If you’re curious about what you should do to learn how to start a beauty blog, you’re in the best place you can be. Our experts have explored the options available to those interested in starting a beauty blog and have come up with one of the most comprehensive, complex, and useful guides for beginner and professional bloggers.
To become a beauty blogger is something many of us sometimes dream about. The lifestyle of a beauty blogger is generally appealing, but we usually tend to underestimate the amount of effort and professionalism that goes into creating a credible identity online and becoming a voice in this competitive beauty industry.
Quick Guide to Starting a Beauty Blog
Here’s a quick summary of the critical steps involved in creating a beauty blog:
- Step 1: Identify Your Beauty Blog Niche
- Step 2: Choose a Name and Secure Your Domain
- Step 3: Select a Hosting Provider
- Step 4: Install WordPress
- Step 5: Select a WordPress Theme
- Step 6: Customize Blog Settings
- Step 7: Install Essential Plugins
- Step 8: Plan and Create Captivating Posts
- Step 9: Promote and Expand Your Beauty Blog
- Step 10: Make Money With Your Beauty Blog
Now, explore each aspect in more detail to ensure you’re well-equipped to make your beauty blog successful.
10 Steps to Start a Beauty Blog: A Detailed Guide
The steps to create a beauty blog are relatively straightforward. Still, some parts are slightly unintuitive, and this guide will make the whole process much more manageable.
1. Identify Your Beauty Blog Niche
Considering the vast beauty niche and the varied needs of people interested in beauty, your blog must be narrowly niched. Beauty niches can range from simple make-up tutorials to fashion advice and product reviews.
Since the need to be attractive is probably one of our deepest desires as a species, pushed by social standards and many other factors, the subject has been quite extensively discussed in the blogosphere, and some of these blogs have become hugely successful.
That is not to say that it is game over for anyone trying to enter the world of beauty blogging today. One thing that is always true about beauty is that trends change dramatically from season to season. That means you can always take advantage of trends to push yourself forward.
Here are some clever niche ideas:
- Beauty subscription box reviews
- DIY beauty product recipes
- Cosplay makeup
- Skincare routine beauty tips from dermatologists
- Skincare and makeup on a budget
One important thing to remember is that choosing your niche will also require a certain level of introspection. You should pick a topic you are familiar with, interested in, and experienced with to a certain extent. That way, it will be much easier for you to stay on top of things when you plan your content strategy.
2. Choose a Name and Secure Your Domain
Picking your blog’s name can be a difficult task to a certain extent. You should always aim for something that is representative of your niche and somehow describes your main topic with relative accuracy.
Your name should also be short, witty, and easy to remember. Once you’ve decided on a name for your beauty blog that you feel represents you and your goals, it’s time to find and purchase the domain name for your blog’s address.
Make sure to find a domain that is identical or almost identical to your blog’s name, as that is a great way to improve your site’s credibility.
3. Select a Hosting Provider
Your website must be hosted on a server for people to visit it. That means you must find a hosting provider.
There are many things to consider when choosing your hosting provider. You will need to find a sweet spot of balance between performance and costs.
Several other choices are available, and the hosting offers are generally quite good if you know where to look. You can save time by choosing one of the hosting providers we recommend as great all-rounders.
If being cost-effective is your top concern, we understand that too. Here are the best cheap WordPress hosting providers that are perfect for those who are looking for affordable options.
4. Install WordPress
While there are several other blogging platform options out there, WordPress remains the best choice for a beauty blog.
Installing WordPress on your beauty blog is quick and easy, and depending on the hosting provider you choose, it can be done in different ways.
The most commonly used WordPress installation process follows the steps below:
- Log into Your Hosting Control Panel. You can do this from your web hosting provider’s platform or directly through cPanel, Froxlor, or whatever the control panel of choice is.
- Locate the WordPress Installer and Start the Installation Process. The most common option is to use the one-click installer found in the control panel, in the service tabs of Softaculous, Fantastico, or other alternatives.
- Enter Your Site Information. This is where you start customizing the basics of your blog and establish your login method for the WordPress dashboard. Enter your site’s name, set up your login data, and fill in any other required information.
- Access Your WordPress Dashboard. Immediately after the setup is complete, you can log in to your WordPress Dashboard, where you can continue the process of creating your beauty blog.
5. Select a WordPress Theme
As you know, WordPress themes are the foundation of any site built this way. Beauty blogs have quite a high standard requirement when it comes to design.
While having a nice-looking blog is important, you should also consider that functionality is extremely relevant. That is why we recommend the Indigo theme for beauty blogs.
It is a very permissive theme, one that can be used for both text-oriented and visual-oriented sites, and one that allows you to shine through the blog you are building without worrying about the technicalities behind it too much.
If the Indigo theme doesn’t perfectly align with the unique needs of a beauty blogger, then feel free to choose another one of our recommendations:
These are all great choices for a beauty blog and will come with great features for you and your readers.
Choosing a WordPress theme can be daunting, so we recommend taking as much time as necessary to make the perfect choice. You don’t want to realize too late that you need a different theme.
Installing a theme is relatively easy when you are just starting out, but things can get rather difficult if you already have a lot of content on your website.
6. Customize Blog Settings
Once your theme is installed, you must configure it to design and set up your beauty blog. To make things easier for yourself, follow the steps below.
- Personalize Your Site Title and Tagline from the Settings section. Here, you will set your blog’s name and a short tagline describing it to your visitors.
- Design an Intuitive Navigation Menu from Appearance > Menus. Your beauty blog posts and all the information you will share are worth nothing if it is not easily available to your readers. You need to ensure a good structure and a great menu for your visitors to be able to navigate your valuable content easily.
- Select Your Homepage Layout from Settings > Reading. First impressions last. Ensure your homepage is the best-looking version of what you can deliver. A great layout for your homepage means that your most relevant content will be easily visible. Help your visitors focus their attention where you want them to look through UX best practices.
- Manage Comments Effectively from Settings > Discussion. One thing about being a beauty blogger is learning to stay in touch with your target audience. That means always keeping an eye on what your readers have to say and finding a balance between good conversation and spammy comments. Set things up the way you want them right from the start.
- Optimize Your URL Structure from Settings > Permalinks. A healthy URL structure is a great way to build credibility with your readers and search engines. SEO best practices dictate a straightforward and tidy URL structure, among many other things, and your readers are a lot more likely to click URLs that describe the content they lead to.
7. Install Essential Plugins
In addition to your theme, you should know that WordPress sites also use a collection of plugins that define their design and functionality to a certain extent. Your beauty blog cannot lack certain features, and they are generally more easily obtainable through WordPress plugins than manual programming.
The best WordPress plugins cover various functions, from SEO optimization to security and performance. You should always find a balance between the number of plugins you use and your site’s performance. Nobody likes a laggy website, regardless of how good it looks or how interesting its features are.
Installing WordPress plugins is quite simple, and you can learn this very quickly. That doesn’t mean you should install too many too often. Stick to the essentials and make sure you offer a great experience to your visitors more than anything else.
8. Plan and Create Captivating Posts
Your beauty blog, regardless of its niche and the topics you tackle, must have captivating, informative, and engaging content.
That requires research, extensive writing and content preparation, extensive planning, and a good strategy.
For example, you should always try to keep your content in accordance with the fashion trends and the time of the year you are in. If you write content about the best sunscreen creams in the middle of the winter, your audience might be slightly less interested.
If certain holidays are upcoming, you can write content promoting the latest beauty trends, outfit ideas, or makeup tutorials appropriate for the occasion, whether that is a New Year’s Eve party or an Easter lunch with the extended family.
9. Promote and Expand Your Beauty Blog
The way you promote your blog will have a direct impact on the number of readers you get daily. There are many tools you can use to promote your site, but social media is by far the most powerful free tool available for a starter blogger.
While social media is a great tool, we cannot minimize the importance of other channels popular beauty bloggers can use. Search engine optimization is one of the best strategies, as it will generate consistent results in the long run.
As a beauty blogger, you will need to keep in touch with your audience and, most importantly, to post content that is accurate for different times of year. To make sure your content reaches your audience at the perfect time, you should consider also setting up a newsletter. That way, people who are interested in the information you provide will always be one click away every time you publish a new beauty blog post. For a beauty blog, social media remains a powerful tool, and you should take advantage of it.
With the right social media widget plugin, your content can be easily shared on various social media platforms. This will give your content the exposure and reach it needs to promote your blog.
Since beauty is all about visual appeal, your focus can be on a social media platform that is all about pictures. Our Instagram Widget plugin is a great tool to make a splash with your content on Instagram.
10. Make Money With Your Beauty Blog
Regardless of how passionate you are about sharing your knowledge about beauty and everything related to this topic, if you really want to turn this into a career, you need to learn how to earn a reliable income.
There are countless other strategies you can go for, but here are some examples of the most popular ways to make money off your beauty blog:
- Display Ads: Whether you start a makeup blog or choose a different niche in the beauty spectrum, you will want to start earning from display ads. This monetization method is one of the easiest to set up and understand.
To clarify, in case you are not familiar with the mechanics behind display ads, the way this strategy works is very straightforward: you sign up to Google AdSense or another similar platform, and you place some ads on your site. For every time these ads are seen by your visitors, you earn a tiny amount of money. The more traffic you get, the more you earn. It’s that easy. - Affiliate Marketing: Another popular choice amongst successful beauty bloggers everywhere, affiliate marketing can be an amazingly lucrative monetization method.
Through affiliate marketing, you can earn a commission every time one of your readers buys a product you recommend by signing up with different affiliate platforms. For example, if you sign up with Amazon affiliates, you can start recommending beauty products you trust. - Sponsored Content: Sponsored content is similar to display ads but more personal. You get to choose exactly how much you charge for displaying the sponsored posts, and more importantly, you can choose the exact businesses you want to promote.
- Digital Products: Digital products can also be a very versatile method of earning an income through your beauty blog. Whether it’s recipes for DIY beauty products, a subscription-based podcast, or an e-book to share your vast knowledge in your beauty niche, as long as your audience believes in your advice, you will be able to sell your own products.
Bottom Line
Learning how to start a beauty blog is a great idea, and you will benefit financially if you do it right and follow our step-by-step guide. Of course, getting started is just part of the story.
There is a lot more for you to learn if you want to be successful. Here are some of the most important things you need to know:
- WordPress SEO: Search engines have been responsible for most of the website traffic for years. If you learn SEO best practices and learn how to “make friends” with search engines, you have a much better chance of making a nice income off your beauty blog.
- WordPress Speed Optimization: We live in an era of speed. Nobody is patient anymore, and we all want things to happen as quickly as possible. Slow sites are never anyone’s favorites, so you must learn how to make yours as well-performing as possible.
- How to Secure Your WordPress Site: Safety is a great concern in the online environment. Learn the best practices and how to protect your content and visitors against attackers.
