Last updated: July, 12, 2018
If you are passionate about writing about your lifestyle experience and the experience of others, if you start every new day while checking out the latest updates from your favorite online magazines and newspapers highlighting lifestyle topics, then why not try your hand at starting a lifestyle blog?
Table of contents:
- Tip #1. Decide on your niche
- Tip #2. Decide on the blogging platform
- Tip #3. Decide on the domain name
- Tip #4. Decide on the theme for your lifestyle blog
- Tip #5. Plan your content
- Tip #6. Bring Unique Style to Your Blog
- Tip #7. Create your content
- Tip #8. Find your first readers
- Final thoughts
A hobby can become your job. If you are fond of creating inspirational pieces of content and sharing these with the online community, then you can carve yourself a career while trying to turn your life passion into a profitable business.
Blogging has become more than just a means of expressing your ideas and sharing expertise with the world. A hobby of many, blogging has become one of the most proven sources of income for the talented and gifted specialists in a number of business niches. If you have knowledge and skills that you can share with the others, then creating a lifestyle blog by means of WordPress blog templates you can kill two birds with one stone. On one hand, you will still continue the things that you truly enjoy. On the other hand, you will be able to mix a pleasure with a lucrative business. How can this be achieved? Take a look at following 5 tips on how to start a lifestyle blog.
How to Start a Lifestyle Blog
One of my favorite examples of lifestyle blogs is Katie Did What. This is a WordPress blog run by Katie Michelle, a mom of a boy and a girl and a loving wife to her husband. Katie is passionate about working out and eating well. Her family is her biggest obsession. On her lifestyle blog, she shares posts about her family, the most interesting events happening in their family life, recommendation for your parents, all the things that women need to know about pregnancy and preparation for the labors, and so much more. She uploads the photos of herself and her family members to the posts from her blogs, etc. She uses her blog not only to share her expertise but also to earn money through ads and a shop page that is also integrated into the blog.
How to become a blogger? How to start a blog? What’s the approximate lifestyle blogger salary? These are the questions that worry many of us when we are just starting to take our first steps in a new and yet unknown niche. No worries. Take a deep breath and get straight to business.
Every new project starts off with a research. Whether you need to do something about the household or complete a task at work, you need to learn as much as you can about a specific matter. The same deals with starting a lifestyle blog. Examine other resources that are available in your niche. Read stories of other bloggers. This can serve as a good motivation. While looking through the publications provided by other popular names in your industry and figuring out the aspects that worked for them and attained the biggest appreciation of the audience, you can decide on the topics/techniques/approaches that will possibly be as popular on your own web resource.
Before we get straight to the 5 working tips on how to start a lifestyle blog, make sure that you do not work under the pressure. Enjoy the process while doing the things that you truly enjoy. Let your audience feel how passionate you are about the entire process. And finally, do not be upset if your lifestyle blog is not as perfect as you wanted at the launch. There is no such thing as perfection. You will be able to polish your lifestyle blog as you go along.
There are millions of things that you may think you need to do as you start off. Still, let’s try to get focused on the fundamental lifestyle blogging ideas
Tip #1. Decide on your niche
A successful and user-friendly blog should be uncluttered, with a clearly specified main objective and the core topic that you highlight in your post. Your lifestyle blog may include plenty of categories. Yet, all of them need to be related to one specific niche. By doing this, it will get so much easier to you to identify your target audience, your niche, find relevant connections with other like-minded bloggers, etc.
Finding your niche is as easy as answering two quick questions.
- What’s your biggest interest? Writing blog posts on the topics that you are most interested in and investigate in details every once in a while will present you like an expert in the niche, on whom the audience can always rely and to whom they can refer.
- Do you have any special skills that you are proud to boast? Consider highlighting those skills on your own blog. If you are enthusiastic about sports a dieting, then you can start a fitness blog. If you are fond of cooking dished from the most popular cuisines in the world, then a food blog is the best choice for you.
Answering these questions you will be able to specify the niche of your blog. Lifestyle blogging is a broad niche, so it’s OK if there will be several patterns emerging on your web resource. What you need to do is making the categories of your blog interconnected with one another, so that you will attain a well-curated lifestyle blog in the end.
Tip #2. Decide on the blogging platform
There are plenty of both free and premium solutions to pick on the contemporary. When it comes to the most popular platform for blogging, WordPress gains the first rank without any doubt. The CMS has become the preferred option of beginner and skilled webmasters. The possibilities that the platforms offer us have gone truly diverse, simple and intuitive to handle. You do not even need to have any special coding skills in order to tweak the layout of your future blog. There are a number of handy solutions and pre-designed web options to achieve the desired look and feel of an online project within drag-and-drop interfaces.
When you need to decide on whether to opt for a free or a premium platform to build your blog, the latter is a better option. The biggest benefit of freebies is the fact that you can get those without any investments. However, paid solutions feature more advantages that will only benefit your future success and revenue growth.
- As a rule, free platforms will post their own ads on your blog. You will be limited in the possibility to post your own commercials, which automatically limits your chances of generating the desired income boost.
- Free platforms do not feature technical support.
- Opting for a free solution you may expect your blog to attain a generic URL.
Premium platforms have a number of advantages over free solutions for sure. If you are not sure whether you blog will bring you as much income as you expect, you can purchase a monthly premium plan and see how well your online resource will perform in a short term.
Tip #3. Decide on the domain name
A readable domain name containing your own or brand name grows your chances to build a more reliable and trustworthy web presence. A well-written and properly chosen name of your lifestyle blog is one of the pre-defining factors of the future success of your online project.
The chosen domain name will be written at the address of your website. So, instead of leaving it like this: www.mylifestyleblog.domainhost.com, opt for a more personalized solution like www.mylifestyleblog.com. To make the choice of the domain name more effective, take into account the following quick tips.
- Make it short and easy to recollect.
- Make it easy to say and spell.
- The domain name should reflect the main message of your lifestyle blog.
- It should be one-of-a-kind.
Tip #4. Decide on the theme for your lifestyle blog
If you decide to build your lifestyle blog on the basis of WordPress, then you will get astonished by a huge variety of ready-made templates that are available either for free or for a fee. The choice of the most optimal solution for your online project is mainly based on the goals that you pursue with your blog. Alongside with a number of pre-designed themes and extensions those are compatible with, WordPress supports forums where you can find answers to the questions that you are interested in/worried about. When opting for premium WordPress themes, you can also rely on the professional assistance provided by an expert team of technical specialists. TemplateMonster provides such service for free.
Just like premium blogging platforms that have a number of advantages over the free ones, premium WordPress themes will be also a better alternative to freebies. In addition to featuring free technical support and the possibility to decide on the ads that can be displayed on you web resource, paid templates also feature premium-quality extensions, custom widgets, modules, and other options, making it possible to launch a fully-fledged and powerful blog without the necessity to invest extra cash in the purchase of additional theme options.
One of the most popular WordPress themes that can be applied to fit different purpose is called Monstroid Squared. It boasts a collection of child themes applicable to a number of topics. The layout of the template can be tweaked by means of a drag-and-drop page builder. The functionality can be expanded with a number of plugins and extensions of premium-quality.
Tip #5. Plan your content
The domain name that you select for your blog and the design of the theme that you choose for it are important. However, these are not the key factors that will make the web audience decide whether they will ever come back to your blog or not. Only helpful, informative and shareable content will motivate the audience to come back to your blog again.
When working on your publications, make sure that:
- the content that you provide is written with love and passion to the topic;
- your blog gets updated with new posts on a regular basis;
- the articles are enhanced with quality, captivating and relevant images;
- you follow good business principles;
- enjoy what you are doing or do nothing.
Start off by outlining a list of blog post ideas that are related to your niche. Before you start to write on any topic, ask yourself whether this will be useful to your readers. Running a lifestyle blog doesn’t mean that you should be focused on highlighting the routine that takes place in your life. Instead, think about sharing articles that will help your visitors find answers to some questions, make their lives easier, provide them with some tricks that they never heard about before, etc.
As soon as you come up with a list of ideas for your blog posts, put them under your main lifestyle blog categories. Add a couple of extra ideas for every category. For example, if you run sports and healthy lifestyle blog, your main categories may be dieting, working out, healthy eating. Subcategories for the workout category may include fitness, yoga, gym, etc. Think about including several post ideas under each subcategory. If you always have several ideas for your future blog posts, then it will be easier for you to pick the right topic and write a full post.
Tip #6. Bring Unique Style to Your Blog
Now that you have done all the preparation work, think about delivering a personalized touch to your blog. Luckily, there is no need to have any special coding or design skills in order to bring a unique style to your web project. You do not need to hire a web design agency or a freelancer either. Owing to such services as https://weblium.com/ that’s powered by TemplateMonster, you can receive a ready-to-go and absolutely unique web design in 2 days. Here is how it works.
In order to start your own website with Weblium, you will need to select a ready-made design that matches your topic. The selected design will be modified by the Weblium Team so that you will attain a 100% unique online project that no one else can boast. Also, you will need to fill in a form outlining your preferences in regards to the features and elements that you would like your future web project to include.
Staring a website with Weblium, you do not need to worry about the choice of a reliable hosting or a unique domain name for your blog. All this will be done for you. Unlike other popular site builders like Wix and Weebly, the do-it-for-me website builder will deliver a speed-optimized web resource with the high domain name rating straight out-of-the-box.
As soon as your site is ready, Weblium team will deliver it to you for a review. If there are any kind of fixes or enhancements that you would like to be added you can apply any of them without writing a single line of code. Your site will be delivered with a built-in drag-and-drop editor that lets you modify multiple layouts in the visual mode.
Just in case you are not happy with the final results, Weblium provides the 100% money back guarantee.
Tip #7. Create your content
As soon as you have planned your future publications, it’s time to start writing. The process of the creation of blog posts is very individual. Avery person has his or her unique writing style. All of us have our own approaches and attitudes in regards to writing short or long articles.
My posts are long enough since I try to deliver as much information to my reader as possible. I think it’s fine to write a long. However, people are not always ready to spend their time to read such posts from the beginning till the end. Many blame social media for this. So, if you ramble on too long, then people may just click away. In general, if you want to keep your audience with you and encourage them to come back over and over again, then keep your blog posts long enough to deliver the necessary pieces of content to your readers, but also short to keep the users interested in your story till the end.
Visual content is the indispensable part of any blog, site or any different project that’s present on the modern-day web. It is easier to understand the main message of a blog post and more interesting to follow the story if there are images and videos being included in your blog posts. Adding crisp, high-quality images is important for every blogger looking forward to capturing his readers’ attention. Nothing turns users off more than a blog with the visual content of poor quality.
Tip #8. Find your first readers
The fundamental thing that you need to do in order to make your blog findable is to optimize your content for search engines. Within SEO, the title of your blog post is of the top importance. It should be easy-to-comprehend yet captivating, making your blog post stand out from the rest in the search results.
Next, consider the quality of your content. You may optimize the page title and the text that it contains like a pro. However, if a person finds your article to be mediocre and leaves after reading the first abstract, your efforts will be worth nothing. It’s better to post once a month and feel confident that you have provided every reader with the best piece of content imaginable.
Do not forget to include links to other posts from your blog. By including relevant links in your articles, you show your visitors that you care about them and want to make it as easy as possible to find relevant pieces of content on your web page. Additionally, include links to other blogs that you trust, showing your readers that you want to help them find the best pieces of content in your niche.
Interact with your readers by replying to the comments that they leave on your blog. If people take time to visit your blog, read your content, and share their feedback, take some time to respond to the reflections of your readers. Doing this you can show that you appreciate the time and efforts that the users applied in order to leave a comment, as well as grow the chances that they will return to your blog in the future.
Final thoughts
When done right, blogging can bring you much more than just organic traffic from the search engines. On seeing that your blog is in demand among the readers, online advertisers can start posting placing their commercials on the pages of your blog. You can also earn from affiliate marketing and sponsored posts. The opportunities that blogging brings to you are limitless. Just try your hand at doing the things you really enjoy and launch a lifestyle blog that you will be proud of.
P.S. Maybe you have already launched such a resource and have any other useful tips for a cool start? Please speak up in comments.