Brands pay style blogger Jordan Reid to blog and tweet about using their products.
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That's when the brands came calling. Reid met blogger agent Robinovitz, a former journalist, at a fashion media event, where she tuned Reid in to the flourishing world of brand sponsorships. Reid's first deal came a few months later--and a week after the birth of her son. She was hired to stage nine looks for the shoe company Geox's holiday shoe collection and promote them on her blog. She could use her own clothes and pose however she wanted, wherever she wanted--smiling in the sun in a pair of brown suede wedge boots, walking along a wall in leopard-print flats, lounging on a roof in a pair of tan leather heels. Her husband shot the photos using their camera, and Reid edited them on her laptop and uploaded them to her blog, along with glowing praise for the products: "For me, it doesn't get better than happy, leopard-swaddled feet," she wrote. A few weeks later, she hosted a cocktail event at Geox's flagship Manhattan store, where her readers could arrive with coupons posted on Ramshackle Glam for a 15% discount. Since then, she has styled, modeled and even helped design the products she hawks for more than 30 brands.
Of course, there are downsides to achieving brand-sponsored microfame. In a world filled with the constant demand to tweet, Facebook, Instagram and Pin, every moment feels "incredibly busy," says Reid. Lilien recently hired a full-time employee to handle the volume of social-media work that brands insist on to peddle their wares. "It was 'Tweet with this hashtag and this link and Pin things on this board,' and it got overwhelming," she says. Reid, who sometimes finds herself the target of trash talk in online comments, worries about the loss of privacy in building a brand around her personal life. She has removed the number from her front door so readers can't find her. But to her neighbors, she says, "I'm just the crazy person who moved in next door."
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The original version of this article misspelled the names of Olivia Howell and Kelley Lilien.