How to Start a Fashion Blog

If you’re ready to start a fashion blog, then bravo! You’re taking the first step towards entrepreneurship and financial freedom. Blogging is something that has not only changed my life but countless others as well.

Fashion blogging has become extremely popular in the last decade. There are lots of bloggers looking to share their personal style online and give others advice on how to curate the perfect wardrobe. You can find petite fashion bloggers, plus-size fashion bloggers, and other specialty fashion bloggers everywhere you turn nowadays! What’s great about fashion blogging is that it’s truly an expression of your personal style – and no one looks like you so you can definitely find a way to make your fashion blog unique and eye-catching if you put in the work!

Now, is fashion blogging a get-rich-quick scheme? Absolutely not! Fashion blogging can be extremely profitable in the long run, but make no mistake: it takes a lot of up-front effort to see a return on your investment.

Here is how to start a profitable fashion blog today!

PS. If you aren’t sure you want to start a fashion blog, then head over to my How to Start a Blog guide to read about starting a blog when you aren’t sure of what your topic will be!

Find a Fashion Blogging Topic

The simplest way to start a fashion blog is to write about and share your personal style. If you’re going to become a fashion blogger then it goes without saying that you should probably be very comfortable in front of the camera! You can definitely get away with using stock photos to write about fashion, but you will find success a lot faster if you share your personal style with your audience.

Narrowing down your blog’s topic can also be useful though it’s not necessary for a fashion blog, as your unique personality will shine through. If you want to define a clearer audience, you could think about fashion blogging for the following audiences, for example:

• Plus-size fashion advice
• Sportswear fashion reviews
• Sustainable fashion recommendations

Each of these topics could be a great way to carve out a niche for yourself. Eventually, you will want to establish yourself as the “expert” in this chosen field, but don’t worry if you’re not right now. Many people love reading about the journey to expertise in a certain niche, too!

Because blogging is so popular nowadays, you’ll want to find a way to stand out from the crowd. It’s somewhat difficult to start a successful general fashion blog, for example, but if you start a blog about sustainable fashion, or clothing designed and made locally in the USA, then you’re much more likely to find success due to lower competition.

Successful Fashion Bloggers

If you’re stuck on a topic or are skeptical that it’s really possible to make money from fashion blogging, then take a look at these successful fashion bloggers for some inspiration! Each of these fashionistas has found success in sharing their personal style and inspiring others to improve their wardrobes.

1. Chiara Ferragni: This Italian blogger shot to fame within just a few years after she began sharing her personal style on her blog, The Blonde Salad. Today, she commands high-paying sponsorship fees from the world’s top fashion and beauty brands. She also designs her own self-titled shoe line!
2. Rachel Parcell: This Utah-based blogger is said to be one of the top-earning fashion bloggers in the country according to RewardStyle, thanks to her blog Pink Peonies. Her style is classic and feminine, an aesthetic that appeals to many American women. Parcell successfully launched her own fashion line which is sold on her website and at Nordstrom!
3. Arielle Charnas: This sassy New Yorker made a name for herself on her blog Something Navy which led to sold-out brand collaborations with retailers like Nordstrom! She offers practical but chic style advice to moms everywhere.

For a full list of fashion blog income reports, visit my blog income reports by niche list!

Start Writing About Fashion

I recommend writing the first 10 articles of your blog before you even set up your site. This is good for a few reasons:

1. You can see just how passionate you are about a topic, and how much you really have to say.
2. It will help you come up with names for your blog.
3. You will realize if there are any other topics you want to cover that you may not have thought of originally, and it may shift the direction of your blog!

At first, the important thing is to just write. Aim for at least 1,000+ words per article but if your articles are image-heavy, then you can get away with as little as 300 or so words. The more the better when it comes to blogging!

As a fashion blogger, one of the most time-consuming tasks you’ll have is taking photos of your outfits. Personally, I team up with another blogger in my area and we shoot each other’s looks every weekend. This is great because it saves us money and doesn’t annoy our family and friends! Of course, you can always hire a professional photographer to shoot your looks if you have the money or ask your friends and family to shoot your looks.

Be sure to describe your looks as detailed as you can in your blog posts. This will help others who are looking for these types of outfits find your blog! Over time, you’ll want to start to pay attention to the structure and organization of paragraphs within your blog posts, especially if they are long. Be sure to read my guide on how to structure a blog post when the time is right.

Choose a Name for Your Fashion Blog

Once you’ve written the first few articles and shot the first few looks for your blog, you’ll need to choose a brand name. Maybe you even thought of one as you were writing your articles! Whatever you choose, the name should be short, catchy, and easily memorable. Be sure to verify your name is available as a domain before settling on it!

Guide to Choosing a Blog Name →

If you have a personal style blog, then you could definitely get away with just using your full name as your blog name. If your topic is broader, however, then it could be worth it to stick to a creative brand name.

Purchase Your Domain & Hosting

If you’re serious about fashion blogging, then a custom domain name and web host are a must.

Using a free Blogspot blog or WordPress.com blog domain isn’t professional and won’t allow you to work with a lot of the major advertising networks and affiliate marketing networks (where the big bucks are made). Furthermore, you technically don’t own your blog when you host it with a free blog provider like Wix, Blogspot, and WordPress.com. These companies can shut your blog down on a whim!

You’ll want to invest in a web host to store all the files, images, and text associated with your blog in one place. The good thing is that hosting is the only major expense you’ll have when starting a blog!

Many hosting providers offer free domain names when you purchase your first hosting plan like Bluehost. If you’re a first-time blogger, then this is a great deal!

If you’re looking to start a second blog, then I recommend purchasing your domain from Namecheap because they have coupons every month, and their prices are unbeatable!

As mentioned above, the purpose of a host is to securely store your blog files. They serve these files as necessary to your website visitors from their servers as quickly as possible. Good hosts will back up these files regularly so you don’t lose all the work you’ve put into your blog in the event of a hack! Generally, it’s best to choose a host that is located in the country where your visitors reside.

Hosting really isn’t that expensive. It can be as cheap as $3 per month! That being said, you want to choose a host that is reliable and helpful. I recommend hosting with Bluehost if you are a brand new blogger since you will receive your domain name free of charge with a 12-month plan. Bluehost is based in Utah and is the first web host recommended by WordPress itself.

While it’s possible to run a casual blog with a custom domain using a free service like Blogspot or WordPress.com, I highly recommend against it if you are serious about creating a profitable blog. You may get by for the first few months, but after your blog takes off, you’ll wish you had set up a self-hosted blog in the first place!

Visit Bluehost and click Get Started Now to begin.

From there, I recommend choosing the Basic plan. You can always upgrade later if you need to!

As far as the length of your hosting plan, I highly recommend choosing 12 months or longer. Blogging is something you need to dedicate yourself to for at least one year. If you don’t think you can commit to blogging for that amount of time, I don’t recommend getting started at all because it simply won’t be a good investment for you.

Install WordPress

Now, I know I just told you not to sign up for a free WordPress blog, so why am I telling you to “install” it now?

Well, there are actually two WordPress options: WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

WordPress.com is for free blogs hosted on WordPress servers. These blogs typically have WordPress.com attached to the end of them (sampleblog.wordpress.com). WordPress.com is meant for casual bloggers who don’t want to make a profit with their blog.

WordPress.org is a self-hosted, content management platform for publishers and serious bloggers who want to turn a profit. It’s a backend content management system that allows you to easily control the content put forth on your blog.

WordPress.org is the golden standard when it comes to blogging. In fact, it currently powers around a third of the entire web!

I highly recommend WordPress.org due to its numerous integrations, plugins, and advanced features. Plugins are essentially add-ons created by thousands of developers that improve your blog in a simple, easy way. If you want your blog to do ___, then there’s probably a plugin for that!

WordPress.org is totally free to use on the majority of web hosts, too. It’s so popular that you can most likely log in to your hosting admin panel and have WordPress installed for you automatically as I explain here.

Choose A Theme

A blogging “theme” is just a set of files that make your blog look pretty and easy to navigate! The theme determines how information is presented to your readers on the front-end portion of your blog. There are themes that are better for visual content, and other themes which are better for written content. Most themes are pretty good at managing both, of course!

There are many great themes you can get for free through WordPress and various developer websites.

Free Feminine WordPress Themes →

If you’d like to purchase a more advanced theme, then I recommend looking through Creative Market and Etsy.

To add a theme to your website, click over to Appearance on the black lefthand admin panel. From there, you can either upload a theme, or search for one that exists in the WordPress repository.

Start Posting Your Fashion Articles

Once your theme is installed, it’s time to start creating your posts! You can do this by clicking the “+New” button on the top navigation bar, or from the lefthand admin panel, you can mouse over “Posts” and then select “Add New.”

Now, you can paste in the body of your pre-written article and give it a title, too.

Before hitting “Publish,” you will want to assign the article a Category and a Featured Image.

Categories are basically sections where groups of articles are filed within your blog. Here are a few examples of Categories and the articles that might be filed under them for a fashion blog:

Category: Casual Outfits

• 10 Casual Chic Summer Outfits
• The One Sweater I Wear All Winter
• Sunday Downtown Look

Category: Handbags

• The Only Work Tote Bag You’ll Ever Need
• 10 Beach Bags for Summer
• Designer Handbags: Are They Worth It?

Category: Clothing Care

• How to Wash Viscose
• Why Ironing is Bad for Your Clothes
• The One Thing to NEVER do to Clean Silk

As you can see, Categories are broad topics which can hold a variety of blog posts. You may only have 1-2 categories at the beginning of your blog, but over time you can add more.

As for the Featured Image, this is one image assigned to your post that provides the reader with context as to what your post is all about. It usually appears in a few places around your website, like the home page, depending on your theme. Sometimes it appears within the blog post itself, and other times you may wish to manually add it within the text yourself.

Taking Photos for Your Fashion Blog

Since fashion blogs tend to be visual in nature, your blog photography is going to have a large impact on your success.

You’ll want to aim for at least one high-quality photo per blog post, but the more the better. Showing your outfit from multiple angles can help readers get a good sense of your style. You should take photos from different distances, too. For example, I try to shoot at least one full-length photo (head to toe), and at least one close-up photo of a certain part of my body. It could be a portrait style (waist up), or a close-up on my handbag for example (knees to waist), or just my shoes. Images that are well-lit and clearly show your face or body (depending on the subject of your blog post) will perform well.

You can shoot quality images yourself with a smartphone camera like the iPhone, or you can invest in a digital camera like the Sony Alpha, which many bloggers swear by to shoot beautiful photos for your blog. Don’t be intimidated by a professional camera, even if you have no experience using one. The majority of DSLR or Mirrorless cameras often have an “Auto” mode for beginners to use. The lens should do all the work for you.

You’ll also want to consider purchasing a tripod to take photos of yourself wherever you are. This little iPhone tripod might be all you need.

If you have the budget, you may want to hire a professional photographer to shoot your photos. Another option is to ask a friend or family member to shoot your photos. If you don’t feel comfortable doing either of those, then try to team up with another fashion blogger in your area and shoot each other’s photos. This is what I do, and we both save time and money by working together.

Lastly, if you’re not able to shoot any images yourself then you can find a variety of free, non-copyrighted images from websites like Pixabay and Unsplash. Keep in mind that these photos should be used as a last resort, and original imagery is always preferred when it comes to blog photography!

Blog Photography Guide →

Drive Traffic to a Fashion Blog

Once your blog is set up you’ll need to find a way to get people to visit your site! There are many ways to drive traffic to your site including:

• Writing guest posts for other blogs
• Leaving comments on other blogs
• Sharing your posts on social media
• Improving your Google Search presence
• Optimizing your content for Pinterest

Personally, I have succeeded at getting traffic to my site by optimizing my content for Google and Pinterest, two of the most popular search engines in the United States. On this blog I share several ways to drive traffic using some strategic methods.

I highly recommend reading these articles about getting traffic from Pinterest and SEO Basics, which is the method I used to optimize my content for Google search results. SEO stands for search engine optimization.

• Pinterest Traffic
• SEO Basics

Google and Pinterest are businesses themselves, so relying on them for traffic is never going to be 100% secure. Their algorithms are constantly changing and you can easily gain and lose traffic from one month to the next.

For this reason, many people choose to create an email list to which they can always market. While you cannot change the whims and interests of Google and Pinterest, you own your email list and no one can take that away from you. It’s important to sign up for Mailchimp, Mailerlite, or another email newsletter service so you can start collecting your readers’ email addresses.

Develop a Monetization Strategy

Once you’ve got your fashion blog set up, and a few posts published, you should start thinking about how your blog will earn income and developing a monetization strategy.

There are a few key ways to monetize a blog. Depending on your audience, you’ll need to figure out the best way for you to make money. Is your blog product-focused around clothing, or more informational around general style principles?

Display Ads

The easiest way to start making money with informational fashion blogs is often by using display ads.

Google’s AdSense program is an easy way for new bloggers who want to put ads on their site and start earning some money.

Once you get more than 25,000 sessions per month, you can apply to join a premium ad network like Mediavine.

Affiliate Marketing

Another popular way to make money with a fashion blog is through affiliate marketing, a strategy where bloggers link to products they love and earn a commission when a reader makes a purchase. These links are found in general articles on the site, but they convert really well when placed in in-depth product reviews and product round-up posts.

Most bloggers join one of the major affiliate networks that gather up big national retailers, provide the cooking technology for you to create links, negotiate a higher rate for bloggers to earn, and manage your commission payments.

Making money with affiliate marketing takes time but the payoff can be huge.

Especially when it comes to fashion blogging, affiliate marketing can be a great way to refer your readers to buy the items you’re wearing – shirts, jackets, sweaters, jeans, pants, skirts, shoes, handbags, pretty much anything can be monetized!

LTK is one of the best fashion affiliate networks you can join, though it is invitation-only. You can read about how I was accepted to LTK/RewardStyle to learn more. RewardStyle is one of my biggest earners as a fashion and home decor blogger, so I definitely recommend working your way into this network if you’re serious about making money as a fashion blogger!

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Personally, ads and affiliate marketing are where I’ve found the most success on my journey to make money with fashion blogging!

Beyond ads and affiliate marketing, you could also pitch yourself as a freelance writer to larger publications, sell products like ebooks and courses, or offer consulting services to your readers around fashion and personal style.

These tend to be monetization strategies for more experienced bloggers but it’s great to keep them in mind even during the beginning stages so you can start brainstorming about products you can sell in the future!

Top Ways to Monetize a Blog →

Go through the Newbie Blogger’s Checklist

Now that your fashion blog is set up and ready to go, head over to my newbie blogger’s checklist to sign-up for social media accounts and services that will ensure your online presence is complete. These tips aren’t immediately necessary, but they should be done as you have time to really give your blog an edge.

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I hope this post has been helpful to anyone who wants to start a profitable fashion blog. Making money from your style blog may seem like a dream, but trust me it’s not! Just take a look at my income reports for proof. I have been blogging about fashion since last year and have found it to be a really profitable topic!

That being said, making money as a fashion blogger takes a lot of hard work and dedication. It won’t come easy, but it will be worth it!

Be sure to sign up for my mailing list below as I’m always sharing new ways to optimize your blog for success!