Creating a fashion blog for many seems to be similar to any other blog creation strategy. There are thousands of blogs that talk about clothes and how to do everything related to fashion, but only, a small percentage of those sites make money from their pots and traffic.
The reason is simple, blogging in general, needs hard work and a passion, at the same time.
When you start the first steps, you will love what you’re doing and get the energy to go all the way. You can build a blog that ranks well in Google in the long term, and that’s what will make you money. In this post, I’ll share some important tips, and how to start a fashion blog and succeed.
A short, memorable domain name
When it comes to domain names, you have to be careful when picking fashion blog names. People will remember your blog Url if it’s clean and easy to read. It’s highly recommended to use the word “Fashion” on your domain, and of course, don’t go all the way with words, you need 3 words at the maximum.
You can use any of the online keyword suggestion tools to find good keywords with a good amount of traffic and then, use your domain at the beginning if possible.
Never use numbers and hyphens in your domain name. Make it short, clean, and modern. But also, make sure to focus on niche fashion, which will make things easy to manage in the future, and you can rank better with good content.
If you want to start a pregnancy fashion blog, for example, make sure to use a short name related to that exact niche, and everything will be fine.
Forget monetization for the first year
This seems bad news if you’re looking for a money-making blog. But, when you work hard the first year, you will make a real income from your fashion posts and replace your actual job, and even, make more revenue than you expect. But please listen to me, don’t use banner ads like the others who fail in a few weeks and leave their blogs forever.
You will never make a dollar with that ugly banner that slows down your site and looks bad for visitors. New blogs receive few visitors, and it’s not possible to make money from that number. Instead, focus on your content, create helpful articles, and good ideas.
You can use some links as an affiliate marketing business. But remember, the first year will be dedicated to building your blog as a real business. So, put all your energy there and work smart, at the same time. Then, the result will come later.
You need a CDN
Unlike all the other types of blogs, fashion blogs, use large image sizes, and every post includes images as the majority of the content. That means more loading time, even, if your server is fast. This is not an option, but you have to use a content delivery network like MaxCDN for your blog.
It will reduce the loading time significantly by serving your images and static file from the CDN server directly. That will help to rank your blog better for that speed. Of course, the user experience is the main goal here.
Use a fast and clean theme
If you have a theme and you want to use it, make sure that it loads fast, and that’s simple and clean as a code. There is no need to waste your money with good-looking themes that are not optimized properly for speed and most importantly for SEO.
The wrong thing to do is use free themes, but the most dangerous thing is premium themes from the wrong place. The theme should be secure to avoid hacks, at the same time, it should be fast and professional.
Use a few colors and compare your design with popular blogs. Learn from their mistakes and what you think needs optimization on their sites, then, make the difference with your blog design. There are no better themes than StudioPress.
Optimize your Images
This is not a hard job to do, you need to use images with the minimum sizes. If your post area width is 500 pixels, for example, make sure that you resize your image to that width before uploading it. You need to save space and make images load fast.
You will waste your time and blog speed with large images. You can also use any of the image compression tools like Photoshop or any other, just google it and you will find a friend paid tools to use.
There is an amazing free WordPress plugin called WP Smush.it that will compress your images automatically when you upload them. It will help to make your images compressed and optimized for speed without losing their quality.
Fast homepage
If you take a look at some fashion blogs, you will notice that the majority, if not, all of them, are loading slowly, but, when you think about the content that they put on their homepages, you can easily understand what you have to do.
The big mistake is that these people are using full post content on their front pages, with lots of photos, and that’s what will affect their page’s ranking without a doubt. Imagine a blog with good content, but, that takes one minute, at least, to load?!
That’s horrible and thousands of people will never wait until the full-page loads. People use phones on the go, and you need to make things professional, easy, and fast.
What you have to do is to use excerpts instead of full content on your home page. At the same time, limit your number of posts to show, for some 5 to 10 posts as maximum. You will notice a good result with a fast blog, people scan titles and the post excerpt will tell the story.
So, if they need that post, they will click and read it. Make the difference and give readers a reason to stay on your blog. Speed is one of the killer arms.
How to make a fashion blog
The best way to succeed, is to learn from the other’s mistakes, and how they solved their problems. In the end, you need to use the right methods to succeed.
I recommend using this guide by Glee Lea, she is a successful full-time fashion blogger woman with experience. You will learn how to create the right fashion posts that rank well in Google, and how to succeed using his exact method.
These are my tips for today, and I’ll share more in the next posts, just make sure to subscribe.
