By Shopperati staff

Worried you’re spending too much time shopping online? Don’t judge yourself too harshly until you’ve sampled the vast circuit of web shopping bloggers, many of whom have turned their surfing habits into full-time (and sometimes paying) obsessions

They spot trends, pass the word on limited-time deals, and from time to time may toss off a zinger about an ensemble gone wrong. Clothes and accessories are overwhelmingly popular topics, but there are consumer-oriented sites for everything from cool and artistic products and design (check out Cool Hunting) to time-saving and unique tools (Cool Tools) to the flashiest smart phones and gaming consoles from Japan, such as those on engadget.

The angles vary, from sites that drip with lust over things only a top-tier plutocrat could buy (if the thought of a $50,000 mattress doesn’t disgust you, head to BornRich) to those showing how to re-create a celeb’s look on the cheap (Frugal-Fashionista). Some are based on a single shopaholic’s personality (boasting about recent purchases, opening wishlists up to strangers’ eyes) while others simply scour the net for corporate press releases about upcoming products.

Tallying the number of these shopping bloggers is like counting sand grains at the beach, but web-watchers agree the number is growing. Technorati, a search engine monitoring the most popular blogs on all topics, currently lists nearly 10,000 on the keyword “shopping.”

Why would people sit around all day and maintain these sites? Anita Clark, whose I Want - I Got site is on the personal end of the spectrum, started blogging purely for her own use. “It started as a way to list the things I liked on the Internet,” she says. “The rest fell into place afterwards.”

By which she means that her shopping list grew wide-ranging enough that readers and, from time to time, manufacturers and stores began paying attention. These days she’s sometimes approached with product samples or discounts in return for coverage. “I usually only accept things that fit with my site,” she says. “I love being asked my opinion and I wish it would happen more often.”

Aggressive PR reps aside, Clarke still gets most of her news on her own. Other bloggers have been around long enough, and gotten enough attention from the media, that simply checking one day’s email probably offers a month’s worth of site content. Kathryn Finney, aka The Budget Fashionista, parlayed her obsession into dozens of features on shows like The Today Show, and eventually wrote her own book. She credits her popularity to providing “fashion advice for real women” and to having lived without money long enough to truly value a great deal.

Beyond simply sticking with it long enough to develop a readership - and then leveraging that popularity into advertising or moneymaking “affiliate deals” with online retailers - a shopping blog’s success appears to rest largely on a clear sense of purpose (Popgadget, for example, isn’t only a tech blog, it’s a tech blog for women), on readability and on regular, reliable updating. Become a site that informed shoppers want to visit, and those shoppers will want to share their own scoops with you. A self-perpetuating newsgathering cycle develops.

Do it long enough, and maybe someday you too will be taking new Coach handbags or unreleased Sony MP3 players for test drives. Stranger things have happened with obsessive online shoppers.

More from Shopperati
Meet some shoppers: We’ve found some of the web’s savviest

Copyright © 2007 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Subscribe in a reader