[Singapore] LiveJournal Blogshops Record S$96 Million In Transactions For 2011

You’d think that for a tiny country where almost everything is conveniently located nearby, Singaporeans wouldn’t quite take to online shopping as we have. But blogshopping – shopping online via blogshops – has indeed taken off in a very big way: according to a LiveJournal survey, some 480,000 people visit LiveJournal-hosted, Singapore-based blogshops every month with an intention to shop.

LiveJournal is one of Singapore’s largest online portals. Catered towards a female audience, the portal hosts over 50,000 Singapore-based blogshops – selling everything from clothes and handcrafted fashion accessories, to home-baked muffins – with transactions on these blogshops are expected to hit a value of S$96 million at the end of this year. This will represent around six-percent of Singapore’s total e-commerce volume for 2011.

“We are extremely impressed with the Singapore e-commerce market and are happy to drive up to S$96m of e-commerce this year,” says Annelies van den Belt, CEO of SUP Media, the owner of LiveJournal.com.

Here are some interesting statistics from the survey shared by LiveJournal:

– Blogshops average 8 transactions per month,

– Sales price on blogshops average S$20 per item,

– 80-percent of LiveJournal blogshops make less than S$500 a month,

– 10-percent of them make more than $2,000 a month.

– Highest reported monthly revenue in the survey stands at S$20,000.

– Less than four-percent of active bloggers/blogshop owners say they use paid advertising to drive online traffic.

All in all, the numbers do indicate that while passive income from running blogshops can be decent, for most it’s still far from being able to replace a regular job with a steady income.

But this space will bear watching in 2012 as the global economic slowdown continues to bear down, and consumers increasingly look towards alternative and cheaper ways to obtain much desired goods and services.