Everything You Need to Know About Starting a Fashion Blog
Having a great sense of style and affinity for new trends, it’s no wonder why you’d want to become a fashion blogger. In much the same way as fashion transcends borders, creating a blog lets you bring your ideas and expertise onto the global stage.
There are several things to consider before becoming a successful blogger, such as defining your audience, setting up an online presence and publishing the right type of content. This article offers a step-by-step overview of how to start a fashion blog and make money with it.
How to start a fashion blog
Create your blog
Get a hosting plan and domain name
Select a niche
Publish high-quality content
Grow your traffic
Promote and expand your reach
Monetize your fashion blog
01. Create your blog
Joining the blogging scene allows you to show off your skills and lets audiences gain access to your knowledge. As you set out to start a fashion blog, you’ll need to make sure every element on your page is on-point with your message.
Begin by choosing from professionally designed free blog templates that offer popular features and tools that are in line your industry. Each one of these templates is fully customizable and can be edited to match your themes and goals.
The next step is to find a website color scheme that sets the perfect tone for what you want to convey. If you’re writing a blog dedicated to French style, using the nation’s blue, white and red colors could evoke an authentic mood for your readers.
Additionally, when crafting a blog logo think about what best describes your overall concept - is it chic or edgy? In the case of the former, picking a logo font that has a classy and minimalist look reminds us that elegance is no-nonsense - true to your position on couture.
Every aspect of your blog should be working to support your statement. That means keeping in mind what you want to express in your web design at all times. Take a look at blog examples for inspiration and see how others have successfully merged the world of fashion and web.
02. Get a hosting plan and domain name
Publishing your blog online is a two-step fold: you’ll need to store it on a web space, which is where visitors are able to access it, and link that to a domain name. Consider these helpful suggestions for getting started:
Get a web hosting server to make your site live. Web hosting provides space to hold all your data on its server, keeping your site fully functional. Wix offers free web hosting that’s secure, reliable and automatic once your site’s published.
Pick the perfect domain name to help visitors find you in search engines. Making a great first online impression can start with your domain name so be sure it sounds professional and memorable. It should be closely associated with that of your blog’s, a variation or an extension of it. If you haven’t settled on a blog name yet, you can enlist the help of a business name generator. When coming up with a domain name avoid using numbers or hyphens, as it might make it difficult for your audience to remember. Taking a name like ‘little-silver-dress.com’ is less likely to be found than, say, ‘littlesilverdress.com’ as the latter falls easier on the eyes. Before you make a final decision, check that it’s available by doing a domain name search, as well as looking across different social media handles.
03. Select a niche
Anyone who has thought to start a fashion blog may already be familiar with the wide range of choices out there. There are celebrity blogs, ones on personal or street style, fashion critique and news or shopping. Depending on your preference and personal experience, you’ll want to figure out a niche that’s right for you and your blog.
Focusing on a fashion niche will help you establish authority in the field. By becoming specialized in something, you can really begin to take on the specific wants and needs of your audience. You’ll also feel better connected with them and vice versa. Plus, down the line, targeting a niche will make it easier for you to create more engaging content and winning marketing campaigns.
04. Publish high-quality content
Before you begin writing a blog post, think about the people who’ll read and benefit from it. This will help you narrow down topics that’ll resonate with your audience and encourage them to come back for more.
A blogger’s goal is to attract visitors. With this in mind, research topics before investing in them and ask if they’ll provide value to your audience. By creating content that meets or exceeds their wants and needs you can ensure a good retention rate for your blog. If they are more keen on keeping up with the Kardashians than looking at what everyday folks wear, then producing content around subject matters like red carpet dresses or TV beauty trends is hands down a better fit.
After you’ve captured their attention, you’ll want to hold on to it with quality content. Set up an editorial calendar to stay on top of your all published pieces and track any blog goals you may have, such as meeting a target number of posts per week or introducing fresh subject matters. Having a schedule will allow you to brainstorm topic ideas, let you review existing content, evaluate what’s working or not and help develop your blog.
You can read more about this in our comprehensive, step-by-step blog post checklist to help you begin writing.
05. Grow your traffic
When you first planned to start a fashion blog, you were probably already envisioning how many people would find it and become instant fans. That’s where SEO, or search engine optimization, comes into play.
SEO is the process of optimizing content to improve a website’s position within search results, ensuring that you’re being found by users who are interested in or may find value in your content.
By performing some keyword research, you’ll find the different terms people use when they look for something in your field of expertise on search engines. Implementing targeted keywords in your content, therefore, can help optimize your posts. This will boost your blog’s search performance or improve the chances that your blog is seen by someone searching online.
Take some time to read through this complete guide on SEO for bloggers to learn the best ways to grow your web traffic.
06. Promote and expand your reach
In order to grow your reader and subscribership, you’ll need to pick the right marketing efforts for your blog. This way, you can successfully expand your reach across all the relevant channels.
There are many types of marketing strategies to choose from, including being active on social media, sending newsletters or guest writing, to name a few. If you haven’t already, ask yourself who’s on your blog and what are they reading, so that you can segment your audience and tailor your efforts to fit each group’s specific needs, behavior and interest.
At this stage, it’s vital that you really get to know your readers. You’ve done some of this work by picking your niche. Now you can begin gathering specific information about your audience by interviewing current readers or conducting online surveys. Once you’ve got a good impression of who they are, you’re ready to take more actionable steps to reel them in.
Here’s a selection of popular strategies to help promote your blog:
Social media marketing is the process of creating and sharing content on social networks to promote a business or brand. Your content should fit the platform that you’re partaking in to effectively drive up engagement and improve your brand awareness. One of the biggest reasons for marketing on social media is the combined billions of users that check in everyday. These free platforms allow for a flexible marketing strategy and can be customized to fit your brand. You can choose to promote your blog using paid advertising on them too. Take a look at these two social media examples to learn a bit more on what each one entails. Instagram is most often the first choice for many fashionistas, whose greatest asset is their visual appeal. It allows them to connect with others through photography, live streaming and compelling video making. On the other hand, Twitter is successful in providing a direct line of communication between you and your audience. It’s a good place to churn out quick and easy updates in seconds, which followers will appreciate.
Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies. The benefits of this practice include building engagement with your blog and turning one-time visitors into loyal followers. There are different types of email marketing campaigns to choose from - automated emails, campaigns and newsletters - which can be combined or work as standalones. Starting a newsletter, for example, is a good and organized way to share your blog content on a consistent basis. You can plan to send it as you see fit. If you want to save time, you can implement automated marketing emails into your strategy, which are automatically sent when triggered based on specific actions readers take - or not. For example, they can be a welcome email that’s sent after someone signs up for a mailing list or a birthday campaign.
Guest blogging gives you access to new crowds. It’s the process of blogging on an external publication and formally presenting oneself to an untapped audience in hopes of generating wide awareness of one’s brand or blog. Your guest posts should be informative and possibly can shed light on something new. Writing about an expert topic or taking on a new angle offers a lot of value to readers and encourages them to return to you.
Create a member’s area where people can choose to follow specific posts and customize their notification preferences, improving their overall experience on your site. This is also an ideal place for readers to get to know each other and interact on a community level. Having a member’s area also lets you observe what diehard followers are up to on your pages. As a result, you can see what they like to read and follow and what posts have piqued their interests.
07. Monetize your fashion blog
You’ve successfully become a fashion blogger who not only creates influential content but has built a dedicated following. Now it’s time to learn how to monetize a blog and explore the different ways that’ll work for you.
You probably ran this thought through your mind once or twice when you first set out to start a blog. Here are some additional ideas when considering how to make money blogging:
Consider paid membership plans. You decided to start a fashion blog because of your expertise and due in part to the fact that you have a unique sense of style. People seek your blog because it’s an invaluable source of content that they’re not ready to part with anytime soon. In fact, they would probably pay money to get their hands on some more. So why not put that in the form of a pricing plan. You can offer premium content to paying members, while keeping the rest of your blog for free viewing. Schedule in some member’s only blog posts in that handy editorial calendar you’ve put together. You can select premium content according to their exclusivity. A sneak peek of any upcoming fashion launch could be just the thing to turn the right amount of heads.
Become an affiliate marketer. Perhaps you like the sound of working with another company. In turn, the other business sees this as an opportunity for them to gain paid access to your substantial following. Becoming an affiliate marketer lets you partner with other brands and promote their products to your readers, earning a commission for every sale generated from an affiliate link. Take time to research the different affiliate programs, including the Wix Affiliate Program, before you reach out.
Create sponsored content. This is another way to partner with other brands. A sponsored post often includes a product review or shows how you use the company’s product or service for yourself. Unlike an affiliate program, you will earn a steady income that does not depend on sales alone. Look out for brand partnerships that fit you. Maybe you prefer to make weekly posts over daily ones. Think about how many sponsored posts you'll need to create to earn a good revenue from the deal. Don’t be shy to inquire with businesses about potential partnership opportunities.
By Cecilia Lazzaro Blasbalg
Blog Writer
