CHAD DOANE SEEMS to have done the impossible: He's made the business of selling paper sexy among the Internet masses.

In fact, the 38-year-old founder of Doane Paper has drummed up quite a cult following online. His notebooks and writing pads — the trademark quality of which is its grid and lines designs — are subjects of fan clubs on Facebook and postings on Twitter. Doane’s own blog, which features short discussions on everything from underground artists and cool sneakers to other notable blogs and video clips, gets about 500 readers a day.

A recent Google (GOOG) search of “Doane Paper” triggered more than 5,000 results linking to product reviews and blog posts. U.K.-based blog Harlem Loves recently proclaimed: “No longer are we forced to choose between the two styles…With this notebook we get the best of both worlds.”

Even though Doane fans continue to multiply, the paper company has yet to see stellar sales. Doane projects sales from his online store will reach about $100,000 this year. As a result, he isn't quitting his day job any time soon. Doane still works full time as a marketing exec at a sports medicine products company in Kansas City, Mo.

Doane first dreamed up the idea for his hybrid paper during the middle of a business meeting in 2002. All the designers in the room were using graph paper while the marketing folks jotted notes down on legal pads. He wondered: “What would happen if I put them together?” His colleagues could then sketch and take notes on the same piece of paper. “It’s like a left- and right-brained person coming together on a single sheet of paper,” he says.

Your name: Chad Doane
Name of business: Doane Paper
Year founded: 2005
Business type (industry): Paper products
Location: Kansas City, Mo.
No. of employees: 1
Web address:  www.doanepaper.com

Where do you look for business advice? (Mentors? Industry or trade groups? Family and friends?)
I look at the history of about five or six brands that I really have respect for. I study what’s worked for those brands along the way and apply that same path to the direction of Doane Paper.

What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started?
It takes a lot of time and effort for a product to grow into something that a potential customer will trust.

What's the smartest move you've made so far?
Free product sampling. Before I went full bore into making Doane Paper writing pads and notebooks, I made sure that there was an actual market for the Doane Paper grid + lines stationery pattern. For the first six months of Doane Paper’s existence I didn’t sell a physical product, I gave away a free PDF of the Doane Paper stationery pattern through my web site. After getting some positive feedback, I then decided to order my first run of Doane Paper writing pads.

What's the best business book you've read so far?
"Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman," by Yvon Chouinard

In brief, how did you fund the business initially?
I won a T-shirt design contest on Threadless.com. The winnings from that started Doane Paper.

When/where was your last vacation?
Seaside, Fla., last summer

But it wasn’t until 2005 that Doane actually launched his business. He used $700 in winnings that he received from a T-shirt design contest to launch a web site and pay for prototype writing pads.

Then, for the six months following the company’s launch, Doane didn’t sell a single sheet of paper. Instead, he gave it away. He posted a free downloadable PDF of his grid + lines design to his site and dispatched a two-sentence email introducing the paper to four or five “alpha blogs” — a term he uses to describe hip, influential blogs like notcot.com, coolhunting.com and core77.com.

Brad Dowdy, the writer of The Pen Addict blog, latched onto Doane Paper shortly thereafter. Dowdy, whose site logs an average 1,500 page views a day, started raving about the paper in his posts and showcasing it in photos. Doane soon reciprocated by linking to The Pen Addict’s blog on his own web site.

“It’s like a spider web,” says Doane. “A blog will write a story, someone will link to it and then it spreads.”

Indeed, from the brief mentions on those blogs, buzz for his hybrid paper ignited. Japanese web sites started touting his grid + lines paper and then individual bloggers in the U.S. joined the fray, voicing their own opinions and excitement about the product. After the first six months, Doane’s PDF was downloaded 8,000 times. Today, that total has risen to more than 60,000.

But of course, Doane couldn't give his paper away for free forever. With about $10,000 of his own money, he started production of his grid + lines paper lines, which now sell in packages of three for $7.95 and $9.95 at his online store. Doane hopes to further boost sales by selling through a wholesale program that would enable boutiques to carry his paper products. Yet, no matter how much he wants to make money, Doane will not abandaon the free PDF on his web site.

“You can sit at home all day long and print it out,” says Brian Greene, the blogger behind OfficeSupplyGeek, a blog devoted to pens, pencils and the like. “But obviously you don’t have the same quality of paper coming out of your printer that you get with Doane.”

Now, Doane just needs to convince other Internet admirers of the same thing.

-Write to Diana Ransom at dransom@smartmoney.com

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