that is out of my reach, but there is something in that connection between watching another person’s experience and getting curious about what my own might be that gives it the edge.

I have come to see just how much influence over varying audiences and consumers these blogs have. My still-developing fashion page is just a grain of sand in a sea of other bloggers, covering absolutely everything and anything.

There is something for everyone, and the idea that there is a face behind the blog creates a human point of reference to the information you are trusting to be true.

Putting a face to the information, a tutorial to the product and a voice to the content makes it interesting. You may not like the format, and you may disagree with the opinions expressed, but at the very least, you are suddenly being woken from the static sleep of the antiquated search and absorbed system of days past, and forced to feel something.

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