David Abitbol of Jewlicious at the Bloggers Convention (Photo: Jacob Richman)

JGooders will be blogging and twittering live from the 2nd International Jewish Bloggers Convention. So these posts may be a little unpolished (we’ll go back and touch them up tomorrow).

First workshop we attended was by David Abitbol, the founder of Jewlicious, one of the most successful Jewish blogs anywhere today, spoke on “Networking for Money: Your Social Network has Value. “Give and Ye Shall Receive.”

David started by saying that the the geeks of yesterday grew up and now run much of the internet infrastructure, such as through Google. He stressed that “Geeks reward geek-like behaviour”, such as sharing, giving and being a good member of the online community.

Jewlicious has English, Russian and soon-to-be-Spanish websites with around 8,000-10,000 visitors daily.  It also have 10,000 twitter followers

David brought up the UJC’s current Jewish Community Heroes campaign. Of the 150,000 votes so far, 40,000 of them are for Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, director of the Jewlicious festivals.  Said David, “When we ask our followers to do something, they do it en masse…When you give them what they want, they will pay you back.”

He added that all these thousands of votes came from people who wanted to show Rabbi Bookstein their public appreciation for the wonderful work that he does.

JGooders asked David if these loyal followers were prepared to give money or just support. He responded that Jewlicious has also succeeded in rallying its readers and followers  to raise money for good causes such as $1,750 for needy Jerusalamites before Pesach, and $3,000 for the Coalition against Human Trafficking.

Clearly Jewlicious is doing good in more ways than one.