‘Fashion Blogging‘ was a big trend and it continues to be so in upcoming years as well. Fashion bloggers are followed like celebrities nowadays. They write about latest fashion trends, personal styles, dress codes, event and theme based styling and a lot more. Based on what they write and share they get readers on their blog, subscribers for their Youtube channel, thousands of followers on Instagram and other social medias like Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. These readers and followers engage with what they write and share on their blogs and social media accounts.
Fashion Bloggers make money through their social media accounts and blog traffic. They promote specific products, brand campaigns, help build brand awareness, promote new product launches and all such activities related to fashion industry through their blog and social channels. Fashion Bloggers get paid for each and every endorsement they sign (be it promoting a product or launching a brand campaign). The amount of money made by each and every blogger differ based on the ‘influence capacity‘ they hold in terms of monthly blog traffic, email subscribers, the number of followers on social channels etc.
Before going deep let’s dig a little to see the Top 3 Fashion Bloggers.
GalMeetsGlam by Julia Engel
Julia Engel started GalMeetsGlam back in 2011 while she was in college studying business. Julia’s story is very much similar to many successful full-time bloggers out there like Darren Rowse and Pat Flynn in the sense that they all started working on their blog (initially) as a hobby finding free time after their day jobs. After working for 2 years on her blog part time, Julia decided to quit her day job and go full time with GalMeetsGlam in 2013. She never looked back since then. Now she has an established full-time business through her blog and its followers (which includes social media followers which she got from the popularity of her blog and its contents). Julia is truly an inspiration for anyone planning to take up blogging as a full-time or part-time business venture. She is your idol if your blogging venture is supposed to be in the fashion industry!
Julia makes money via Affiliate Marketing and Sponsored Posts. If you are curious how it’s done, take a look at her post- Blush Pink Dress – Red Coat. She promotes all those outfits she wears on those photographs through this blog post (be it the Maje dress, the Vince coat or the Mansur Gavriel bag). For another example, take a look at her blog post- A day in Charlotte with Lela Rose -where she promotes another set of products. She has not disclosed her actual income from online business (via her blog, Instagram etc) anywhere. However based on some web sources, she makes above $1Million a Year.
Quick Facts about GalMeetsGlam
| Monthly Traffic | 3,000,00+ Unique Visits (approx) |
| Followers | 1 million+ on Instagram |
| Income | Above $1 million a Year |
| Monetized via | Affiliate Marketing + Sponsored Posts |
| Major Affiliates | ShopStyle and RewardStyle |
So far we have seen 3 outstanding fashion bloggers and learned a bit about how much money they make. You should be inspired by now to start your own fashion blog, isn’t it? Just by writing this much, I feel charged to move ahead in my online businesses. If you are passionate about the fashion industry, have an eye for good designs and latest trends, have a flair to work hard, then you definitely can make the success with a fashion blog. So let’s begin to learn how to start or create a fashion blog from scratch. I assume you are an absolute beginner with no prior knowledge in starting websites/blogs.
I’ve divided the whole article into 2 sections.
- Section 1: How to create a fashion blog
- Section 2: How to make money from your fashion blog
How to Create a Fashion blog in 4 steps
Are you amazed at the heading? Well, you read it right. You can create your first blog in just 4 steps. The very first one being finding the right domain name and registering it. The second step is to find a good web hosting solution, buy the hosting account and setup the hosting account. The third step is to choose the right platform for your blog and no other platform is as good as WordPress for a blog. The 4th and final step is nothing but to start blogging or start publishing contents.
Step 1: Register your Domain Name
First of all, you need a domain name for your fashion blog. If you don’t have an idea what a domain name means read all the tutorials given below. A domain name is a name represented by a blog. In the above example of Julia Engel, her blog domain name is Galmeetsglam.com. Domain name of this blog is – RahulDigital
You have to find the right domain name for your fashion blog. Read our guide on – How to Find a Good Domain Name for your Blog. This article explains different techniques in finding the right domain name.
When it comes to ‘fashion blogging‘, you can opt to choose a generic fashion related name like WhatToWear, Fashionista or a more personally branded domain like GalMeetsGlam or WendysLookBook. The choice should be based on your business ambitions with the blog.
Once you finalize your domain name, the next step is to register it. We have a well-explained tutorial on – How to Register a Domain Name.
Note: – You can get a Free Domain Name (free of cost) while signing up for a web hosting account with BlueHost. So if you don’t already have a web hosting account (explained in Step 2), we advise you to register the domain name while signing up for the hosting account as you can save around 10USD.
Step 2: Select Your Web Hosting
Once you have finalized your domain name, the next step is to find the right web hosting for your blog. A web hosting account is basically a server space to store your blog’s files and contents. There are 3 different types of web hosting account (as a primary classification) to choose from – 1) Shared web hosting 2) VPS web hosting and 3) Dedicated web hosting. Beginners and first-time bloggers are always good to go with Shared web hosting.
We are running around 50+ WordPress based blogs and websites on our own. In addition, we have hosted over a 100+ WordPress based websites for our clients (as part of the services offered in our Web Development company). Based on our experience, we have shortlisted the top 3 hosting companies that offer the best Shared Hosting solution for WordPress.
Step 3: Install WordPress
Once you’ve registered with bluehost, you need to go to the cPanel and then select the one click installer option. After all, you need to select the domain name(the fashion blog domain name which we registered newly), and install WordPress into that domain. You need to set a database as well. If you don’t know, a database is where the data gets stored. WordPress is developed in Php platform and the database is Mysql. All your blog contents will be stored in this database. The content you see in any blog is been pulled from their database. You need to set a username and password for your database and another user name and password for your WordPress back end administration(where you can login and manage the blog posts). Click install, that’s all and you are done!
How to make money from a fashion blog and get paid.
You can make money from your fashion blog . Number of fashion bloggers live full time with the money made from their fashion blog.
So, how do they get paid for fashion blogging? Let’s have a look.
10 ways to make money from your fashion blog
1. Affiliates
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways in getting paid for your fashion blog. Haven’t heard about affiliate marketing? Its a simple concept of promoting 3rd party products in your blog. Okay, so how’ll you be paid promoting a 3rd party product? You will be having a unique link(url) to the third party product(may be a fashion apparel in our scenario) and if a customer buy a product following this ulink(unique for you) the corresponding affiliate program will pay you.
There will be predefined commissions for the products sold. The payment threshold for most of these affiliate programs are 100$(means you’ll only get paid once you touch 100$).
In the fashion niche, the most popular affiliate programs are
Rewardstyle
Reward style is the most popular affiliate program used by fashion blogs. It’s affiliate program has been developed exclusively for the fashion bloggers.
The best thing about reward style is the average commission rate of 10%(this vary as per brands) , or in other words, you’ll get 50$ if someone makes a purchase of 500$.
Amazon associates
Amazon associates is the affiliate program of amazon. FYI, amazon has the biggest affiliate network in this world. Billions of dollars are paid to the amazon affiliate marketers. You can navigate into the amazon fashion and promote the products mentioned in this category through your blogs.
Amazon not only offers commission to the purchase made, but also to every purchase made by the customer in the next 24 hours. This makes amazon, the most favorite affiliate program for a blogger.
The commission rate for amazon in fashion category is around 6%, but this can improve on accordance with the number of sales .
2. Pay per click program
Pay per click program pays you once a visitor clicks ads in your fashion blog. You don’t need the customer to make a purchase to earn. Lets have a rough look at the shopstyle ppc program for fashion bloggers.
Shopstyle
Shopstyle is a fashion shopping search engine that has products of a number of brands incorporated under one platform.
Shopstyle has an make money program Shopstyle Collective through which fashion bloggers can create affiliate links of the mentioned products and promote it through their fashion blog. The best thing about shopstyle is that you’ll get paid per clicks, which means the customer don’t need to make a purchase of the product for you to get paid. On the flip side, you wont get commissions if a customer makes a purchase.
You can create links to individual products or widgets(a collection of products). To promote an individual product, you can make your unique link, copy it and paste in your fashion blog along with the image. To promote multiple product all in one, go to Create > Create Widget and you can select the products you are intending to promote(from shopstyle collective), select the dimensions and select Publish. This will generate a a javascript code and you can embed this in your blog’s sidebar, content or wherever.
Quick notes
- How will you be paid: Through paypal
- Shopstyle is very easy to join
- Pay per click program
- Allows you to share affiliate link on pinterest
3. Brand Collaboration
Once you’ve built your brand, you can endorse other brands. As you know, fashion is an industry crowded with tons of brands and these brands are looking to promote their brands through various methods. This is why they are looking to collaborate with fashion bloggers(in other words, fashion influencers).
You can promote products of these brands making a deal with them. Well, the deal can vary as per the collaboration, it can be for a time period, it can be for number of blogposts. Its all up to the blogger and brand.
4. Sponsored Posts
Make money sponsored posts fashion blog
Sponsored post is a good method through which a fashion blogger can make money. There are many fashion brands out there looking to promote their products through blogs. Once you have a set of readers, you can approach these brands(or they’ll come to you if you become that popular) for sponsored posts. There are many online program that’ll give you around $600 for a blog post endorsing a brand. momitforward is one such kind of program.
Some of the popular websites through which you can apply for sponsored post in a fashion blog are,
1. Choies
Choies welcomes fashion bloggers to promote their products. You can get paid and avail special discounts for promoting their products.
You can apply to choies as a fashion blogger to promote their products.
2. Oasap
Oasap is another good brand that offer cash, freebies and reward points to fashion bloggers. Check their sponsored posts page to read more.
3. Stylemoi
Stylemoi has a bloggers program that allows fashion bloggers to have sponsored products. The only criteria is that the blog should have a minimum of 5000 followers on any major social media network.
4. Shein
Shein sponsored posts program doesn’t says about paying for product promotion but they do give clothing worth $40-$200 a month for fashion bloggers. The major criteria for the approval of your fashion blog is to have 1000 followers for your blog and 5000 followers in any major social media network.
Apply for Shein’s Fashion blogger program.
5.Fashion Photography
I personally know many fashion bloggers who get paid for fashion photography. Many fashion models or wannabe fashion models(not the bigger ones, but the smaller ones) are looking for a fashion photographer to make a portfolio. If you have that photographic skills, you can offer your service as a fashion photographer. And now a days, many brands are also hiring fashion bloggers to take photographs. Showcase yourself as a fashion photographer throughout your blog and offer your fashion photography as a paid service.
6. Be a fashion model
Being a model is the dream of every fashion enthusiasts. You are building a brand through your fashion blog, if you check this fashion blog of Julia Engel, you can see that she is building a brand of herself.
A fashion blogger often upload photos in the latest fashion wears. Or in other words, he/she is the model of their fashion blog. Once you build a readership, you can offer modelling as a service and you can get hired as model and make money.
A good real life example would be Aimee Song, from songofstyle.com. She do have more than 4 million followers in her instagram account, which means she is a style sensation and is model who has lots of followers. This massive amount of followers can bring in more brand to her modelling and thereby more money.
7. Write an ebook about fashion tips/style guide/fashion blogging etc.
When it comes to 2016-2017, a digital product selling is one of the most profitable online businesses. The biggest advantage of having a digital product is that it is a one time investment business. Once it reaches a break even, all the sales will generate 100 percent profit to the creator.
Ebook is such one digital product through which you can generate tremendous amount of profit. Once you build some traffic to your fashion blog, you can write some ebook about fashion tips,fashion photography or something, or even about starting a fashion blog and sharing your journey. Primarily, analyze what your reader want to hear from you and write an ebook in that niche.
Once you’ve written an ebook, set a descent price(I’d say something in the range of $10-$15) and promote this ebook on behalf of your readers. If you can achieve a conversion rate of 3-5 %,and a traffic of 500 unique visits a day, you can easily touch $6000-$7000 a month in revenue, not at all bad! right?
You can also sell your ebook through amazon ebook store and kindle store.
8. Sell a course through your fashion blog
Course selling is another good income opportunity from your fashion blog. Justagirlandherblog sells an online course(through her blog) for ($200 avg) and make great deal of money online.
9. Starting an eCommerce fashion store
Once you have a set of readers, you can convert this readers into potential customers. Theblondsalad is one perfect example of converting a fashion blog into fashion eCommerce store.
10. Helping others to start a fashion blog
If you are a regular follower of popular fashion bloggers out there, you can see them set a separate page helping other people to start a fashion blog. You can also see affiliate links to hosting and various platforms like Genesis Framework(helps bloggers to easily setup an interactive WordPress blog). Once a reader clicks and signsup these affiliate links, the fashion blogger earns money as commissions.