Are you constantly shopping for new makeup and skincare items? Do you love products and have an eye for trends? If so, let’s talk about how to start a beauty blog and choose a blogging platform. The online beauty community is huge and forever growing. Plus, blogging has really started to make an impact on the industry as a whole.
Beauty blogging is an industry which is very saturated with content. In order to grow a following, you have to make yourself stand out. Think of it as wearing red lipstick when everyone else has chosen boring, old beige. If you’ve got a fresh perspective or something new to say, that’s a fantastic place to start.
Knowing a lot about makeup and skincare is obviously an important aspect of how to start a beauty blog. But it’s not that simple. From the actual set up and hosting, to growing and eventually monetizing your blog, we’ve got a 10-step guide for you.
Step 1: Find Your Niche
In no sphere of the blogging world is it more important to stand out than in blogging. Why? Because even before you even consider starting a beauty site, you need to figure out what makes you different from the crowd. To put it simply: why should people care what you have to say?
So what’s your specialty? Do you write about black hair? Are you obsessed with lip kits? Are you an encyclopedia for the different kinds of blonde that one could get? Figure out your niche before writing your first post.
Step 2: Match Your Name
As soon as you’ve come up with a good idea of what you want to write about, you need to decide on a name. This name should be catchy and fun, but most importantly, it should be well-suited to your brand and blog content.
Step 3: Set It Up
It’s time to choose your hosting platform. The two biggest are Blogger and WordPress. Blogger is a little bit simpler to use, but harder to personalize. WordPress feels less intuitive at first but allows for more personalization later.
If you register with either of these (or any blog hosting platform), for free, the platform name will show up in your URL. For example, your name will first appear as “lipstickdiva.wordpress.com.” If you don’t want this, you can register your domain name for a fee. Sites like GoDaddy are where you need to register, but you can browse online for the best deal.
Step 4: Make It Pretty
If you want people to keep coming back to it, you need to make reading a pleasant experience. While hiring a web designer can help you with a super fancy and unique blog theme, when you’re just starting out it probably isn’t necessary.
The priority is to make the blog easy to navigate and pleasant to look at, which you can likely do yourself using your hosting platform’s settings. Think about the blogs you regularly read, and take inspiration for how you want your blog to look.
Step 5: Think About Images
For many other sites, you can rely on stock images to get the job done. Unfortunately, this just isn’t true for beauty blogs. Great photography is the key to a successful beauty site.
However, this isn’t to say you immediately need to break the bank purchasing a fancy camera (although it does help). Most phones nowadays have decent enough cameras to get you started. If you take your photos in direct sunlight and against a white backdrop, they’ll certainly suffice. This setup is a great place to start, and you can start to think about more complicated blog photography later down the line.
A tip I’ve learned when creating beauty content is it’s a really good idea to get a whole bunch of photography done at once. When you have a bright and sunny day, take advantage and load up your camera with images for future blog posts. That way, you won’t be risking a delay, waiting for images to publish a post. Also, setting up your background and camera can be a pain, so doing it just once for multiple posts helps streamline the content creation process.
Step 6: Plan Some Content
All of the tips above would be useless if you aren’t creating quality content. Before launching your site, it’s a good idea to have a plan and schedule. This includes both when you post (which helps readers know when to check back) and what types of posts to do. If you’re struggling for inspiration, there are a few good post types which beauty bloggers can always fall back on.
- “Favorites” posts are excellent because you can use them as weekly or monthly bookmarks. They’re a great way to talk about new products or techniques you’ve been impressed by.
- Mini reviews are a great way to talk about beauty products you’ve been using and do or do not recommend.
- Hauls are always fun because they are an exciting way to talk about newer launches (plus any old favorites you’re repurchasing).
- Trying out new makeup and photographing the results can provide a wealth of excellent content. It helps if you show different ways to use products, talk about application techniques and beauty tips, and give in-depth reviews of the process.
- Product Reviews. These posts allow you to go into detail with a particular type of makeup, skincare or other beauty products. From nail polish to face masks to essential oils, in-depth articles on a product are the bricks and mortar of content creation.
To build the skeleton of a posting schedule, you should aim for one of these types of posts per week. This will keep you motivated and consistent in your posting (which is essential to gain readership).
Step 7: Expand Your Horizons
On top of these fairly standard posts, you can think outside the box and add some more innovative, unusual post types. Some ideas for this content include:
- Roundups. “Top X Products For Y” posts are a great way to talk about beauty and skincare products you like, plus tips and tricks to help your readers get the most out of their purchases.
- “Skincare Routine For X Skin Types” is a great way to talk about new launches, old favorites, plus add in any skincare tips you may have.
- Showing how to create certain looks using step-by-step guides and good quality photography always makes for a fun and creative content.
- Including other people on your beauty website helps you expand your horizons and get a fresh perspective. Makeup artists are always excellent sources of knowledge, or you could collab with other beauty bloggers to help boost both of your readerships.
- Anything news-worthy. You want to keep your site feeling fresh, and a great way to do that is reflecting on the greater world. Even something as simple as a seasonal shift can be an inspiration for a beauty blog post.
Step 8: Build Your Readership
There’s no point in writing top-quality, well-researched and unique beauty pieces if nobody knows they’re there! While building an audience is super tricky at the beginning, there are ways to help make sure your content is reaching as many people as possible.
- Be consistent. You need to be posting regularly, especially if you’re trying to grow your blog. Your readers will only come back if they know there’s something good waiting for them. This is the number one tip for creating successful skin care or makeup website.
- Use social media. To coincide with the launch of your beauty site, you will want to promote it, particularly on Instagram. Making a direct Instagram account for your site is a great way to reach more readers, and to get noticed by brands in the beauty industry.
- Be part of the community. Reach out to and connect with other beauty bloggers who have recently launched. By forging these relationships, you can both benefit by sharing an audience and growing your readerships together. Guest posts on each other’s sites is an excellent way to do this.
- Search engine optimize. People should be able to find your content organically. In order to achieve that, you can use search engines to help bring them to you. Look at what topics are trending and write about them! Staying on top of search terms and writing about what people want to read is a key way to build your audience and grow your site. For example, popular topics right now are K-Beauty (Korean beauty products) and natural beauty (“green” lines comprising of natural ingredients).
- Product giveaways are a great way to promo your blog and give back to your readers. These can be to celebrate blog milestones, and you can ask your readers to promo your site on social media in exchange for an entry.
Step 9: Branch Out
Writing exclusively about beauty could be your specialty – but if not, there are ways to branch out from the beauty content. Both beauty and fashion and beauty and lifestyle have excellent ties. Introducing this “non-beauty” type of content slowly can help your readers feel more connected to you.
A good way to expand your beauty content is through introducing some “non-beauty” talking points in some posts. Favorites post, in particular, are a great way to do this. See how your audience responds, and if it’s positive, you can start to introduce extra posts which are totally non-beauty based. These could be clothing hauls, and other fashion based content, book or movie recommendations, travel pieces, the opportunities are endless.
Another way to expand your beauty blog is through video. You can make a YouTube account for your site to post beauty related content, including video tutorials. The YouTube beauty community is an excellent way to bring readers into your site.
Step 10: Turn Blogging Into a Job
Once you’ve got a successful site running consistently, you can begin to consider some ways to monetize. Remember that making money should never be the initial aim of your beauty site. You should be doing it because you just love creating content about beauty, hair care, skin, makeup tips, cosmetics, and all that good stuff. But making a few bucks doing what you love never hurt anyone. So here’s how.
- Affiliate links. This is one of the first ways you can make money from your beauty blog. You can add affiliate links to any products you mention. If any readers click that link and purchase the product, you then earn a small commission. At first, this will be cents, but over time it can add up.
- Including ads. You can sell space on your site to advertisers. Google AdSense will try to make sure these ads are relevant to your readers – although they can sometimes look cumbersome and out of place.
- Brand deals. As your audience and Instagram follower count grow, brands may reach out to you offering work. These could be collaborative posts, where you are paid to talk about a certain brand or product. Remember that you always need to disclose this information, and don’t accept just any offers if you want to retain authenticity for your audience.
- Freelance work. You may be able to use your beauty site as a jumping off point for more general makeup and skincare content creation. Having an audience and a bunch of links to successful pieces can help you to connect with beauty editors and encourage them to take a chance on your for some freelance beauty writing work.
Conclusion
If you love beauty and everything that comes with it, then starting a beauty blog can be a fantastic outlet for your creativity. While running a successful beauty blog is a lot of work, if it’s your passion then it’ll also be super rewarding.
The mechanics of starting any type of blog can be something which initially puts people off, but you shouldn’t let it. The very beginning of your beauty blog can be simple and quick, and you can deal with more complex issues of web design and hosting further down the road once your blog is up and running.
You need to be starting a beauty blog because you love beauty content creation, and thinking of it as a potential source of income down the line should always be secondary. What matters, in the beginning, is the words and the images – and if you get those right, the rest will follow, including the potential for monetization.
Have you ever done any beauty blogging? What are your top tips? Let us know in the comments below.
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