Fashion Blogging: 7 hard realities before you jump into it
Do you want to earn money and fame from your fashion blog? If so, we must emphasize beforehand that all blogging requires hard work, passion and perseverance… and fashion blogging requires a lot of it all… and earning money in this crowded field requires it even more.
1. You’ll need to update yourself on new fashion and lifestyle trends, new products, changing consumer preferences… For that, you’ll need to regularly visit fashion events and product launches, browse the web, read fashion magazines…
2. Fashion by its very nature needs celebrity endorsement… Being personal, interviewing celebrities and experts in that area, getting back-links from their web properties helps… If you do not want to invest your time in making links in the real world, you are at a big disadvantage… Being personal helps but you must analyze beforehand how much ‘personal’ you can afford to be — how much you should expose yourself.
3. Are you a known expert or celebrity in your niche? … If not, people are not likely to take your content on face value… If you intend to offer advice, do you have a degree / certificate in that area? … If you’re going to endorse products, are you ready to forego or settle for low remunerations for the sake of giving an honest opinion…
4. If you lack in celebrity quotient and expertise, you are starting with a poor base. You must look at other ways to gain a firm foothold … You can endorse or review others… Are you in a position to sell your own or a friend / company’s products and services [which should be of high quality]? … Are you in a position to run reward schemes for visitors on a long term? [This too takes time, expertise for evaluating submissions and useful ‘rewards’.]
5. There are advantages of having a good URL and hosting it on an independent webhost… but there are numerous such websites and blogs… so, unless you make it more specific and more local, you are likely to be lost in the crowd… You also need to invest time, energy and /or money on SEO to stand apart in search listings.
6. You must be good at social media management… and you’ll need to regularly spend time on Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest, also other social networking and bookmarking sites… You’ll need to comment on good blogs and your comments must contribute to ‘those blogs’ value… Networking is a must, but not ‘I’ll scratch your back and you scratch mine’ type we see on personal blog comments. It all takes big time but you must engage in the social media proactively till you are a big and respected blog.
7. A fashion blog is not a political / current affairs / medical research blog…You must have a greatly fabulous blog… You’ll need to spend time [and money, if you are not technically very good] to have great looks of the blog… You’ll need to put photos and info-graphics much more than text, and for that you need to have a source for free photographs and info-graphics and basic technical support.
Originally published at www.indiantopblogs.com on December 14, 2013.
