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How to Start a Beauty Blog
This guide will teach you how to start a beauty blog in five easy steps!
If you love all things beauty, makeup, skincare, hair, and nails, then starting a beauty blog is the perfect thing for you to do.
Starting a beauty blog is a lot of fun. It’s a great way to be creative, share your passion, inspire others, and even make some extra money!
Blogging has a very low investment (it costs just $2.95 a month for a domain name and hosting with Bluehost) but a high potential for profit.
Ready to start your beauty blog? Here’s everything you need to know!
Step 1: Choose a Niche
Your niche is simply the topic you blog about. “Beauty” itself is a niche, but a lot of popular beauty bloggers narrow their niche down even further.
For example, Cruelty-Free Kitty is a beauty blog that focuses only on cruelty-free beauty products. Other beauty blogs focus solely on reviewing products, sharing makeup tutorials, talking about hairstyles, etc.
Check out my list of beauty blog niches for more ideas.
You can always start with a general beauty blog and narrow down your focus later once you see which content of yours is most popular.
When choosing your niche, another important thing to think about is WHO you’re writing for. Who is your target audience? Who can benefit from reading your blog posts? For example, if your target audience is millennials on a budget, you may not want to write about $200 designer makeup and might want to focus on the best drugstore makeup products and makeup dupes instead.
Related: What to Blog About: 150+ Profitable Blog Niche Ideas
Step 2: Choose a Name
Time for the fun part! Once you have an idea of your niche and target audience, it’s time to choose a name for your beauty blog.
Your domain name is simply your blog’s address on the Internet. It’s important to choose a name that you love, because it’s hard to change later.
Related: Beauty Blog Names: Ideas and Examples
Here are some tips for how to pick a domain name for your beauty blog:
- Make your name easy to spell and say. Don’t use misspelled words, numbers, or hyphens in your domain name. All of these things will make your name a lot more confusing and harder for people to remember.
- Make sure that the .com of your chosen name is available. Try to avoid alternative domain name endings like .net or .co because they are less common, harder to remember, and less trustworthy.
- Use your own name. If you can’t think of a catchy name for your blog, using your own name as your domain name is a great move for beauty bloggers because it helps you establish your personal brand.
- Don’t overthink it. Try not to spend too much time on this step or worry about picking the “perfect” domain name. Chances are, whatever name you pick will grow on you and start to feel like a great fit.
Related: How to Choose a Blog Name
If you can’t decide on a name yet, that’s okay! You can come back and choose one later after you sign up for web hosting with Bluehost.
Step 3: Get Web Hosting
If you want to make money as a blogger, you will need to have a self-hosted blog. This means that you own all of your content and your blog is totally yours, as opposed to using a hosted platform such as Blogger, Wix, WordPress.com, etc.
Even if you are not a very technical person, setting up web hosting is extremely simple and only takes a few minutes.
First, you will need to choose a web host.
The web hosting company I use and recommend is Bluehost.
Here are a few reasons why I like Bluehost:
- They have some of the most affordable web hosting plans out there.
- You can get your domain name for free with them (as opposed to paying $15 to $20 with an outside company.)
- Their service is reliable and robust, so you will never have to worry about your website going down or loading slowly.
- Many of the most successful bloggers I know use Bluehost.
- They have great customer support and I have always had my questions answered quickly whenever I needed help.
Bluehost has very generously offered hosting packages starting at just $2.95 a month for readers of Blogging Her Way, along with a FREE domain name.
To get this special pricing, just be sure to use any Bluehost link in this article!
Here’s how to set up web hosting with Bluehost:
1. Click here and then click the “Get Started” button:
2. Select your hosting plan
3. Put in your domain name
Select this option and you can go ahead and set up your blog now, then use the free credit to buy your domain name later.
4. Create your hosting account
5. Choose your package and pay
I recommend the 12-month plan for $2.95 a month, for a total cost of $35.40 for the year. But you can also choose a 24-month or 36-month plan.
6. Congrats, you’re done!
Now you’re all set! Bluehost will automatically install WordPress for you.
What exactly is WordPress? WordPress is the content management platform that your blog will run on. Your WordPress dashboard is where you will go to edit the look of your blog, write blog posts, upload images, etc.
It’s extremely easy to use, even if you’re a total beginner.
Step 4: Design Your Blog
Now it’s time for the fun part – designing your blog!
When you log in to your WordPress dashboard for the first time, you will be prompted to go ahead and choose a theme for your blog:
You can pick one of these default themes if you want, but I don’t recommend it.
For one, the majority of these free default themes are not designed with bloggers in mind. Most are designed for business websites.
Additionally, choosing a premium theme over a default theme will make your blog look more professional right from the start.
Here are the benefits to choosing a paid theme for your blog:
- They come with step-by-step set-up instructions
- You will have access to customer support from the theme creator.
- Paid themes come with crucial features like a mobile responsive design and customization options.
- Your blog will look prettier and more professional.
Here are some themes I absolutely LOVE that are perfect for beauty bloggers:
Installing your WordPress theme
To install your theme, go to Appearance > Themes in the lefthand menu of the WordPress dashboard, which looks like this:
Then simply upload your theme file and install it.
Once you have installed your theme and are happy with the way everything looks, you can go ahead and launch your blog! Until you follow this step, your blog will just display a “Coming Soon” landing page.
To launch, go to the Bluehost menu on the top left of your WordPress dashboard:
All you have to do is fill in this info and you’re good to go:
Congrats! Your beauty blog is now live.
Step 5: Start Blogging!
Once you have launched your blog, it’s time to write your first blog post.
There are so many things you can write about as a beauty blogger. Here are just a few ideas to help you get started:
- Product reviews
- Drugstore beauty products
- DIY tutorials
- Product round-ups
- Beauty product wishlist
For more beauty blog post ideas, check out this list of blog post ideas for beauty bloggers to get some inspiration for your content.
I recommend publishing at least 5-10 blog posts in the beginning, so that people will have something to read when they land on your site.
How Beauty Blogs Make Money
You might be wondering exactly how beauty bloggers can make money.
While there are so many ways to make money as a blogger, here are a few of the most popular, along with tips on how to get started:
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money blogging. As an affiliate for a company, you earn a commission every time someone makes a purchase through your unique affiliate link. You can literally get paid for recommending products you already use and love to your readers!
For more tips on affiliate marketing, read my guide to making money with affiliate marketing or sign up for my free list of affiliate programs for bloggers.
Display Ads
Display ads are another popular way to make money as a blogger.
Once you have enough traffic to your blog, you can join an ad network like Monumetric (which requires 10,000 monthly page views) or Mediavine (which requires 50,000 monthly sessions.)
These networks will display ads on your site and pay you based on RPM (revenue per one thousand impressions.) Depending on traffic, many bloggers earn anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of dollars from ads each month.
Sponsored Posts
Beauty bloggers can work with brands on sponsored posts, where a brand pays a blogger to publish sponsored content on their blog or social media channels.
You can find sponsored post opportunities by joining sponsored post networks or pitching to brands directly. Some good networks to join are Linqia, Izea, Real Clever, Aspire IQ, Cooperatize, and Blog Meets Brand.
Beauty Blog Examples
Here are some examples of popular and successful beauty bloggers.
Click the link to check out their beauty blog income reports.
- Chic Pursuit: She made $11,376 in one month.
- Hot Beauty Health: She made $10,064 in one month.
- Beauty Brains Blush: She made $413 in one month.
Sharing income reports is not very common in the beauty niche like it is with other types of blogs (ex. the personal finance niche.) However, there are plenty of beauty bloggers out there making well over six figures.
For example, Cruelty-Free Kitty shares that she makes over $10,000 a month.
You can read about more than 200+ bloggers in various niches who make money blogging in this ultimate list of blog income reports.
How to Start a Beauty Blog Recap
So that’s all there is to it! Starting a beauty blog is a lot of fun and very rewarding.
As a recap, here are the steps you need to take to start your own beauty blog:
- Decide on your niche.
- Choose a domain name.
- Register for web hosting from Bluehost.
- Write 5 to 10 blog posts.
Good luck and happy blogging!