How to Become a Successful Lifestyle Blogger

Starting a career as a lifestyle blogger is a great journey that anyone should consider. It may take some time to grow your following right off the bat, but this shouldn’t deter you. Nobody can develop a blog magically overnight. Even the most fabulous lifestyle bloggers had to start at zero followers. Let this motivate you.

This isn’t to say, though, that there aren’t some productivity hacks you can use along the way to improve your chances of success as a lifestyle blogger. This guide will feature an in-depth look at several steps and tricks to help you become a successful lifestyle blogger. Let’s not waste any more time and dive right in.

What is a Lifestyle Blogger?

The first step in becoming a successful lifestyle blogger is actually understanding what a lifestyle blogger does and how this type of blog differs from others. In short, a lifestyle blogger focuses on taking daily occurrences within their own life or past experiences and applying them to a modern theme. It’s about sharing personal information, so this isn’t the blog type you should pursue if you are on the shy side. 

Can Blogging Actually Be Successful?

With the basic definition out of the way, you’re surely wondering whether or not lifestyle blogging can be successful. A study done mid-decade found that the average salary of a blogger is around $24,000 a year. While this may not seem like a lot on the surface, most bloggers do more than just write on their pages. The top of the line bloggers can certainly make enough to support a family. Still, over $20,000 a year from simply posting and allowing ad revenue to accumulate is certainly not a bad path whatsoever. If you dedicate yourself to a lifestyle blog, you can see success and create the foundation of a personal business. With that said, how do you start one of these blogs?

Becoming a Successful Lifestyle Blogger 101

Pick Your Niche

Every blogger needs a niche before taking the plunge to start a blog. 

Think about articles you enjoy reading and consider your own social media feeds to give you an idea of where your interests lie. Choose a subject area you have a genuine interest in; this way, blogging becomes a joy and not a chore. Great articles such as how to start a blog will inform, inspire and influence what kind of blog you ultimately set up and the niche you choose. It is designed specifically for the novice blogger and explains popular terms such as “keyword search” and “affiliate opportunities.” 

Spreading yourself too thin rarely works when it comes to blogging, and you must be an expert in your field to have any chance of success. Also, for more inspiration, look up popular bloggers who appear to be in that niche and see what their websites look like. Why are they so popular? Is there some unique feature that helps their website be successful?

Choose a Unique Domain

After deciding what niche you want to write in for your lifestyle blog, you’ll need to pick a domain. Take a good amount of time and think this decision through.  This is the domain potentially thousands or hundreds of thousands may recognize you for. Choose a domain that represents what you want your brand to be. 

Additionally, choosing the wrong domain can be a hassle down the road because changing it is not as easy as many would think. Make sure your domain is available before you even begin advertising your blog, as you don’t want to build an audience only to find out you can’t use that name.

Design an Appealing Website

After picking a domain and deciding your niche, the fun part finally arrives: designing your website. First, you will need to purchase your own little corner of the Internet using a web host such as GoDaddy or Bluehost. Try to choose a host that features one-click WordPress installation as well. WordPress is where your design center and a hub for the new blog website will be. This is the space you will use to download any themes you want to put on your website and where you post new blog articles. 

Implement and design a theme that resonates with the niche you have chosen for your blog. For example, if the niche is travel, have the homepage be travel photos. Choose a theme that represents who you are and what the blog is about. 

Write Quality Content on a Consistent Basis

Picking a theme and getting your website set up is just the beginning. Now comes the more challenging part: publishing content. Growing your blog can only be done by publishing consistently good content on your website. The keyword in that sentence is consistent. It would be a good idea to establish a simplified writing workflow so that you can keep your content ideas flowing and have them written and scheduled for publication.

Here is a collection of the 20 best lifestyle blogs to inspire your writing career; each is unique, well structured, and equally engaging. They cover a range of topics from entertainment to hobbies and fitness. Browse through them at your leisure and pay attention to their content, supporting imagery, and favorite social media platforms. 

Publishing sporadically every four months will never grow your website’s audience. Instead, pick a day or multiple days during the week and allocate those times as publishing days. Never rush a post to get something on the Internet. Write your posts in advance, and don’t be afraid to go as far as to write a week in advance either. 

Incorporate Photos Into Your Blogs

Photos should be a huge priority when you get started with your blog. Search engines prefer blog posts that use photos to break up the text, making a post far more readable. When it comes to improving search engine optimization, adding images can have a substantial difference. Search engines will actually rank photos as well as websites. If you have a photo that pertains to a certain topic, it may rank first when someone types a query into Google. This is a great way to drive traffic to your blog and just ensure your Content is readable as a whole.

Write in an SEO Friendly Way

Along the same line of thinking, writing SEO-friendly writing is a must-do for any new blog. Include a catchy title with every post, and don’t be afraid to add headings to your article. Finally, don’t forget to break up your paragraphs. Long-form content is absolutely fine, but no paragraph should go on for more than six lines. Additionally, if you plan to link to any articles or statistics, be sure that the site you are connecting to directly pertains to the writing around the link. Search engines will negatively rank web pages that use links they determine to be “spammy.” 

Join Social Media

Without a doubt, joining social media is a must for any lifestyle blogger. There are billions of monthly users on platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. These represent potential audience members for your blog. Create pages for your blog on these platforms and announce each time a new blog post has been released. Build an audience that is distinct from your blog so that you can have multiple sources for the traffic visiting your blog. 

Focus on Monetizing Your Blog

Last but not least, you are going to need to monetize your blog if you want to see any true success. Content without structure is just as bad as blogging without any monetary gain. There are a few simple ways to make money blogging that every self-respecting blogger should have up their sleeve. The first and easiest is to install software such as Google Adsense on your blog. Software such as this is responsible for the banner and column advertisements you see on every website you have visited. These ads sit on your webpage and, should anybody click-through, you receive a small amount of commission. 

As you’d expect, this isn’t highly profitable until you have a serious following. However, a great way to monetize your blog earlier on is to reach out to companies in your niche for product reviews. Show them the following you have already amassed on your blog, and tell them that you would love to give your honest thoughts on their product. Of course, if you only have a small following, their commission will likely just be giving you the product for free. When you begin to grow, though, they will start to pay you more money. 

Another easy and effective way to monetize your blog is to offer sponsored posts once you earn a fair following. Tell authors who want to write posts for your site that you are willing to let them do so for a small fee. Alternatively, offer this option to companies. Rather than writing about a specific product, you can write about a company within your niche as a whole. If you have grown popular enough, some companies may be willing to pay hundreds for a single post. 

Also, don’t forget about the social media platforms you have been developing. Social media advertising is huge nowadays, and getting involved on the side could create a great side income for your blog.

Choose Productivity Tools that Suit Your Needs

As a lifestyle blogger, you will be juggling a lot of tasks and engagements with people within your niche. If you want to properly manage all of your upcoming engagements and tick off your to-do list accordingly, you should make use of a good productivity tool like Kanban. By using a Kanban board, you get to have better visibility of your pending tasks and be able to stay on top of all the things that you need to accomplish. Check out our Content Creation board template to get started. This is especially helpful if you are collaborating with a team as a Kanban board will make it easier for you to delegate tasks.

Conclusion

There is no better time for anyone to get into the world of blogging. Everybody has the potential to be a successful lifestyle blogger because everybody has a story. All you have to do is start getting organized, apply your unique story to a particular theme or situation, and you will be well on your way to becoming a lifestyle blogger.

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