Start A Lifestyle Blog That Makes Money.
If you’re looking for a way to start a lifestyle blog and take it from scratch to a thriving online business, this article would take you through all that you have to know to start your blog.
Maybe you never knew blogging could make you some money but the reality is that we have bloggers who are making from $20,000 to $100,000 – Well, this would be enough for many people in every country on planet earth. But the unbelievable truth is that these bloggers are not making $20,000 to $100,000 per year, but rather, $20,000 to $100,000 per month!
Some bloggers have scaled their blog even further and they’re earning more than $100,000 every month – But unless you’re told this, you would never know. For many, blogging is just a hobby. And that’s quite understandable because from 2007 to somewhere in 2013, blogging wasn’t really a lucrative thing to do.
But now blogging is massive – in 2020, the content marketing industry was worth $400 billion and it’s expected to grow to over $600 billion by 2024. Moreover, looking at where the world is heading, the internet would become the habitat for many people.
We have so many people who make a living from their blogs. So if these bloggers have had success with their blogs, how can you replicate that in the lifestyle niche to see the same or even better results?
Since there are many blog niches, why must you consider the lifestyle niche? This is a complete guide to help you start a lifestyle blog – Therefore let’s start diving into the main topic.
What You Should Know About Lifestyle Blog Before You Start.
A lifestyle blog is the one that makes it possible for writers or bloggers to create content about their personal life and interests; including events that happen in their lives every day both good and bad.
A lifestyle blog is one of the easiest blog niches to start – Why? Because everyone has a life. It is the only blog niche that allows you to write about almost everything you’re interested in. You can see a lifestyle blog where the blogger writes about travel, personal finance, and fitness – Another blogger may choose to write about food recipes, beauty, and travel. Lifestyle blogs, therefore, fit into all the micro-niches we have.
That means starting a lifestyle blog can be a way to document your life. Lifestyle blogs can be curated to entertain, give advice, motivate, inspire and give information to readers.
Common Lifestyle Blog Niches.
- Beauty
- Food
- Parenting
- Fashion
- Fitness
- Ladies’ Lifestyle
Starting: Find Your Lifestyle Blog’s Direction.
Finding a clear direction for your lifestyle blog would help you get positive results very rapidly. Think about these two people, De Santa and Tyson. They both get in their car one early morning in the Southeastern State, Florida – De Santa says he’s roaming about to figure out where to go later. But Tyson decided even before he got into his car that he’s driving to Seattle, Washington.
Tyson who has a clear destination would get there sooner than De Santa who’s still figuring out where to go.
The same applies to your lifestyle blog. The truth is that competition is huge at the moment therefore having a direction would make you stand out and get a unique audience. Moreover, since lifestyle blogs have many sub-niches if you decide that you’re writing about everything – You’ll grow weary soon.
The content you write would also be shallow, and hence less authority from your blog.
“If you want to reach everybody, you’ll end up reaching nobody.”
How Do You Find Direction For Your Blog?
1. Go back to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy. The needs of people would help you decide where to head – Because even though you shall be writing about your life, if it doesn’t help or teach people how to live their lives, you wouldn’t win!
2. Write down your hobbies, past jobs, and experiences. You can get more content ideas from the experiences you have gotten in life so far. There are so many things your readers can learn from what you have gone through, whether good or bad – So they can shape their lives with it.
Moreover, your hobbies and past jobs would help you get additional content ideas. After writing these down, ask yourself if writing about them would be inspiring for others and if you would love writing about them in the first place.
You can’t start a lifestyle blog without immersing yourself in the blog, people have to see, feel and relate on a different level with you. That’s when they would always click on the notification right away when you post an article.
Now that you have found the direction for your lifestyle blog, let’s move on to the next step.
Decide The Niche You Want.
A niche refers to the topics you shall be focusing on in your blog. There are several niches you can choose from – For a lifestyle blog, you can choose many niches if only they relate to your daily activities.
However, the fact that you can choose many niches at a time doesn’t mean it’s the right move. When starting a lifestyle blog it’s very advisable to choose a few sub-niches – This would help you build much authority in that few niches.
Literally, if you start writing about many niches, you would soon get weary and overwhelmed. Once you improve your writing skills as a blogger, you can add other niches.
Example:
Amelia Liana started her lifestyle blog in 2013 when she was 21 years old on a few topics – She now talks about many niches on the blog. She has gained authority and recognition and has therefore worked with several big brands including Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Armani Beauty, Givenchy, and others.
Here are some various niches you can choose from.
1. Travel Niche.
People love to travel and would like to know tips and the experiences living in a city or country they want to travel to. You can choose to write about the cities you visit if you’re someone that travels to different cities.
2. Food Niche.
If you love food and have different recipes in mind, you can teach the foodies out there how to cook these different foods.
3. Fashion Niche.
Fashion will always be in the interest of people. If you love fashion, you can take it upon yourself to provide fashion tips for your readers.
4. Health & Fitness Niche.
Staying healthy and fit is everybody’s utmost priority – But many people don’t know how to stay healthy and fit. You can give your readers the health and fitness tips you’re using. People would love these tips.
5. Hobby Niche.
Talk about the activities you do in your leisure. Reading, camping, hiking, yoga, dancing, gardening, slacklining, and others – People would connect with you when you write about these.
6. Beauty Niche.
Did you know that the average lady spends approximately 55 minutes every day on hair and make-up? If you have knowledge in making up and everything about beauty – You can go for this niche.
7. Family Niche.
It isn’t easy to manage a family – People go into problems all the time. Some people are so busy with their work that they can’t get time for their spouse, children, and other relatives. They would love to change but most of them don’t know how. You can help them out.
8. DIY Niche.
This has become popular because many people are now staying at home and working. DIY simply means Do It Yourself. There are some problems around the house that people want to fix on their own. For example, decorating the room or making your own hand-painted wallpaper, etc.
This niche would explode in the future, therefore, if you’re creative – I think you would want to consider it.
9. Motherhood/Parenting Niche.
This niche is also great because there are many mothers or parents who are new to parenting – Moreover, so many problems associated with single parenting at times. Because of that, people would want to listen to you so they can raise their kids well. So if you’re a parent, you can consider this niche too.
10. Gardening Niche.
If you’re passionate about gardening and have some knowledge about it then this niche is also great. Teach people how to mulch, replenish organic matter, recycle yard waste, improve soil, revitalize beds and borders, and many more.
11. Self Care/ Self Help Niche.
Many people are frustrated in life – They may be making so much money from their work but still frustrated, sad, pissed off about life, etc. You can help them change their lives. Additionally, many people lack confidence, gratitude, and many more. Helping these people out would also give you an extraordinary feeling of fulfillment.
Now that you know some of the niches you can choose from, let’s look at starting your website.
Pick a Domain Name – How To Do It.
So a domain name is your website’s address that is typed in the browser URL bar by people so they can visit your website. This domain name will give your blog a unique identity.
How can I pick the perfect domain name?
Generally, when choosing a domain name, you have to ask yourself where you want to take your blog to. Some people choose a domain name and later regret it. Make sure you avoid regret now.
The options you have:
- Use your own name.
You can use your own name provided that it’s easy to spell. Naming your blog after yourself would be the best approach for those who want to build a personal brand with their blog. It would also give you the opportunity to write about every topic on your blog.
- Use the niche and your name.
So for instance, your name is Carolina – Therefore, carolinalifestyle.com or carolinatravelandfitnessspace.com.
- Go for any generic name.
The third way is by going for any generic name. Whether it’s an English word, a Spanish word, or a name you have derived from your own creativity. For example, dollarsandfreedom.com was from my own creativity after the domain I wanted to use was already taken.
An example of a lifestyle blog with a generic name is Goop.com.
Which is the best to use?
Your website or blog can be sold – Wirecutter, for instance, was bought by New York Times for about $30 million! This was possible because the website was great in the first place, moreover, the name of the website wasn’t someone’s name! Businesses wouldn’t love to buy a blog that has been built around a particular person.
What I mean is that, if it is your dream to sell your blog and walk away with “money in the bank”, then don’t name your blog after yourself. – Go for any creative name.
But if you want to use your blog forever, and build your personal brand with it – Then name it after yourself.
As for me, I would always choose a generic name.
Check your domain name availability below – For your real name, the chances of it being available is higher than the other names – All the same, if the name you have in mind is taken, be creative and choose other names.
Take Note: Choose “.com” as your top-level domain – That will make your blog look more established and credible to people. In addition, many people already assume all website addresses end with a “.com” so why don’t you go with that to avoid any confusion later?
Let’s move on to the next thing to do now that we have our domain name.
Choose Your Web Hosting.
After you have chosen your domain name, the website you’re about to create must have web hosting. Website hosting is the service that would allow you to publish your website files onto the internet to make them accessible to everybody.
There are many web hosting providers – Some are Hostinger, Hostgator, Site Ground, and Dreamhost. But the one I highly recommend is Bluehost.
After using Bluehost for several years now, it’s certainly the best. Before I take you through the steps for signing up on Bluehost, let me tell you some amazing offers Bluehost users enjoy.
1. The most affordable – $2.95 per month.
2. Free domain name for a year. That means you don’t have to pay for your domain name for a whole year.
3. Free SSL Certificate
4. AI-driven templates.
5. You get fantastic SEO and analytics tools to help you optimize your website’s performance. And many more.
Click here to visit Bluehost and let me take you through the steps.
1. You can hover your mouse pointer over the WordPress and from then select WordPress Hosting from the drop-down. Or just click on Shared Hosting from the homepage – the other option on the right-hand side is also the same thing, just some slight changes.
2. You shall be taken to the next page where you have to select your plan. The Basic plan is okay for your blog. So you can go with that – However, you can check the other plans to see if you want any of them. If not, then the Basic plan is more than enough.
3. If you already bought a domain name from a site, just enter it in the space provided and move on – But if you don’t have one, enter the domain name you want in the ” Create a new domain” and check it’s availability.
Just for demonstration – I used getmetherequickly.com
4. If your domain name is available like mine, you shall be given a form to complete – You have to choose a different domain name if the one you want is already taken.
Complete the form and proceed to make payment.
Bluehost gives you some Package Extras. Even though all are important, if you don’t have enough money to get all, you can deselect them – They’re not compulsory to have. But for Domain Privacy + Protection and SiteLock Security, do well to add them to your package.
5. The next vital step is to create your account and password that you would use to log in anytime. Bluehost would send you an email notification in your inbox. Check it out and activate your account.
Moving on, Bluehost would ask you some questions to understand your experience in running a website/blog. Showing Bluehost that you’re a beginner would let you get guidance – But you can skip these questions in case you don’t need Bluehost’s guidance in creating your blog.
6. You would be given some themes to choose from – Free themes and Premium themes. You can skip this step and choose the theme when you get to the main dashboard.
We’ve now gotten to the WordPress dashboard! That’s where we would design our blog and write our articles – everything will be done here!
Install A Theme, Plugins And Page Builders.
Choosing a theme is something that you shouldn’t take for granted – It is very crucial in building a blog. Choosing the wrong theme can affect how your blogs rank on Google. There are some themes that are rigid to the extent that you cannot change the appearance of pages.
There are so many themes people recommend, and it’s difficult to tell the differences between them. But the first step to choosing the right theme is to ask yourself these few questions.
- What’s the purpose of your blog?
- At what level do you want your blog’s customization to be?
- What features do you want on your blog?
I suggest that you visit the various lifestyle blogs to find out the features, and appearance of the blogs. This would let you know what to go for.
Do’s And Don’ts When Selecting A Theme.
- Don’t choose the theme with overly cluttered or scattered features.
- Do choose the theme with easy-to-read fonts.
- Do examine the theme very well. The theme check plugin when installed would help you do that.
- Do consider going in for a premium theme. Premium themes are constantly updated – If you run into an obstacle when using the theme, there’s 24/7 support for you. This isn’t the case with free themes.
- Do make sure you know the features you want before you go in for the theme.
6 Best Blog Themes To Use.
- Astra
- Blocksy
- Divi
- Thrive
- Ocean WP
- Hestia
Important Plugins To Install For Your WordPress Lifestyle Blog.
Plugins are simply program applications that bring in extra functionality to your website. There are many features that require a plugin installation before they can appear on your blog – But there are over 50,000 plugins and you basically don’t need all of these. You just need the most essential plugins. Here are some important plugins to install.
1. Yoast SEO. This plugin will help you optimize your articles, pages, etc so that they can rank on search engines.
2. Jetpack. This plugin is actually the ultimate toolkit for your website – It will help you to enhance social sharing, monitor your blog’s statistics, design the website, protect your blog from spam, etc.
3. WP Super Cache. This will help your website to load very very fast so that your readers can have a memorable experience.
Make sure after installing the plugin, you go to its settings and select “Cache On” for the plugin to start working.
4. WP Forms. Use this plugin so that your readers can send you a message without stressing.
5. Elementor Page Builder. Design your pages quickly by just dragging and dropping – Forget about coding. Elementor can do the work for you!
6. Smush. You definitely have to include images in your articles to make readers more engaged – But image size can hurt the loading time of your pages. Smush reduces image size for you!
7. Google XML Sitemap Generator. This plugin will submit your pages to Google so that they can be crawled and indexed properly. If your pages are not crawled properly, your blog won’t rank on Google.
8. Akismet Anti-Spam. Get protected from spam.
9. Monster Insight. It will track your website’s Google analytics – You need analytics to decide the next move to make in order to grow your blog.
10. UpdraftPlus. This plugin protects your website from hacking. You also get backup for your content on the blog.
Must Have Pages You Should Create For Your Blog.
To make your readers and visitors more comfortable with your blog, there are some pages that have to be created. Below are the most important pages your blog must have.
1. Homepage. You have to optimize your homepage to avoid any confusion – A visitor who visits your homepage should be able to tell what your blog is all about in a few seconds.
2. About Page. Every visitor is curious to know who the heck is behind a blog – So your About Page must be well created. Include your goal and mission and tell them a brief story about you to get them connected.
3. Privacy Policy Page. At some point visitors would be providing their personal information like email address, contact, location, etc to get a product or service you shall be offering – Privacy Policy makes it clear to them how well their vital information would be protected from spammers, etc.
4. Contact Page. As you continue to write compelling content, some of your readers would love to reach out to you personally – Maybe they need your guidance on something. Your contact page will show them how they can reach out to you.
5. Service/ Product Page( Optional). Visitors must clearly understand the services you provide or the products you sell on your blog.
Your blog should have a logo. The best place to design your logo is on Canva – You can also use this tool, the Hoth LogoMaker.
Promote Your Articles.
Writing your articles doesn’t mean people will come and read – You have to promote your work. Use these ways:
1. Pinterest. Creating high-quality pins with great titles on Pinterest to help drive traffic to your site. This should be done on a regular basis.
2. Use Quora. Answer questions on Quora more often and if you have articles that relate to those questions, put a link in your answers for people to read more on your blog.
3. Friends and Family. These are the people who can start reading your articles – Most of them would be curious to know what’s on your blog. Telling them to check your blog out would be a great idea.
4. Focus on SEO. There are some questions that people are searching for, if you want to be at the end of people’s questions they ask on Google and other search engines then focus on SEO.
Start by looking for content ideas on other lifestyle blogs – After that, copy the title of the article you want to write on Google and search. Look at the “People also ask” section for keywords. Check their SEO difficulty using Ubersuggest. Its search volume and SEO difficulty would help you decide whether to write an article for that keyword or not.
5. Facebook Groups. Join groups on Facebook of all the sub-niches you write about on your blog( Health & Fitness, DIY, Travel, etc). Participate in group discussions – If you do this consistently, members would definitely want to know what’s on your blog.
6. Write Guest Posts. Build relationships with other lifestyle bloggers and tell them you want to write some articles for their audiences. Their readers would definitely check out your blog once they see your articles on their favorite blog. More eyeballs will be on you if you do this consistently for bigger blogs.
Start Making Money With Your Blog: Ways To Do That.
After consistently writing articles on your blog, you definitely have to make some money right? Here are some ways you can make money from your lifestyle blog.
1. Through Advertisement. If you don’t know what I mean – When you go on to various blogs, you often see banners advertising a service or product. That’s what I’m talking about.
Here is how you can get them to be displayed on your blog as well.
- Join Google Adsense – Just after your blog goes live you can sign up. Adverts shall be displayed on your blog by Google and once the ad gets 1,000 views, you shall be paid. Not much money because you don’t have huge traffic. Once your blog starts getting over 100,000 visitors per month you can earn massively – So focus on getting more traffic.
Other Options Besides Google Adsense are;
- Mediavine
- AdThrive
- Media.net
- Ezoic
- Monumetric
- Skimlinks and many more.
Note: Unlike Google Adsense that you can join straight away – Some of these options require you to have minimum traffic of 50,000 per month before you can sign up – They also pay higher than Google Adsense.
2. Through Affiliate marketing. Recommend services and products of companies to your readers, and get a commission from the company every time a reader buys the product or service.
Suggested Post: 10 Amazing Reasons You Should Start an Online Business.
Best Affiliate Marketing Networks To Join.
- Commission Junction( CJ Affiliates).
- Rakuten Advertising
- ClickBank
- ShareASale
- JVZoo
- Digistore24
- Warrior Plus
- ClickFunnels and many more
3. Through Brand Partnership/ Sponsorships. When your blog gains recognition brands would want to work with you by paying you to promote their products to your audience in your posts, etc.
4. Sell Your Own Products. Courses, ebooks, t-Shirts containing your logo, printables, and many more are the things you can sell to your audience – You can also do coaching and counseling.
Forum You Can Connect With Other Lifestyle Bloggers.
FAQs
Do lifestyle bloggers make money?
Yes! The median income in the lifestyle niche is $5,199 per month. You can make more than that depending on how much effort you put into your blog.
What do lifestyle bloggers sell?
Lifestyle bloggers sell photos, printables, online courses, ebooks, physical products(t-shirts, clothes, beauty products, etc), pre-recorded mini-class, patterns, and many more.
Is vlogging better than blogging?
Answers can be found here.
Suggested Post: Which Is Better, Blogging or Vlogging?
Final Words.
You have to do this – becoming a lifestyle blogger can help you to influence the world positively. You don’t have to create anything extraordinary, just document your journey and learn along the line – you don’t have to be an expert in anything before you can start this blogging journey. Everything looks scary until you start.
Moreover, blogs will continue to be relevant in the years to come – so start now. I’m wishing you success.
Manuelo is an entrepreneur and a personal finance nerd. He is the founder of Dollars And Freedom. An expert in side hustles, online gigs, and everything about making money. His works have been featured on major financial publications, like Business Insider, GoBankingRates, Investopedia, Entrepreneur, and more. When he’s not busy with his blog or writing for others, you’ll catch him hanging out with loved ones or reading books on stoicism and self-development.
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