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How do I start a lifestyle blog? And more importantly, how do I make money with a lifestyle blog?
If you have asked yourself these questions, you came to the right place! And, you definitely have a a good idea.
Not only is blogging a creative outlet, it can also be a money-making business. It takes very little overhead to start and run one.
It does take some time and effort, but it is well worth it. Imagine making over $1.5 Million in one year!!
That is what Michelle Gardner of Making Sense of Cents did. While her blog is more financially-focused than lifestyle, it is still a good example of a money-making blog.
If you want to know how to start a lifestyle blog and make money, this guide should help!
In this guide on how to start a lifestyle blog we will cover:
- What is a Lifestyle Blog?
- Choose a Focus and Niche
- Choose a Blogging Platform
- Pick Your Blog Name and Register the URL
- Purchase Web Hosting for Your Lifestyle Blog
- Choose a Design
- Install WordPress
- Create Must-Have Lifestyle Blog Pages
- Start Writing Blog Posts
- What are Examples of Lifestyle Blogs that Make Money?
What is a lifestyle blog?
A lifestyle blog is really just a blog where you write about your life and interests.
Most lifestyle blogs cover many everyday life subjects such as recipes, home decor, fitness or even just your personal thoughts and ideas.
In many cases, a lifestyle blog refers to a blog that is less niche-specific since it covers many subjects.
But, of course You can still choose a subject theme for your lifestyle blog if you want. A good example of that is Hollie Elizabeth whose blog focuses on beauty and fashion.
How to start a lifestyle blog in 8 Steps
Here is a step by step guide on how to become a lifestyle blogger. There are only 8 steps to starting a blog and it is pretty easy!
Step 1: Choose Your Lifestyle NIche and Focus
Before you dive into the ways of setting up your website you really should do some thinking and some researching.
There are many types of focus and many niches within the lifestyle niche that you can narrow your blog to.
You can choose to concentrate on food, or fashion, travel, home decor or health and fitness.
There are really endless options since lifestyle is sort of a catch-all. And of course, you can choose to write about more than one of these things. But sometimes focusing onto a specific niche can help the success of a blog so you may consider this.
Look at other lifestyle bloggers that you like. See what works and doesn’t work. And investigate the money making possibilities of each niche.
Look into the types of affiliate programs that are available for instance if you talk about home decor. Make sure there is good money making possibilities.
You should also of course consider what you like. You will have to spend a lot of time working on this subject, so choose something that interests you!
Step 2: Choose a blogging platform
Before you can start a lifestyle blog, you need to decide where you want it to be. All you need is a platform, or “host” for your blog site. It needs a place to live just like you!
There are many free blogging platforms out there like WordPress.com (this is different from wordpress.org and what most bloggers refer to as WordPress), Blogspot and Blogger but using one of these is not a good idea.
First of all, you won’t own your blog if you use a free blogging platform. They will.
In addition, you won’t be able to have a nice, clean url for your blog if you choose a free blogging platform.
Your web url will be your blog name tagged onto the end of their company name. For example, www.myblog.blogger.com, instead of just myblog.com.
The best platform to use to set up your lifestyle blog is WordPress.org.
You should choose WordPress.org as your platform. Do yourself a favor and take the easiest route for this by choosing a web host like Blue Host!
Just buy your own url and web hosting through a company like Blue Host which uses the WordPress.org platform automatically.
It will only cost $3.95 a month for the basic plan. In addition, if you use this link to purchase a plan, you can get your blog name registration for free.
Blue Host will set up your blog with the correct WordPress automatically, making it an easy way to start your own blog.
Using a blog platform like WordPress with Blue Host gives you a lot more options for the design and look of your blog. You will ultimately have more control and flexibility.
In addition, you will be able to add important plug-ins for additional features you may want later for your blog, like ads that can help you make money blogging.
Choosing a web host like Blue Host will make starting your blog an easy process!
Easy Click Start
Get a free domain name!
Click below to start your blog the easy way by signing up with Blue Host and get your blog domain for free. Blue Host will take you step-by-step through the set-up.
Step 3: Pick your Lifestyle blog name and register the url
One of the fun parts of starting a blog is picking the name! You have to purchase it and get a url assigned before no-one else can.
You should take some time on this step. Choosing a name is an important step in starting your own lifestyle blog.
There aren’t any set rules for blog names. It is a good idea to choose something that is easy to spell and remember.
If you already know what name you want, put the name into the tool below to find out if the .com url is available!
But, if you are really stuck choosing a name for your blog, you can try a name generator for help.
Satori Studio also has a blog name generator which narrows the results even more to ones that have available .com urls.
Once you have decided on a name for your blog, you have to register the domain. Basically claim it as yours so no one else can.
**You might also be interested in getting a logo for your blog created, you can get this done inexpensively on Fiverr.
Blue Host makes this easy to do. You can actually do steps 1 and 2 all at once on Blue Host.
If you purchase your url from a different company than the one hosting your blog site, you will have to get the blog domain transferred which is a pain.
Plus, if you sign up for a year of web hosting with Blue Host, they will give you your domain name for FREE for a whole year. This leads us to step 3!
Related Reading: How to Make Money on Fiverr Without Skills
Step 4: Purchase web hosting
In order for your lifestyle blog to be seen by the world, you need someone to host it on the internet!
Now, to be honest, I don’t really know what web hosting means exactly, just that it has something to do with the mysterious way the internet work.
And, that it is one of the necessary steps in how to start a lifestyle blog. Or any type of blog really!
As Step 1 details, it is easier to sign up for web hosting and register your blog domain in one step with Blue Host by clicking here.
And, it is super affordable at only $3.95 a month for the basic plan. Blogging is a great way to try and make money since you can start one with little-to-no up-front investment.
You don’t have to feel stressed about your business succeeding because you’ve invested money. And, you don’t have to go to a bank for a business loan to start your blog.
So basically, you’ve got nothing to lose! Take the first step to your own lifestyle blogging business to make money by signing up for a url and web hosting.
If you do have more money to invest in your blog up front, I would also recommend WP Engine as the web hosting company you use for your WordPress site.
They offer advanced “managed” hosting with improved speed and loading time, excellent customer service and you get access to all of their premium themes for free.
Other recommended web hosting alternatives to Blue Host:
Step 5: Choose a design and look for your blog
Now comes the fun part! You get to design the look of your blog. And, it is super easy!
You don’t have to know fancy computer coding. You won’t need to program anything or hire a graphic designer.
The main look of your blog will be determined by something called a “theme.” There are literally tens of thousands of possible blog themes.
Blue Host will offer you the chance to pick a theme as part of your blog set-up. You can choose one of their options during set-up, and then later spend more time choosing something else from other vendors if you want.
When looking for themes you want to make sure you choose one that is mobile friendly, SEO friendly and has the right look.
You might want to make sure you have a logo at this point as it will help you choose a coordinating theme. Or you can make your logo match the theme! You can easily get one created inexpensively on Fiverr.
Lifestyle blog theme options
There are many free WordPress themes out there if you want to keep your blog set-up costs low. Or, if you don’t mind spending a little money, can purchase an upgraded WordPress theme.
I recommend going with a paid WordPress theme. Mainly because they come with support from the people selling it. You are able to ask questions about the theme and get help when you want to change a design element or run into issues.
When you are a newbie blogger this can be a lifesaver!! I used it many times.
Elegant themes is a company that offers some beautiful design options for blogs. They have a WordPress theme called Divi that has a drag and drop builder that makes it easy to design as you go.
The nice bonus with them is for one price, you get access to all their themes options and even plugins!
Divi comes with many pre-made templates as well, below are just a few of the many options available.
Another company I recommend for blog WordPress themes is StudioPress.
Their WordPress themes are built on something called the Genesis Framework. Genesis is known to be better for your blog site performance and speed. Both important factors in your SEO.
Studio Press is owned by WP Engine, another web hosting site like Blue Host hat we already mentioned.
WP Engine however offers something called “managed” WordPress web hosting instead of the cheaper “shared” hosting option.
Managed WordPress hosting is a better way to go if you can afford the price bump as it enables improved speed for your blog and features advanced support.
If you sign up with WP Engine with this link for your web hosting, you also will get all the StudioPress WordPress themes for free. They also offer shared hosting and if you use the coupon code WPE3FREE you get 3 months free!
Here are a couple of examples of Studio Press themes:
And last but not least, is Restored 316 for premium themes. The theme on my blog is actually their Captivating theme. They are all Genesis themes and so are a great choice for speed and performance of your blog.
Step 6: Install wordpress on your blog
You have to install WordPress so that you can start building your lifestyle blog and adding actual blog posts. WordPress is actually the content management system you need to support your blog.
It allows you to apply a theme and design how your blog looks, post blog articles and even create ads so that you can make money with your lifestyle blog.
The nice thing about Blue Host is that WordPress installation is a part of the set-up process.
Once you have input your blog domain name, chosen a web hosting plan and set up an account with password, all you have to do is click a button and Blue Host will install WordPress on your blog.
You will then have a WordPress dashboard you can go into in order to write posts and edit your site.
Step 7: Create must-have Lifestyle blog pages
Once you have set up your blog with a url, a blogging platform and web hosting, you need to actually start building out the structure!
All the work of building your blog will happen in your dashboard which looks like the picture below.
From here you can create pages, write blog posts and even create ads to display that will help you make money!
There are some essential pages you will need on your blog which are easy to create.
Creating these pages is a fast process, you just need to click on “Pages” and then “Add new” from your WordPress dashboard as you can see in the image below.
About Page
When people visit your lifestyle blog, they want to know the back story. They want to know who you are and what your blog is about. Your About page is a must-have for this.
It doesn’t have to be that long, just some general information about you and your blog Telling a personal story can help create connection with your blog readers, and keep them wanting to come back.
Check out this in-depth tutorial on how to create the best about us page.
Contact Us Page
This is an extremely important page! Your readers need a way to contact you. Plus, eventually when you start making money potential sponsors and advertisers may want to reach out as well.
So, creating a contact page when you first start your lifestyle blog is crucial. The best way to build your contact page is to include a pre-made contact form.
This allows people to quickly input their information and a message, click send and it comes straight to your inbox.
There are many contact form options out there, WP Forms and Ninja Forms are two that work well. They both offer premium versions that you have to pay for, but when you are first starting your blog the free version is all you need.
Privacy policy
I know, this doesn’t sound very exciting. But it is something you are actually legally required to have.
It doesn’t have to take up valuable real estate in your blog header though, you can set this page to show in the footer (the bottom of your blog.)
The privacy policy is a statement or a legal document that states how a company or website collects, handles and processes data of its customers and visitors.
But, you don’t have to be a lawyer to write it. You can use a privacy policy generator online like this one.
Step 8: Start Writing Blog Posts
Of course, once you have set up your lifestyle blog you have to start writing!
Content is key, so publish blog posts as often as you can. But make sure you are following the rules of SEO in order to make your blog posts rank.
Here are just a few Lifestyle blogging SEO tips:
- Do keyword research (Keysearch is an excellent tool to help) for blog post ideas
- Write epic content
- Get backlinks to your lifestyle blog
If you really are serious about making money blogging, I suggest making one key investment as you get started. Purchase the course Stupid Simple SEO.
While it is a little pricier than some other options, it is packed with absolutely essential information to develop a successful blog.
And, buying it when you first start your blog will help you give yourself the best chance for success. It is the ONE investment you most need to make in my opinion.
What to do after you’ve started your lifestyle blog
Setting up your blog is just the beginning. And, writing blog posts is only part of the blogging business. There are some other key elements you will need to pay attention to.
Install WordPRess plugins
One of the best things about using WordPress.org as the platform for your blog is the fact that you can customize it easily with plugins.
The next step after starting your blog is to install plugins you need. There are plugins for literally everything.
From contact us forms, to security for your site, to automatic back ups. If there is a feature you want to add to your blog, you can bet there is a plugin that will allow you to do that. And there are plenty of free plugins to use.
Here are a few plugins you will want to install right away:
- Yoast for SEO
- Updraft Plus for back ups of your blog (While your host will back up your site, this is also good to have in place for when you’ve edited a blog post for an hour and somehow it didn’t save!) It has saved me many times from tears.
- Akismet for anti-spam. This is a must-have. It will keep your posts from getting hundreds of spammy comments you have to waste time individually removing.
- Contact Form 7 so you can install contact us forms on your lifestyle blog
- WP Smush to compress your images so your site speed doesn’t slow down
- WP Rocket caching plugin for speed and performance of your blog
Promote your blog
You must also work on promoting your lifestyle blog if you want to make money.
The more traffic you have, the more successful it will be.
Here are a few tactics for blog promotion:
- Building relationships with other bloggers
- Growing your social media following
- Media outreach
- Gaining backlinks to your blog from other websites
Start Social media pages
Your lifestyle blog should have some associated social media. In the beginning, it is best to choose one primary platform that you can focus on building.
It can be hard when you start your blogging journey to have enough time to do everything. Plus, if you focus on just 1-2 social media platforms, you can really grow them and help pull more blog traffic in.
Blog consistently
You will want to maintain a regular and consistent schedule of creating lifestyle blog posts. It can help with SEO and Google like consistency as well as your readers.
In addition, the more content you have, the more possible traffic you will get.
How to Make Money as a Lifestyle Blogger
Once you have started your lifestyle blog, you have to figure out how to make money from it!
Of course as mentioned, building traffic will help but you want to make sure you are taking advantage of that traffic.
And, turning visitors to your blog into dollars in your pocket.
Here are a few ways to make money blogging:
Affiliate marketing
If you want to know how to start a lifestyle blog and make money, look no further than affiliate marketing.
This is where you promote products and basically get a commission when someone clicks through your affiliate link to that product and they buy it.
There are many companies out there that offer you money to be an affiliate. Amazon is a big one!
If you include affiliate links in your lifestyle blog posts to any amazon product and someone clicks through and buys, you will make money! You just have to sign up to be an amazon affiliate.
You should be including affiliate links in every blog post you write in order to give yourself more chances to make money blogging.
Some other good sites for affiliate marketing for lifestyle blogs that include multiple accounts are CJ affiliates and Rakuten.
Take the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course for an in-depth guide on how to make money as an affiliate marketer.
Ads
Another way to make money blogging is of course with ads. You can place ads on your blog and every time they get seen or clicked on, you will make revenue.
But, I do recommend you wait on placing ads until you are getting some decent traffic. Ads can slow down your site, and in the beginning when you are working on your SEO you need your blog to be as fast as possible.
You also will need a decent amount of blog traffic to make money from advertising. But once you are making some headway with your blog traffic, join an ad network like Media.net, or Ezoic.
Mediavine is one of the most popular ad networks to join that provides good revenue. However, they have a minimum traffic requirement of 50,000 sessiosn per month for you blog to be accepted. #goals!
Digital products
You can sell your own products to make money blogging. Digital products can be anything from a day planner pdf, to Pinterest templates for use on Canva.
There is a lot of demand for digital products, and a lot of potential money to be made for something with low overhead.
Courses
Another way to make money as a lifestyle blogger is by creating and selling courses. You can make your own course on everything from how to blog, how to knit, or tips for entrepreneurs.
Whatever your area of expertise is, make a course and sell it. It will take some time to write and create one, but then you can make money off of it for years to come.
Teachable is an excellent site to get set up on to host and sell your online courses.
Sponsorships
Another money-making opportunity for lifestyle bloggers is something called a sponsorship.
A sponsored blog post is simply when you get paid by a company to write a post about their product or company.
It is like an ad, but written to be a blog post. It could be a recommendation or a product review and there are a few things you can do to get them.
Whatever the sponsoring company might be looking for, but it is money in your pocket! As your blog grows, you may even want to create a page advertising sponsored posts.
The most important part of starting a lifestyle blog and making money is that you start TODAY! So, what are you waiting for?
If you are looking for more tips on how to blog check out my Blogging category!
successful Lifestyle blog Examples That Make Money
One of my favorite examples of a lifestyle blog is Cup of Jo which covers many subjects such as style, design, relationships and food. While I’m not sure of the income she makes, her blog receives around 5 million views a month!
Chasing Foxes is another one of the well known lifestyle blogs that makes money. While they haven’t published an income report in a long time, at last record few years ago they were making over $10k a month.
Needless to say, the husband and wife couple quit their day jobs and spend their lives traveling now! If you want to know how to start a successful lifestyle blog, look at what she has done.
Abby Lawson of Just a Girl and Her Blog makes over $40,000 a month! So yes, you can make money from a lifestyle blog. A lot of money!
Most of these succesful lifestyle bloggers make their money from ads, affiliate marketing and sometimes digital products and courses.
Why Create a lifestyle blog?
There are many benefits to blogging. Money is of course the number one reason you should start a wordpress blog.
And if you are making good money like most successful lifestyle bloggers, you can quit your full time day job. You might be able to travel or stay home with your kids while still earning a full time income.
In addition, it can be fun to run a blog. If you are an entrepreneur and you are creative and like marketing you may really enjoy having your own blog.
Tips for starting a lifestyle blog
Before you get started with your blog, here are a few tips to help guide you!
- Research other lifestyle blogs to figure out what is successful and what you would like in your own blog.
- Talk to other bloggers for help and support.
- Create a strategy and a plan for your blog.
- Create and maintain a schedule for working on your blog.
- Educate yourself first. Learn all the tips you can from others that will help you be successful.
What makes a successful lifestyle blog?
There are a lot of ingredients to a successful lifestyle blog.
For one thing, it does take a lot of work! You will have to devote some time and effort into blogging.
You have to cover all the bases too, blog promotion, monetization, SEO and more.
And, if you want to make money, you have to spend a little money. Investing in your blog can help get you to that next level of lifestyle blogging.
General Tips for Blogging Success
It can be challenging to find success as a blogger, so here are some tips I’ve discovered on my blogging journey to help you.
SEO SEO SEO
Yes, I keep repeating this. But, if you don’t work on your blog with search engine optimization in mid you simply won’t find success!
You must do keyword research, and you must do it the right way. When I first started my blog, I thought I was doing keyword research correctly. But I wasn’t and I wasted time.
Which is why I recommend you start with the Stupid Simple SEO course.
Educate Yourself and Study Other Successful Lifestyle Bloggers
You should always be learning and before you even start the blog, get as much education about how to be successful in it that you can.
Read about how other successful bloggers did it and copy what they did! Don’t just blindly start a business like this and try to do everything on your own. Leverage the success (and failures) of others.
Publish Consistently
For whatever reason, publish blog posts consistently is important. You can choose just to publish once per week when you are first starting out.
But try to maintain that schedule and ideally publish each week on the same day.
There is also something called content velocity that can help your blog grow quickly. So, if you can publish even more posts each week it can be beneficial.
Consider paying for additional posts from a content company or freelance writer so you aren’t doing all the work yourself.
Focus on One Social Media Platform
Blogging involves a lot of work. And you could end up spreading yourself too thin. You might think you should get on all the social media channels possible to promote your blog but don’t!
You won’t be able to succeed on them all. Choose one social media platform like Pinterest, or Instagram and just focus on that until it is truly built up and doing well before you start another social channel.
Invest a Little Money
You can start your blog with little to no money. You just need to pay for web hosting if you want to go it as cheaply as possible.
However, if you plan to make money blogging then I recommend investing a little. You can spend money on additional content to help get content velocity and grow your blog more quickly.
And, most importantly if you are careful, you can purchase some white hat back links here and there or pay a freelancer to do HARO queries on your behalf for links.
Tools you need for Successful blogging:
There are a lot of helpful blogging tools you will want to make starting and running your blog even easier. Some of these are quite simply things you can’t live without it!
My number one tip for starting a successful lifestyle blog and making money is to take the Stupid Simple SEO course.
While it is a course that is more expensive than the average one, the tactics and plan you are taught will make a HUGE difference in the success of your lifestyle blog.
I can’t recommend it enough!
Here are some other tools you will need:
- Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course
- ConvertKit for email automation and landing page conversions Or Constant Contact works as well
- Keysearch for keyword research
- Elegant Themes for design themes
- Canva for graphic design
- Stupid Simple SEO course for Sear Engine Optimization tactics
- Fiverr for freelance designers
Frequently Asked QUestions
Does a LIfestyle Blog make money?
Yep lifestyle blogs do make money! And they can make a LOT of money! However, it will take a lot of work and a lot of time to do that.
How Much do Lifestyle Bloggers Make?
How much you make as a lifestyle blogger can vary. There are some lifestyle bloggers making as much as $1 million a year.
And there are likely others only making a few hundred dollars. According to ZipRecruiter, the average hourly pay for a lifestyle blogger is $35 an hour.
But a lifestyle blogger salary may be hard to accurately estimate since not as many people may report their income as in corporate jobs.
How Does a lifestyle blog Make Money?
A profitable lifestyle blog makes money just like any other wordpress blog. Here are the main ways lifestyle blogs generate money:
- Affiliate marketing
- Advertising revenue
- Sponsored blog posts
- Selling products owned by the blog
- Selling courses
Why Should You BEcome a Lifestyle Blogger?
Owning your own blog is an excellent business and way to make money. Especially if you like writing and you love marketing like SEO and social media.
It is a great way to fill your time and an excellent challenge that can be super lucrative if you keep at it.
How to start a lifestyle blog for beginners final thoughts
We hope you liked this guide to starting your own lifestyle blog! As a blogging beginner, if you follow the steps outlined you will be on your way in no time.
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