How To Start A Fashion Blog: In Just 9 Steps 

Do you have this urge to create your own fashion blog but don’t know where to start? Good news: you just took your first step. It is possible and we’re going to make it easy for you to start your own fashion blog. We’re going to keep it simple and to the point for you. In this step-by-step guide on how to start a fashion blog, I’ll address everything you need to know in just 9 steps-

1. Narrow down your niche
2. Installing WordPress
3. Suitable web hosting provider
4. Creative Domain name
5. Get a vibrant theme or template
6. Adding useful pages to your blog site
7. Writing your first blog post
8. Driving traffic to your fashion blog
9. Monetizing your fashion blog

There are big opportunities waiting for you out there and blogging doesn’t take much. However, at TemplateToaster, we’d like to offer in-depth guidance. Therefore, I represent this step-by-step guide on how to start your own fashion blog. It will not only help you start your own blog but will also offer you some tips on how to stand out. Keep reading-

#Step 1: Narrow down your niche

When I say fashion, what exactly comes to your mind? Clothing? Accessories? Shoes? Men? Women? Kids? What I am trying to say is that it is relatively a vast term and you need to narrow it down. Select your area of expertise before getting started. The narrowed your niche, the better it is to get quality traffic. Ensure that the niche you select is as specific as it can get and you are actually passionate to write about that particular topic. The niche you will select will be used to help you create your website URL, website design, and your marketing strategy. Some of the examples you an consider to narrow down your niche are as follow-

• Budget-friendly shopping tips
• DIY fashion
• Modern-retro fashion mashup
• What’s new in Paris Fashion week
• Latest fashion trends for women over 40
• Latest fashion trends for office chics
• Stylish and comfortable fashion for moms
• Accessorize yourself
• Professional men going for meeting
• Party boys- fashion for teenager boys

These are a few ideas for you to select your niche. Go through the list and whichever theme makes you excited, pick that. Happy blogging!

#Step 2: Installing WordPress

There are unlimited blogging platforms to choose from including Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, and WordPress.org. Sure there are platforms like Wix or Squarespace that offer a free version and an easy to use drag-and-drop editor. Despite that, I would like to recommend WordPress.org. It is the classic CMS that supports blogging like no other platform. It is free and open source that offers most advanced and flexible features for building and running a professional-looking blog site. Some of the main reasons to go WordPress.org-

• It is a self-hosted platform which gives you total control over your fashion blog site.
• It is an open source platform, which means unlimited free and paid themes, templates and plugins.
• Highly intuitive and use-friendly make it the best available option for beginners as well.
• A large online community continuously working on bettering the platform by delivering free or paid themes, templates, or plugins, frequently. They will also help you out with issues you face with WordPress through an online discussion forum.
• The only cost you’d have to bear is the web hosting and domain registration expense.

Because WordPress.org is the best available CMS option, we’re going to use WordPress as our example for the rest of the blog.

#Step 3: Suitable web hosting provider

Next step is to get a suitable web hosting service provider. A web hosting provider basically offers you a space or server to store your website files like HTML, CSS, PHP, Script files, and media files, to allow access to your visitors when they want. Web hosting is not limited to servers only, think of it like a rental. It means you don’t have to worry about things like slow websites or software updates. Therefore, it is important to get a suitable web hosting provider. Consider the following factors while choosing a suitable web hosting provider-

• Uptime
• Affordable plans
• Optimized performance
• Customer support
• Server locations
• Security
• Under-the-hood features
• Bandwidth and storage limit

I personally use Bluehost web hosting provider. It is a reputable company with a great uptime record track. Moreover, it is the most used web hosting provider, officially endorsed by WordPress.org. It is budget-friendly and offers relatively satisfactory customer services. Moreover, it also offers a free version, you can check it out without even paying a penny. Overall, it is a great choice.

Steps to install WordPress on Bluehost-

1. Login to your Bluehost cPanel

1. Navigate to the website section and click the Install WordPress option

1. Click the Install button

1. Enter the domain name to install it. There is an optional box to select your subfolder you can also leave it blank, if you don’t have any at the moment

1. Next, you can edit your email address, username or password for the new WordPress installation

1. After reading the license and service agreement, check the boxes

1. Click Install Now button.

#Step 4: Creative Domain name

Consider the domain name as the address to your blog site, which will redirect your visitors to your website. You want it to be unique and glamorous that grabs the attention of your visitors instantly. Domain name is probably the first thing your visitors are going to notice about your blog site. Therefore, make sure you get it right. Here are some tips for you while selecting your domain name-

• Don’t go for lengthy domain names, keep it limited to 3-words long.
• Go for a relevant domain name that reflects the type of content your visitors are going to find on your blog. Go for an evergreen, which is still valid even if it’s old. For example naming your blog- ‘21 years old fashionista’ won’t make sense when you’re 22. You can use your name because it will always be valid, even if you are in your 60s.
• Use words that are easy to remember and spell. Don’t go for fancy words that are not used in daily lives and are difficult to remember.
• Choose a name that is brandable. You want to build a brand  and the first step is to go for a brandable name.

In case if you are having a hard time choosing a domain name for your blog, you can use domain name generators. You can just enter the keywords and it will generate some creative domain names for your fashion blog.

#Step 5: Get a vibrant theme or template

By now, you have already completed most of the essential steps. Now, it’s time to make your blog look just as pretty as your talent. Focus on the creativity part that drove you to start a fashion blog and use it to generate a wonderful concept for your blog. Every successful blog has a creative and unique theme that makes it stand out from other fashion blogs.

With WordPress, you can have unlimited  free or paid pre-set themes for your fashion blog. All you need to do is make some alterations and it is ready to go. Make sure you get rid of default pages and content of the theme or template you pick. Carefully put together all the elements like additional pages, images, media files, and text, as you would put together an outfit.

In case, you can’t find a satisfactory theme for your blog, you can also buy templates from third-party sides. My personal favorite is TemplateToaster because it offers great templates for a wide number of niche, including fashion and an easy to use, drag-and-drop editor. Their templates are very stylish, quite reflective on the niche, with vibrant color-palette and a lot of whitespace, making it look beautiful. Find your fashion WordPress templates on TemplateToaster.

#Step 6: Adding useful pages to your blog site

Now that you have your blog site ready, it is time to add some static content to your site. There are two types of content, Static and Dynamic. Your blog will be dynamic content because you will keep updating it. Whenever you will post a new blog post, your previous posts will shift down. On the other hand, pages that remain the same and are easy to find are static pages. They are common among the internet and almost every website has those pages. Ad the following pages to your fashion blog site-

About us

This page will tell your visitors about your story. Who are you? How did you start your blog? What is your inspiration? And how your blog will help your audience/readers? Although the page says ‘About us’, ensure that you make this page about your visitors as well. Tell them how much they mean to you and how your blog site can serve them.

Contact us

Blogs can seem like a one-way conversation but nobody is interested in your talks only. You need to make sure that your readers are able to reach you. That’s why create a contact us page and give them a way to reach you. You can mention your work email, offer a message box on the page, and your social media profiles. However, be specific about the type of messages you’ll respond to, so that they don’t spam you.

Privacy policies

You might not be aware of this age because people often mention it in the footer, not header. This page offers the privacy policies thoroughly. It states how and what type of data your website collects for what purpose. Most websites use visitor’s cookie information. You need to be transparent about how your site collects your visitors data and for what purpose. It can save you from legal lawsuits and can gain the trust of your visitors.

Copyright info

Just like the privacy policy page, this page is also often found in the footer of the website. It states that everything on your site is your intellectual property and no one is authorized to claim your work as theirs.

Gallery/Portfolio

Gallery is an optional page but being a fashion blog site, you should have it on your fashion blog site. This page will offer pictures of your creativity to your audience. If you have a model or want to showcase your own pictures of your styles or outfit, this can be the attraction point of your site. You can also extract pictures from your Instagram profile. I recommend you choosing a consistent frequency when it comes to posting content on your site. For a busier and large site, you might need to post on a daily basis. But at the beginning you can start with posting twice a week on your portfolio or gallery.

#Step 7: Writing your first blog post

Now that you have your blog site up, you can finally focus on what’s important: creating useful content for the fashion community. Content is the meat of your website. Even if you have the slickest, most beautiful website but useless content, you won’t get anywhere. First thing you need to do is write a descriptive article on introducing yourself. Writing your first blog can be overwhelming, so I am going to put down a list of useful tips for you.

Brainstorming the topic

Figure out the topic you want to write about. You should start from something basic which can act as the foundation for your upcoming blog post rather than going full-on fashionista techie. However, the topic should still be relevant, useful, and informative. You can start with something personal, like a personal trip experience and how you planned your outfits for that trip. There isn’t a right or wrong way to do it. Just sit back, relax, and come up with a useful topic that makes your heart sing. Don’t forget about your readers in the process. Keep in mind that this is more about your readers than you, and include things that you think your reader wants and would relate to. This is your blog, as long as you are true to yourself and come up with topics your readers are interested in, you’re doing everything right.

Sticking to your niche

As we mentioned before, fashion is relatively a vast term and you need to narrow it down. The more you jump from one niche to another, the more it becomes irrelevant to your readers. A visitor comes back to your site when they find something interesting and relevant on your site. But if you are going to keep shuffling between various niches, you are going to lose your existing audience. Never make that mistake.

Use catchy and creative titles

Creative and catchy titles are essential to grab the attention of your audience. A catchy title makes visitors click on your blog post and even share it with their contacts. As a result, it goes viral even without you asking for it. Here are some quick tips for you to come up with catchy and creative creative titles for your blog posts-

• Offer something useful and relevant information to your audience. Your title is promising the reader a solution to the problem they are currently facing, which most likely made them click on your blog post in the first place. Think of titles like ‘A beginner’s guide to a killer wardrobe’, ‘Wear you LBD in 5 different ways’, ‘5 types of shoes every girl must have in her wardrobe’ you get the point.
• Use short and sweet titles, they are most likely to be found by people on the internet. Moreover, a short title is more likely to be clicked by a reader as compared to a long one.
• Use compelling adjectives to highlight your titles. For an instance ‘5 useful tips’ is more likely to get your attention as compared to ‘5 tips’.
• Listicles are visually more appealing and share-able, so create one every once in a while. Moreover, including digits in your title can grab more attention. For instance, ‘7 ways to get discounts on online purchase’ is more appealing than ‘ get discounts on online purchase’.
• Offer some useful insights to your audience. The more useful, relevant, and unique your content is, the more audience you are likely to have. Therefore, always include interesting theories, strategies, DIYs, and life-hacks in your blog posts.

Create easy to read posts

A plain-text post with never-ending paragraphs is boring and uninteresting. Always write lengthy and descriptive blog posts but break it up with interesting headings, bullet-points, tables, images, videos, gif-files and whatever you feel like including. Short paragraphs always work best on the internet. It makes your post easy to read and enjoyable. Take this guide for an instance, you’d notice a lot of sub-headings, bulleted points, and images, to make it easier and interesting for you to read.

Use high-resolution media files

Any other niche might do fine without so many pictures but when it comes to fashion it is all about pictures. If you add more pictures than text in your articles, it would still be fine. Therefore, make it a habit to include as many images in your blog post as possible. For a busier and successful blog post, you would see images of photo shoots, selfies outfit looks. However, you are just starting out and for you, stock images are a lifesaver. There are various platforms like Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, etc, that offer royalty-free, high-resolution images, free of cost. However, you still need to provide credit.

#Step 8: Driving traffic to your fashion blog

Don’t be upset if your post doesn’t get viral overnight and you have a large audience by the next day. You need to be patient and put some effort into bringing the audience to your blog sites. Here are are some tips to drive more traffic to your fashion blog-

Market your blog on social media

Social media marketing works for every kind of blog but for fashion blogs, it is the best way to get an audience. All you need to do is focus on image-heavy posts and you’ll be able to get an ideal audience. Start with integrating social share buttons to your site which will allow your audience to share your work on their networks. After that, get creative with your Instagram profile and promote your fashion blog site there. Instagram is undoubtedly the best social media platform for a fashion blogger. You can even step up from being a blogger to an influence. Just be creative, offer relevant and useful content, and you will be able to get some quality traffic.

You can also build a social media strategy like what to post, how often to post, whether to post organic or paid content as well. Start working on social media tools to organize your marketing campaigns. If you have some budget to spare, you can also experiment with social media advertisements on platforms like Facebook or Instagram.

Send out frequent email newsletter

Start building your email list from an early stage. In fact, integrate a signup form when you launch your blog site. However, you’d have to give a reason to your audience to subscribe to your email newsletter. It can be a free eBook, gift coupon, premium content, or anything which is not available otherwise. It might take a lot of time and effort but an email list is an asset in the long-term. Your subscribers are basically your quality traffic that finds your content useful and wants to see more of your content. These are the people you need to keep.

You can use effective and efficient email marketing tools like ConvertKit or SendinBlue for email marketing. They offer great templates, scheduling features, and so much more in affordable plans.

Be consistent

Stable audiences appreciate consistency. If you post one article today and the next one after two weeks and then post another one after two days, it can get confusing for your audience. On the other hand, posting on a consistent schedule will keep your visitors coming back for more. Relax, we are not pressuring you to post frequently, we are just telling you to keep posting on a consistent schedule. Even if you post one a week, just pick a day, like Wednesday or Thursday, and  keep posting every Wednesday or Thursday. For a beginner, posting twice a week is ideal. Whereas, a busier and larger blog needs to post more frequently, on a daily basis.

In case, you have to delay posting, try to inform your audience through your social media profiles or email newsletter. It is enough to show that you are not procrastinating but genuinely busy. Writing in advance and keeping a blog or two in a buffer can help you avoid any delay.

Interact with your community

It’s not just about collecting followers or readers, you have to engage with them. Give them a way to reach out to you and when they do, respond to them. Encourage your audience to comment on your log post by responding to their comments and emails. Ask them what they expect next from you, it will not only give you ideas about your next project but will also build relationships with your audience.

Network with other authors/bloggers/influencers

Networking can help you get noticed. Basically, you need to interact with other influencers or fashion bloggers, comment on their blog posts, promote their genuine work, etc, and they can also do the same for you. You are basically sharing their work with your audience and they will do the same, which is a great way to expand your audience base.

#Step 9: Monetizing your fashion blog

Once your fashion blog starts to grow, it’s time to make some money. If you are passionate enough, you can turn your passion into your living. Some of the ways to make money from your fashion blog are-

Display ads

Google Adsense allows you to display ads on your blog site space in exchange for the money. Moreover, you don’t have to deal directly with the advertisers, instead Google Adsense will find the advertisers for you. Then, whenever a user clicks on an ad on your website you earn a commission. You won’t make a fortune with this but it is a good start.

Become an Instagram influencer

You can become an influencer and start promoting brands. Basically, a brand will approach you, asking you to promote their brand in exchange for money. How much you make through this way is totally up to the brand’s budget and your negotiation skills. However, to pull this off, you need a huge following. You can contact brands directly if you have great ideas for a marketing campaign. Even if nothing comes out, they will have your contact information for future reference. There are various influencer marketing platforms like Rep, WebInfluencial, etc. you can also create a profile there to have a better shot at getting a brand promotion campaign.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is more like native ads. You write an article and put some links to the products or services, which you think would be useful to your audience. The more people make purchases through the affiliated link, the more commission you make. Amazon Affiliate is the most popular affiliate partner out there for fashion bloggers and offers a great start.

Final words

Made it so far? Then you are familiar with the fundamentals and it’s time for you to get to the real work. Starting a blog is overwhelming at starting. You don’t get thousands of visitors in a day or week. It demands hard work and patience. Just don’t give up and keep creating useful content. You will get there eventually. Once you have a stable audience, then there is no looking back.

We hope that this article was helpful to you and you find it useful. If you have more ideas or tips on starting a fashion blog, please comment below. We’d love to hear your ideas.