If you’d love to know how to start a lifestyle blog and turn your passions into profits, you’re in the right place!
Not only am I going to walk you through the process and give you 9 fundamental tips to start your own profitable lifestyle blog, but you’re basically reading a lifestyle blog in action right here!
My goal is to help you build an income doing something you love to do, that gives you the freedom to travel the world and live the lifestyle you dream about!
To be able to talk, write about and share your passions all day every day, from where you want, with who you want, and doing what you want, is a dream come true!
And totally doable by the way.
How to Start a Lifestyle Blog – TL;DR
Before we get into the nitty-gritty and the main step by step content walking you through how to start a lifestyle blog, here’s a summary of the key steps for the fast action readers who just want to know how to get started right now!
- Decide your blog’s lifestyle niche
- Choose your lifestyle blog name & domain name
- Sign up with a hosting platform & create a self-hosted WordPress blog (I explain why I favour WordPress below)
- Create a very simple lifestyle blog design (focus on content first, you can improve the design as you grow)
- Create content! Lots of it!
- Promote your lifestyle blog content across the web
- Monetise your lifestyle blog
I go into more detail on each of these steps below, plus give 9 fundamental tips for ensuring your lifestyle blog stands out from the crowd and takes off like a rocket!
Let’s go!!!!!
How to Start a Lifestyle Blog – Step by Step
Anyone can start a lifestyle blog.
Sign up to WordPress … Write about what you ate this morning … Upload a few nice pictures … DONE!
And perhaps 10 or 15 years ago, this would have been enough.
Nowadays, however, even though we’re pursuing our passions, we need to approach our lifestyle blog more like a business if we want to make money from it.
Below, I will take you through all the critical steps and the top tips you need, to show you how to start a lifestyle blog that generates an income.
First up let’s define what a lifestyle blog is.
What is a Lifestyle Blog?
A lifestyle blog is a website that blogs about various topics related to everyday living. The critical difference between a lifestyle blog and a corporate or company blog, is that a lifestyle blog tends to contain more storified content based on the creator’s life and interests.
It’s far more personalised content where you get to know the person behind the brand. Many of the best lifestyle blogs are named after the lifestyle bloggers themselves.
There is no exact formula for what constitutes a lifestyle blog or what subjects they cover.
Instead, they are a unique mix of content, discussing various topics that all fall under the broad umbrella of “lifestyle”.
Including:
- Beauty
- Travel
- Home decor
- Makeup
- Design
- Fashion
- Relationships
- Food
- Recipes
- Hobbies
- Finance
- Arts & crafts
- Parenting
- Animal / Pet Blogging
They usually include a rich mix of multimedia, including photos, video blogs, podcasts, and text-based blog posts. Plus many lifestyle bloggers are often early adopters and trendsetters, buying and showcasing the latest products and merchandise, pairing their blog with an ‘influencer’ style social media presence.
Successful lifestyle bloggers have found their voice and aren’t afraid to share their opinions with the world. As a result, they tend to attract audiences who benefit from the information, education, entertainment or tips the lifestyle blogger is publishing, and who resonates with the blog creator in some way and shares their worldviews.
Examples of Lifestyle Blogs
Here are a few examples of some of the most successful lifestyle blogs on the web today. I recommend following them closely to see what they have done and continue to do to be successful.
Initially started by Katie as a one-woman blog, this has evolved into a much larger lifestyle blog with a whole team of writers. Covering topics from parenting to natural living. It’s a great example of a blogger who took a CEO approach and has brought others in to help grow a much larger business.
Founded initially as a travel blog, Kiersten grew her site into one of the biggest lifestyle blogs on the web. Though it is still largely travel-based, it also covers a range of topics, including health and wellness and design ideas. She has managed to monetise in various ways, including hosting retreats where she teaches other young women how to build successful travel blogs.
Here’s a great example of a lifestyle blog geared towards a male audience. Its mission is pretty straightforward: offering practical health and wellness tips to help men feel more confident about their image.
How do Lifestyle Blogs Make Money?
Before we dig into how to build a profitable lifestyle blog, let’s first take a quick look at the different ways lifestyle blogs make money.
In the same way that no two lifestyle blogs are the same, neither are the exact methods they are monetised.
Monetisation can include:
- Paid brand collaborations – Brands pay you to promote their products across your blog and social media channels.
- Affiliate income – When someone clicks an affiliate link on your site and makes a purchase, you earn a percentage commission from the sale.
- Courses – Creating premium courses where you offer insight into achieving a specific result. This would include content not published elsewhere on your site.
- Books – These can be on anything, such as a personal autobiography or a “how-to” style book.
- Your own products – The sale of anything physical, such as your own branded gym wear or a line of shampoos.
- Coaching – Offering 1-on-1 coaching for people looking to improve their lives in some way.
- Gated content – A monthly or one-off fee to access blog content not open to the general public.
- Organised boot camps/retreats – These are hosted events where you get together with a group of readers for a week or weekend.
- Sponsored content – When people pay you to publish content on your site. This is different from paid brand collaborations in that the person paying you may only be interested in getting a link back to their website. Not in you selling a product.
- Advertising – Adding display ads, usually via an advertising platform like Ezoic, Mediavine or Raptive..
Are there even more ways to make money not listed above? There sure are! But these are most of the more popular options.
So, now you know what a lifestyle blog is and how you can make money from starting your own, let’s walk through the main steps on how to start a lifestyle blog today!
How to Start a Lifestyle Blog Today; 7 Key Steps
1. Decide Your Lifestyle Blog Niche
I think this is one of my favourite things about blogging. Over my years of working with people to build their own online lifestyle business, one of the biggest things that hold solopreneurs back from getting started is choosing their niche.
They’re constantly trying to answer questions like;
- What am I passionate about?
- What am I an expert in?
- How can I stand out and be unique in that niche?
- Why would anyone listen to me anyway????
Blogging allows so much creative freedom and is a great testing ground to see what your audience resonates with.
Sure, you still have to choose a niche to start, but it doesn’t have to be a micro-niche. You can begin pretty broad and narrow down (or start narrow & expand) as you get to understand the topics your audience love!
For instance, in the examples of lifestyle blogs I gave above, the Blonde Abroad started as a travel blog and grew into health, wellness & design.
A Beau