When pop princess Ashlee Simpson was first photographed last summer post-nose job, it wasn’t just her plastic surgery that garnered mass attention. Sales of the dress she was wearing in the photo skyrocketed.

In the current celebrity-obsessed scene, an A-list star - on or off the red carpet - shown wearing a new designer’s creation can almost singlehandedly launch a fashion frenzy.

When Jessica Simpson stepped out recently in West Hollywood with Sang A’s “jade” clutch in blue python, blogs were quick to post her picture and solicit comments. And with the attention, from sites such as Pop Sugar and Style Minded, came demand for Sang A’s new $1,576 handbag.

Accessories designer Sang A learned early on that reaching out to the online community could be a crucial element of hawking her high-end handbags, which range in price from $1,500 to $15,000.

With a limited budget for marketing, Sang A has since come to rely heavily on blogs not just for attention, but also feedback.

The sites she chose to sell her wares, such as luxcouture.com and lagerconne.com, have developed mutually beneficial relationships with bloggers by incorporating reciprocal links.

“Blogging is absolutely important because it reaches the people that aren’t inside the fashion industry,” Sang A said.

CNN Money

Hiring a Web developer to build an e-commerce site from scratch can cost at least $5,000, and often far more. But there are cheap alternatives for those willing to do much of the setup themselves — many of which don’t require much time or technical savvy.

For an e-commerce novice, an all-inclusive service may be most sensible. Yahoo Inc.’s Merchant Solutions, for instance, lets users get a domain name and choose one of 12 predesigned Web-site templates.

You could save money by picking an all-inclusive service without sales-transaction fees. GoDaddy.com, owned by the Go Daddy Group, offers an e-commerce site-building and hosting service called Quick Shopping Cart, which has plans starting at $9.99 a month for sites with up to 20 product listings.

The Wall Street Journal

WalkStyles invited America’s fitness community to use its free, online service to form walking clubs. Participants can register, connect with like-minded walkers where they live or where they travel, and use the site to manage their group activities.

If all goes as planned, it could become the MySpace for walkers.

The target audience is huge and growing: Nearly 72 million Americans say walking is their favorite form of exercise, and older Americans favor it most.

The free online service complements the subscription-based service already in place on walkstyles.com. Walkers are encouraged to use a DashTrak to tally their daily steps and monitor their progress or to check it against others in the group. It’s a product that people all over the country - mostly women - have encouraged Parks to build, so they can find like-minded walkers wherever they go.

Sun Herald

Online video is becoming the killer application of the Internet as b-to-b marketers embrace it as an integral part of their marketing programs, using it in such disparate formats as 15-second banner ads and long-form documentaries.

Spending on online video advertising will more than triple in the next three years, growing from $775.0 million this year to $2.90 billion in 2010, according to research company eMarketer.

With the anticipated surge in spending, media companies are scrambling to get in on the action, as demonstrated by the partnership announced last month by NBC Universal and News Corp. to form an online video ad network.

In announcing the as-yet-unnamed venture, News Corp. President-COO Peter Chernin called it “the largest ad platform on earth,” with an audience that will reach about 96% of the U.S. Web viewing audience. The video network will be distributed by partners including Microsoft Corp.’s MSN, News Corp.’s MySpace, Time Warner’s AOL and Yahoo.

Already, the video venture has lined up charter advertisers including Cisco Systems, General Motors Corp. and Intel Corp.

BtoB Magazine

The business model is simple: Build it, make it funny enough, and the public will come. And once you get enough eyeballs, you can make money through advertising, just like regular TV networks.

Ever since a bootleg clip of a Saturday Night Live sketch comedy skit put YouTube on the map in December 2005, the growing consensus among Web watchers has been that short comedy clips are the “killer app” of the brave new viral video world.

SuperDeluxe.com, a comedy broadband network launched in January by Turner Broadcasting, and FunnyOrDie.com, a partnership between Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s Gary Sanchez Productions and Sequoia Capital, venture capital firm behind YouTube and Google.

17-year-old Jake Fisher and Weina Scott, who met via an online message board, started their business in June 2005.

Switchpod is a podcasting hosting service that provides both free and premium accounts. You can create a podcast with their technology, upload it to Switchpod and be podcasting to the world in a matter of minutes.

Switchpod’s product soon generated 800,000 downloads and was bought out by Wizzard Software in an all-stock transaction worth $200,000. The sale also provides the partners with annual salaries of $40,000 for a 20-hour workweek.

startupjournal.com

Shay Hammond started her business when she was 11 years old. She got her idea from a dog bone cookbook she found while on vacation. She wanted to make dog treats for her dog Pancake, so she did.

“He really liked them and I thought, “Wow this could really end up being something huge!” So i went around town to see if anyone would actually sell them and i found a couple of business that would, ” Hammond said.

Now, she sells her homemade dog treats, which come in flavors such as Mutter Butter and Chic’n Lick’n, from her website and in a neighborhood store which sells local artisan’s goods on consignment. Hammond earned $700 last year and $1,500 since she started the company.

Inc.com