MAGAZINES have long been oracles of beauty advice for women. These days, beauty bloggers, celebrities and tweeting makeup artists also dole out tips and tout must-have products — that they may have received free. But Makeup Alley, a 12-year-old low-frills Web site that focuses on user-generated reviews, has quietly come to be the standard bearer for the unvarnished truth about beauty products online.

According to its New York-based founder, Hara Glick — who, unlike most beauty editors, is so low-profile that she didn’t even want to be photographed for this article — Makeup Alley now has 1.1 million members, which is roughly equivalent to the circulation of Allure. They hotly debate the finer points of Clarisonic skin-cleansing gadgets on the site’s message boards, which get 45,000 posts daily (the site had 2.1 million unique visitors in June), Ms. Glick said. They also swap their used blush, lipstick and other items, so no ill-suited purchase goes to waste and something “new” is always in the mail, even if funds are low and outsiders think it’s gross. Read More…




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