So you want to start a fashion blog…

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist starting this post out with that!) In all seriousness, the hardest part about blogging is the actual starting of a blog. So, give yourself a huge hug, a (huge) cup of coffee/glass of wine and a whole lot of grace, because GIRL, YOU DID IT! You are finally going for it 🙂

You may be feeling a bit overwhelmed, doubtful and even a little awkward about blogging. It’s 100% normal! Let yourself be a beginner at something. It’s normal to feel inadequate or awkward when taking photos of your “ootd” for the first time. It’s 2000% fine if you aren’t made of money and cannot afford a weekly wardrobe update. Hey, it’s even okay if your main goal is to make money from this. (What entrepreneur says, “don’t pay me. I will just do this for fun” )

Always remember: Your favorite bloggers were once beginners too.

A little about me and why I started my blog:

I started my blog back in 2017 as a way to have a creative outlet. I was engaged and planning a wedding on a music teacher salary and my now husband encouraged me to share all of my DIY projects. 

I began monetizing my blog after a few scares that my job as a music teacher would be cut (sadly my state cuts the arts every year). I knew it wouldn’t make much money at first, but it was worth a shot!

I profited about $9 the first few months. It was a slow, yet steady growth every month. Now, in 2019 I am earning MORE per month from my blog than I was during my first few years as a teacher. Granted teachers don’t get paid much to begin with, but STILL! (you mean I could have been sitting in my jammies blogging all day?!)

I still teach full time, but with the additional income from blogging I live freely without the financial stress I had before. In 2019, I was able to pay off my credit card, build an actual grown-up savings account, travel to Europe with my husband (a trip we never could have dreamed of!) and now I am in the process of preparing my house to be on the market 🙂 This is all because I just decided to finally start my blog!

If I was able to do it, YOU CAN. …scratch that. YOU WILL. 🙂

Now let’s get to the good stuff…

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Wee Little Disclaimer: The purpose of this “How to” is to educate, assist and inspire new bloggers! None of this is meant to show off or brag about any success. I am sharing what worked for me, so it may not work for everyone. However, the foundation of my own success has been “time, dedication and consistency” so I have a teeny little feeling it may work for anyone. 🙂

How to Become a Style Blogger

This is about to be quite the post…Blogging really is a “learn as you go” type of job. However, I hope to save you some time with my own trial and errors. 

My main focus is sharing exactly what I did “behind the scenes” in hopes that you will have a better understanding of all that goes into blogging. So, feel free to take all of this step by step and read at your own pace!

Grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and let’s begin!

What exactly is a Style Blogger?

Okie dokie, let’s address what a style-fashion-influencer-whatever-you-wanna-call-it blogger is.

To me, a style blogger is an online sales associate that just happens to be your best friend. We receive commission from our follower’s purchases EXACTLY how a sales associate in a shopping store receives a small commission. (That is why the register always asks, “did anyone help you in the store today?”) However, we have the potential to be a trusted source that our following believes in. 

We should aim to be friendly, approachable, relate-able, knowledgeable and helpful. It’s all about balance. Now… where is our “store”? Social Media!!

Helpful Tips for Aspiring Style Bloggers

For me, fashion/lifestyle blogging is basically a balance between: Instagram, WordPress, Pinterest and RewardStyle (LTK app). They are all important and dependent on one another! (I personally don’t use twitter, facebook or youtube…)

• WordPress: Your blog! If you don’t have a blog yet, I have an entire post on how to start a blog that can be monetized. 
• Pinterest: Drives people to your blog! 
• Instagram: Builds your main following and drives more people to your blog
• RewardStyle: Monetizes your blog! Note: RewardStyle may not accept you at first, so I suggest Amazon Affiliates and ShopStyle as a beginner. There are also other ways to monetize your blog as a beginner, check out this post.

As a beginner, I suggest choosing 1-2 of these platforms to really focus on at first before diving into the next. You will eventually be able to juggle all four, but the important thing is to not overwhelm/burn yourself out!

Here are some helpful tips and tricks to help guide you with all of these platforms.

Tip 1: Prioritize Your Time.

Prioritize and allot a certain amount of time and energy for each social media platform. Again, you don’t want to put all of your energy into one thing and exhaust yourself. Baby steps will get you much further than the blogger that burnt herself out and gave up!

Work full time?! Finding time to work on your “blog life” is especially hard with a full time job, but it works! I am a morning person, so I wake up at 4:45am M-F and 6am on the weekends to ensure I have enough time in my day to achieve my goals.

Here is an example of what I basically did as a beginner with a full time teaching job:

• Priority 1. Instagram. Take photos on the weekend and prep them for the week. Spend 1+ hours a day engaging with other posts and stories.
• Priority 2: Blog. 1+ hours a day. (M-F: 4:45-5:45am and 5:00-8:00pm. All weekend long!)
• Priority 3: Pinterest. Have at least 5 pinning sessions throughout your day. I called this my “Power Pin Session”. I’d pin for 5-10 minutes each session. I religiously pinned during breakfast, my lunch break, after school, while on the Stair-master, while making dinner and right before bed. 
• Priority 4: Monetizing. As a beginner, I used ShopStyle and Amazon Affiliates to link products that I posted on Instagram and my Blog. 

Tip 2: How to Use Instagram

Instagram alone can be your “style blogger” career. It is that powerful and important!

The goal in the beginning is to build your Instagram following. This is for many reasons, but mainly so you can be accepted into RewardStyle (LIKEtoKNOW.it). RewardStyle is currently my main source of income! If you are hoping to do this gig full time, RewardStyle is a necessity! (at least in my opinion hehe)

—>Coming soon… I am currently working on a post all about getting accepted into RewardStyle and how to grow your profit on RewardStyle. Stay tuned 🙂

Important: It may be tempting, but NEVER purchase followers. Companies and brands can tell if you do not have an honest following, and they may never trust to work with you ever. One of the brands that I worked with noted in their collab invitation that I had “an honest following”. Out of curiosity, I asked what they meant by “an honest following” and they responded with something along the lines of, “We like for influencers to have an engagement score that reflects real followers”. 

Likewise, potential followers may overlook you as well with a fake/paid for following. To be 100% honest, when I see a profile with 10 photos, about 100 likes each, but a miraculous 21k followers… I don’t follow them. It’s hard to decipher if they are a spam account or not. Maybe they chose the easy button?! Maybe it’s the teacher in me, but I only want to follow authentic, hard workers.

Growing an organic Instagram following was (and kind of still is) the toughest, most frustrating phase of my blogging career, but it eventually does happen! Hang in there 🙂 

—> I shared my tips and tricks to gaining my first 1k followers here

–> Follow me on Instagram 🙂 I love helping new bloggers!!

Daily Instagram Tasks:

• Post 1-2 outfit photos daily. I take my own photos on my iPhone 8 with this super affordable tripod & bluetooth remote. 
• Tag the brands that you are advertising (until you can link the products)
• Have a fun or meaningful caption that will engage readers.
• Use mostly semi-popular hashtags to increase your chances on being seen (50k-600k posts)
• Use a few super popular hastags (600k-2m posts)
• Follow, “like”, and comment smaller accounts. (style bloggers with smaller followings) Those accounts will return the favor and they may even follow you back.
• Follow, “like” and comment on larger accounts (style bloggers with large followings). Their photo comment section is a way to get your profile visible to new potential followers.

Important: You should be “liking” and commenting on other style bloggers’ photos for more than an hour a day before & after posting your photo. (I know, I know… remember, growing is the hard part.)

Tip 3: What to Blog About

Instagram can be your blogging career, but it really shouldn’t be. I am a strong believer that every style blogger needs an actual blog as the foundation to their career.

You can publish your blog right away, or you can wait until you have a few posts finished. It is up to personal preference! I am somewhat impatient and published my own blog right away.

Don’t stress over the view count. It was days {possibly weeks} before I had my first view (I still question whether or not that 1 view was just my husband haha…)

Regardless, I will never forget my first view lol! It happened while I was at the gym! My first post was terrible, but I remember frantically running off of my Stairmaster over to my husband to let him know that someone looked at my blog lol…

Basically: Just keep blogging… just keep blogging… blogging, blogging!

Inspiration for blog posts as a beginner:

• About you – A whole post about what inspired you to start blogging. You may even inspire other soon-to-be bloggers.
• Weekly Instagram re-caps – I sooo need to start these up again! Basically, everything you post to instagram each week/month is organized into a post. You can link all of the products you are wearing in each photo (with Amazon Affiliates, ShopStyle or Reward Style) You may even earn your first profit off of this post! PIN these photos to appropriate boards on Pinterest and then your monetized outfits are now circulating all over Pinterest. (money grows on the trees of the internet, folks…) 
• Top 10 things on Amazon that you cannot live without – Be real and relatable! Share the 10+ products that you love and link each product with Amazon Affiliates (you may earn profit hear too!) Anything from your bed sheets, random gadgets, coffee machine, clothing items and even Alexa!
• 5 Ways to style a… – Show us 5 ways that you style a t-shirt, blazer, puffer vest… anything! These photos can be from your instagram or just new photos for your blog. PIN these photos to appropriate boards on Pinterest.
• Holiday Decorations from Amazon – Create this post a few months before Christmas. I created a few back in 2017 and I made over $200 off of Amazon Affiliates from October-December. That was my 3rd, 4th and 5th month of blogging! I was blown away and now I tell every hopeful blogger that she NEEDS a holiday Amazon post in her life. 

My first 3 months of Amazon Earnings after my first Holiday Post:

Tip 4: How to Use Pinterest

Pinterest is the workhorse of your blog. This has always been the main source of traffic to my own blog! However, it can be a little overwhelming and tricky at first. Once you get the ball rolling, you will slowly get more and more Pinterest followers. Likewise, your blog views will go way up!

–> Follow me on Pinterest 🙂

Pinterest Step-by-Step:

1. Make sure you have a Pinterest Business Account (it’s free)
2. Create at least 10 boards with topics relevant to your blog.
3. Create some boards with broad topics (Everyday Outfits, Recipes, Hair, Beauty, Home Decor…)
4. Create some boards with more specific topics (Fall Outfits, Holiday Desserts, Modern Boho Home Decor…)
5. Add keywords to ALL of your boards. (sooo important!)
6. Fill these boards up with pins!
7. Pin your own pins (as long as they belong in that category)
8. Post your ShopStyle/RewardStyle outfit looks to Pinterest! (you may earn profit when people click on your pins)
9. Always include keywords to your own pins!
10. Use Tailwind to auto-pin your Pins.
11. Pin to each board throughout the day.

—> Don’t know what Tailwind is?! Check out this post on how to use Tailwind

Tip 5: How to Create Blog Graphics to Pin

I mentioned Instagram, WordPress, Pinterest and RewardStyle being the main platforms that I use, but I kind of left out one shining star… CANVA.com

I use the free version (because I am still cheap) of Canva for basically everything! I make Pinterest Graphics, RewardStyle Graphics, Instagram Story Graphics… Everything!

It is pretty user friendly, but take some time to develop your “brand’s” look. Here is an example of a graphic I made with Canva. I can post this on Instagram, Shopstyle, Rewardstyle, Pinterest and even a future blog post!

Example of one my Canva Graphics:

pssst…Click the image to shop the photo! 🙂

—>Coming soon… I am currently working on a tutorial for making Canva graphics with gorgeous fonts, transparent backgrounds, and branding! All without paying Canva’s premium fee. {because your girl, is thrifty…}

Tip 6: How to Make Money Blogging

Are you ready to potentially earn a full-time living off of Blogging?! {yaaaas!}

As I stated earlier, I began my blog in July 2017. I earned about $9-$15 the first few months and honestly had no idea what I was doing. I just “did” whatever. Everytime I made a few cents off of google adsense, I celebrated internally haha. Remember, baby steps are always progress!

By December 2017, I was making a steady $90-$100 a month. This was mainly off of Amazon Affiliates. (I am still profiting off of those Holiday Amazon Posts I told you about in Tip #3. …and basically every Amazon post I have created.)

Now, I make over $3k a month through Reward Style, Amazon Associates, Adsense and sponsored posts. I am not even close to being a highly followed blogger! (imagine what those gals earn…#BossLadies)

It has been a steady growth since then, and now I have matched what I currently make every month as a full-time teacher (including taxes that I take out myself as a freelancer).

This can be a full-time job for you! All it took was time, patience, dedication and consistency. 

How I earned my first profit:

I applied for every Affiliate Market Company out there and got denied by most. I kind of expected to be denied, but I was still bummed! Some of the companies I did get accepted into, I honestly never used haha!  Spare yourself the time and disappointment and just focus on Amazon Affiliates, ShopStyle and Google Adsense until you get accepted into RewardStlye (that may take some time).

It was Google Adsense and Amazon Affiliates gave me me my first $9.03 (I will never forget that number haha!) This was all done by placing a few ads with my posts and sharing Amazon products in a few blog posts. 

—> I share my first month of blogging experience and income report here!

 

Quick tips on Amazon Affiliates:

• Create blog posts centered around Amazon Products. (Amazon Holiday Decor, Amazon Clothes, Amazon products you cannot live without)
• Make sure you are creating graphics for your blog post that you can Pin to Pinterest. This will bring the followers in!
• Style outfit photos using Amazon clothing. Create blog posts with a look book of these styled outfits. Link everything you are wearing with your Amazon Affiliates links.

Amazon Blog Post Examples: 

• Farmhouse Decor – Budget Friendly
• Modern Boho Decor – Amazon edition!
• Scandinavian Christmas Decor

 

Quick tips on ShopStyle:

• Upload your Instagram photos to ShopStyle’s “looks” and link all the products you are advertising in your photo/blog post.
• Add a Shopstyle “Look Collection” to a new blog page. Call this page “Shop My Instagram”. (The Shopstyle widget automatically displays all of your shop-able instagram looks on your blog, so viewers can shop off each photo).
• Add the link to this “shop my instagram” page within your Instagram bio, so your followers can find your product links easily.
• Pin these “looks” on Pinterest to get more attention to your shop-able looks.
• Use ShopStyle to link products that you advertise on your blog.

Important Note: I had ShopStyle back when they paid $0.05 per click, but I believe it has changed to pay per order. However, I believe the commission rates are now waaaay better than $0.05 per click! 

I made anywhere from $0 to $20 off of each photo I posted to ShopStyle:

 

Quick Tips on Google Adsense:

Google Adsense displays ads within your blog. You can adjust the types of ads and where they end up I suggest doing a few ads here and there, so your potential blog subscribers do not feel overwhelmed by all of these ads. 

I made over $10 off of ads my third month blogging.

 

Quick Tips with RewardStyle:

RewardStyle is an invitation only (you can also apply) affiliate company. It took me around 800-1000 followers on Instagram to finally be accepted. 

At first, I still linked my Instagram through ShopStyle, because my click ratio was waaay higher than my purchase ratio. (Meaning I made more money at $0.05 per click than I did 8-10% commission with purchases via RewardStyle.)

Once I gained more followers on the LIKEtoKNOW.it App, I started earning more commission and I pretty much stopped using ShopStyle. Now, I earn anywhere from $1k-$2.5k a month through RewardStyle alone!

The graphic below is from November 2019. $2,551?! I don’t even have 10k followers on Instagram… This is only going to continue to grow! Start your blog NOW 🙂 

 

—> Coming soon… I am currently working on a post all about getting accepted into RewardStyle and how to grow your profit on RewardStyle. Stay tuned 🙂

Tip 7: How to Get Brand Offers as a Beginner

Landing a brand collab was something I knew wouldn’t happen right away. In fact, it was almost a whole year before I received my first offer!

March 2018, I did my first brand collaboration with Basic Invite  (a wonderful invitation company). At the time, I was a DIY bride-to-be blogging about DIY Wedding ideas and tips. I made sure every blog post had strong keywords and I shared them all over Pinterest. Little did I know brands were discovering me.

Basic Invite gifted me my gorgeous wedding invitations in return for a blog post! I was on cloud 9! On my “sponsored” blog post, I got to type “Thank you Basic Invite for Sponsoring this Post”. I felt like I made it as a blogger.

A few months later, I started revamping my Instagram with outfit photos and I started getting more collab offers here and there. I have a feeling that brands find us through hashtags! #newblogger #influencerstyle #discoverunder5k 

Tip 8: The power of Flat Lays

Fast forward to December 2018, I shared a flat lay the sweatshirt that may have changed my life…haha!

For some reason, a ton of people purchased that sweatshirt via my affiliate link. (I posted so many gorgeous sweaters prior and of course the most casual sweatshirt beats them all haha) 

A few weeks later, I received an offer to work with that the retailer of that sweatshirt! Little old me with 2k Instagram followers and a major retailer collab?! To this day, I still can’t believe it. I actually just celebrated my 1 year anniversary of working with this brand 🙂 All because of one flat lay. 

The best part?! I am not even a photographer! I will credit myself with having an artistic side, but these flat lays are literally taken with my iPhone 8. I just lay my clothes out on a sheet or bulletin board paper in the middle of my dining room floor and voila! Fake it until you make it, folks!

Tip 9: Haters hate for FREE

Haters will hate {for free} but you are making money, girlfriend!!

Blogging is awkward at first. I still have a hard time explaining it to people, because I don’t want to feel judged. I take photos of myself wearing cute outfits and then I post them for strangers to see. That sounds weird AF to your average Karen. Then I have to explain how I actually make money doing this… enter: skepticism, confusion… doubt. However, I would say that 90% of the people I talk to about blogging are genuinely interested and want to know more! 🙂 

Oh… then there are the mean comments that pop up every now ant then. 

I get a few sh*tty comments from time to time. It sucks, but I remind myself that I made X amount of dollars on that one little post while she/he waisted 30 seconds of her day spreading hate. 

We all get to make our own choices and to me, posting an ootd photo to inspire another woman to dress cute and feel her best far outweighs the hateful words from a struggling stranger behind a screen. My motto to haters: DON’T HATE…AFFILI-ATE. (just kidding…but really…) 

 

Tip 10: Go easy on yourself

My final tip may just be the most important. Go easy on yourself! Don’t push yourself to a point where blogging is no longer fun. If it becomes too overwhelming, take a break! (I get blogger burn out all. the. time.)

Here are some quick reminders to hopefully help you stay inspired and motivated:

• Even baby steps are progress.
• No more “I will start a blog one day”. Change it to: “Today I started my blog.”
• The bloggers on top of the “mountain” were once at the bottom.
• You don’t need wealth to be a blogger. Relate-able fashion sells!
• It’s ok to purchase clothes, review it and return. Most bloggers have admitted to doing this! Companies benefit from the sales you are generating, so they do not mind at all! Think of yourself as a sales associate wearing your store’s clothing. You can’t keep it.
• Amazon prime is your friend. Amazon products are always my top sellers!
• You don’t need 10k followers to be successful. Strategy wins over popularity.
•  There are no blogger police. No one will come after you if your blog posts are subpar. I probably have at least 10 grammar errors in this post haha…
• There isn’t a strict timeline to accomplish things. Work hard, stay authentic and enjoy yourself! 
• Haters will hate…for FREE!

On your mark, get set… BLOG! 

There ya have it! This is all basically how I got started. My ultimate goal was to turn blogging into a source of income to help with my teaching salary. Little did I know this hobby of mine could become a full-time income! I have no plans on quitting my job as a teacher yet, but I can definitely see blogging full-time somewhere in my future!

Blogging is incredibly rewarding, challenging and fun! I really hope that you feel a bit more inspired and motivated to start your blogging career. Feel free to contact me with any questions! Follow me on my instagram and DM me if you ever need any help!! I love helping you all 🙂

Best wishes!

-Lori

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