Singapore e-commerce booming on blogshops

On which platform do roughly half-million Singaporeans shop monthly online?

LiveJournal reports that 480,000 visitors come to LiveJournal.sg with the intention to purchase on its blogshops, according to its December survey of 868 Singaporean users.

This number of potential blogshoppers represents half of Livejournal's 1.2 million monthly users.

Blogshops are micro online stores established on blogging platforms like LiveJournal with typically external payment systems, as through PayPal or bank transfers.

LiveJournal has 50,000 of such blogshops with predominantly home-based female owners. Typical products include clothes, fashion accessories and bakery goods.

Despite the bustling sales, blogshopping profits are still not enough to be considered as a full-time work option.

"The survey showed that 80% of the blogshops make less than S$500 a month keeping it an attractive passive income, but not a career switch option. Only 10% of the blogshops earn more than $2,000 per month. The highest monthly revenue in the survey was reported at S$20,000," said LiveJournal in a release.

"Blogshops have on average 8 transactions per month with a per-item sales price of S$20. This indicates that a staggering S$8m worth of blogshop transactions flow through LiveJournal Singapore every month," it added.

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

“With the total e-commerce market estimated at S$1.6 billion this year, we are proud to see that LiveJournal transactions might represent a staggering 6% of that, re-affirming us as one of the largest e-commerce players in Singapore. The world is bound for an economic slowdown in 2012, but we believe blogshopping will continue to grow here as e-commerce truly represents the most cost-effective way to do business," adds Roshni Mahtani, CEO of Tickled Media, the publisher of LiveJournal in the South-East Asian market.