How to Start a Fashion Blog

If you are passionate about fashion, but aren’t sure how to start a fashion blog, then this guide is for you!

A blog is a great way to share your personal style, as well as your take on the latest trends from established designers. A blog that delivers quality content can be a great way to gain recognition as a fashion expert. While only a few bloggers are seen as true fashion icons, many lesser-known fashion blogs have gained quite a bit of mainstream attention recently, effectively launching the fashion careers of the bloggers behind them.

Why Start a Fashion Blog Now?

There are a variety of reasons to start a fashion blog, but the best reason is simply because you are passionate about fashion. I am going to assume that since you are reading this guide you are someone who is already excited about the fashion world.

With that out the way, we can turn our attention to the benefits of starting a fashion a blog.

Reason #1: It’s fun!

By starting a fashion blog not only do you get to share photos, videos, and write about fashion, but you get to connect with other people who share your interests. Communication is at the heart of blogging, so readers may leave comments on your posts. By responding to their comments you can build a sense of community on your blog, will which will allow to develop relationships and learn what types of things your readers would like for you to post about.

Reason #2: Get noticed

As you grow your blog and build up a following you will have the opportunity to network with other fashion bloggers. This not only let’s you meet new people with similar interests, but it also opens the door for publicity. If you have a great blog and put in some time into networking with other fashion bloggers you can grow your blog readership and potentially become a fashion blogging celebrity!

Reason #3: The money

Even if you don’t start your blog for the purpose of making money, it’s nice to know that fashion can be a very lucrative area. To start with, there are millions of people around the world looking for fashion and style information online, so your potential audience is enormous. Combine that with the fact that the fashion industry is quite lucrative, and you have a “perfect storm” for making money from something you love to do.

Do You Have What It Takes to Start a Successful Fashion Blog?

Building a successful fashion blog means taking the time to create and post engaging content for your readers. Typically you should post something new about once per week to start with, and possibly more often as your blog readership grows.

You also need to take the time to network with other blogs to build your readership. I go into more detail on how to do that in Step #6 of my free blogging guide.

How to Start Your Fashion Blog

Perhaps the most challenging first step to starting your blog is to come up with a name. This is known as your “domain name” (this blog’s domain name is theblogstarter.com), and it will become your online identity, so choose wisely. You can always change your domain name in the future if you like, but it is best to get it right the first time.

Once you have a domain name picked out you will need to see if it is available to register. You can check domain availability here. If your domain is available then you have the green light move forward.

The next step will be actually registering your blog and getting it setup. This free blog building tutorial will walk you through every step of the process so that you can be up and running in about 20 minutes, with no technical expertise.

Once you work through the basic steps you can turn your attention to finding an eye-catching design for your blog. If you follow the process in the tutorial you will find that designing a blog is actually very easy. There are pre-designed blog layouts called “themes” that allow you to change and customize your blog design with just a few clicks. There are a thousands of these themes available, so if you are totally lost on which one to choose here are some recommendations:

Recommended Themes for Fashion Blogs

Bandana

Bandana is a simple yet stylish theme designed primarily for fashion and photography blogs. It provides a responsive design, custom background and header and a featured images section. The default dark design is particularly great for framing and drawing attention to visual content.

Oblique

Oblique is another free theme for fashion bloggers. In addition to its responsive design, it also features a parallax header for an interactive scrolling visual experience. Other features include full color controls and direct access to Google Fonts.

fFashion

Another free and fully responsive theme for fashion enthusiasts, fFashion features a highly customizable magazine-style layout. One of its most important features is the scrolling header image as well as the integration of social sharing icons for all of the popular networks.

Clutch

Clutch is a highly original premium theme that helps to promote creativity through its interactive and responsive design. The casual layout features a slideshow-based header that also provides space for an accompanying description and a link for visitors to find out more.

Fashionista

Fashionista is one of the most popular and highest-rated free fashion themes available for WordPress. It’s a bold theme featuring plenty of whitespace to draw attention to things like visual elements and stylish typography, making it particularly suitable for magazine-style blogs.

Recommended Plugins for Fashion Blogs

Plugins provide additional functions and features to your blog, and there are thousands to choose from. While there are a few plugins every blog should have, such as JetPack, others are designed with specific subject matters in mind. This section takes a look at some of the most important plugins available for fashion bloggers.

Every blog should integrate social networking, particularly those that deal with popular topics like fashion. ShareThis provides 120 social sharing buttons, allowing you to choose the ones that are most important for you, and adds them automatically to your posts and pages. It also provides social analytics to help you track your social shares.

Ajax Post Carousel

This plugin displays your recent posts as a carousel with a thumbnail to represent each page of content. The animated widget is particularly good for fashion blogs due to its interactive and visual nature. It is also extensively customizable thanks to the ability to select posts by category, time published or even completely custom taxonomies.

Image Zoomer

Any great fashion blog needs high-resolution images to truly shine, but making them literally jump off the page isn’t always easy. The simple Image Zoomer plugin allows visitors to zoom in on any image on the page simply by moving the mouse pointer over it.

Post Template

Many fashion blogs have one or more daily or weekly features rather like a newspaper or magazine. Post Template allows you to create templates for posts that belong in a series so that you don’t need to format each post separately.

What Now?

The first step to getting started is get your blog registered and online.

Once that is done you can focus on customizing your blog design.

When your customization is complete you will need to start creating content and promoting it. It is important to publish new content regularly (about once per week) and to regularly promote your blog on social media and by networking with other fashion blogs. There are some tips for promoting your blog for free here.

If you are having trouble getting started, or just have a some questions, feel free post in the comments section or contact me.