Here are some good cases of marketers finding new business by using blogs. If this sparks your interest, read the whole article by Stephan Spencer which originally appeared in Catalog Age.

Chief Marketer Report: Blogging for Dollars.

Consider the success story of the Voltaic Backpack, as described in an article in Fortune magazine earlier this year. Entrepreneur Shayne McQuade received an early sample of his company’s solar-powered backpack, which can charge the wearer’s cell phone and other gadgets. He asked a friend — who runs a blog with a niche audience called Treehugger — to blog about it, and he did. The mention on Treehugger didn’t by itself produce a huge word-of-mouth epidemic. But another blogger higher up the blogging ecosystem picked up the story from Treehugger and blogged about the backpack on his Cool Hunting blog, which was then read by Gizmodo, one of the most popular blogs on the Internet for cool stuff and gadgets. Once the backpack was featured on Gizmodo, the orders poured in!

Last year Steve Spangler, founder/CEO of Steve Spangler Science, a catalog selling educational and entertaining science products, launched a blog at http://www.stevespangler.com. The blog already has a Google PageRank importance score on par with that of the company Website’s home page. The blog is effectively driving traffic and sales into the online store and further positioning Steve as a thought leader in childhood education.

James Robertson, managing director of Website design agency Step Two Designs, writes a blog called Column Two (http://steptwo.com.au/columntwo/), which has become his company’s top client referral source. The blog, along with a compendium of his articles, accounts for 75% of new leads. Over the course of the blog’s first year (the blog was launched in April 2002), Web traffic went from 200 visitors a day to more than 1,500. Repeat visits per month quadrupled. Robertson reckons blogging has been “the best online marketing I’ve ever done.”