How to become a Successful Fashion Blogger in India | Tips And Tricks - cairodock

Image: Tanya Dhar

With the advent of the Internet, a lot of things have changed: information that was available on paper is available in a digital format, sales and marketing have transitioned to digital marketing. , and classroom-based learning has moved online as well. Journalism which has traditionally been paper-based has also been digitised; considering the reach ‘being online’ provides, writers today are making their articles available online.

 

 Since you are reading this post, you may have searched for ‘9 Secrets to Becoming a Successful Fashion Blogger in India’, and maybe curious to know what it takes to become a successful blogger in our country; this should give you an idea as to the ‘power of the internet’, and the importance of ‘key-words’ in any given article/post.

I have kept this article specific to an Indian context considering I cater largely to a local audience, but my ‘9 Secrets to Becoming a Successful Fashion Blogger in India’ will apply to any other country as well. At the outset, I may say that I find blogging satisfying; it is therapeutic in many ways as it provides a medium of expression , but it is not an easy journey to establish oneself as a blogger. It takes a fair amount of discipline and consistency to succeed.

Here are my 10 Secrets to Becoming a Successful Fashion Blogger in India

1. Research

Before you go ahead with setting up your blog, do a lot of research on the kinds of topic you want to write about. Figure out who you will be competing with. Do a little research on competitors and see what they are doing. Figure out what is working out for them and see if you can incorporate those things into your blog.

You also need to figure out whether you want a self-hosted blog or a free blog. I will explain more about this and technicalities in the next section. So, if you have no idea what is self-hosting. Don’t worry about it yet.

Read a lot of Fashion Designing books, It will help you gain substantial Knowledge about Fashion & Fashion Industry as well as will help you write better content for your Blog.

2. Decide on the Name of the Blog & Domain Name

For those of you who don’t know what is a Domain Name here is what it is. To put it in simple terms, Domain Name is the name of a website. For example, Cairo-Dock.in is the Domain Name of our college’s website, facebook.com is the domain name of Facebook. I hope you get the gist of it.

Domain Name is how people will be able to access your blog and it’s important that the name of your blog should be the domain name. Hence, before you go ahead and start setting up a blog, think of a name that is catchy as well as easy to remember. Once you have decided on that you can buy the domain name from GoDaddy (Cheapest domain names ever and it’s not a promotion).

3. Search Engine Optimization & Social Media Marketing:

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is how you make your blog appear on Google when someone searches on Google about terms related to your blog. Social Media Marketing is how you can increase the number of followers & engagements on your Social Media profiles.

Go ahead and set up Social Media pages particularly for your blog. Since we are talking about a Fashion Blog, Instagram page is a must have. Facebook & twitter are recommended as well.

Try to read up on SEO & Social Media Marketing; learn at least the basics of both SEO (Search Engine Optmization) & SMM (Social Media Marketing) because those things are going to play a major role once you have setup the blog and ready to roll out.

4. Decide on the Design of the Blog:

While doing your research look at some designs and decide what kind of design you want for your blog. There are hundreds of free templates out there for free that you can use at the beginning. If everything works out fine, you can always buy a premium template or hire a web developer (like me – sorry for the shameless plug) to design your blog.

5. Learn Basics of Coding (HTML, CSS):

Though there are platforms that have a drag & drop design options, you won’t have complete control over the platform. It’s always better to learn at least basics of HTML & CSS. For those of you who don’t know what HTML & CSS are, these are the programming languages used to design websites & blogs.

6. Difference between Niche & Micro Niche Blogs:

Another thing you need to do is decide whether you want to start a Niche Blog or a Micro Niche Blog. Don’t panic, I have explained all that Niche jargon below.

A Niche blog covers a broader topic while a Micro niche blog covers a very specific micro-topic of a broader topic.

Confused? This example will clear that up.

Your blog will be a niche blog if you write about everything related Fashion on your blog. It will be a Micro-Niche blog if your blog concentrates only on Vintage Handbags which is very specific micro topic. While the competition for Micro-Niche blogs are a lot less than that for Niche Blogs, you won’t have much to write about in a Micro-niche blog. It’s up to you which one you want to go for.

7. How to start a fashion blog:

Now that you are ready with all the things you need. Let’s go ahead and see how to go about starting your Fashion Blog.

Blogging Platforms:

While blogging has evolved over time and has gained immense popularity, it has also become a lot easier to set up blogs as well, Thanks to the platforms making it easier. Setting up a blog is pretty straight forward as well. But it also depends on if you want to set up a free blog or a self-hosted blog. Let us see what are all the platforms you can use to start your blog.

1. Wordpress: Wordpress has been the leader in terms of Blogging platforms for a while now. There are a number of ways you can setup a blog on WordPress. You have the option of setting up the blog for free or set up a Self-Hosted blog. The free blog & self-hosted blog will be explained in next section.

2. Blogger: Blogger platform by Google is a famous blogging platform for users who are looking to set up a free blog. But the problem with this is that if you decide to start running ads on your website at some point, you are going to have a hard time with that.

3. Wix: Wix is nothing different than WordPress. The options are similar with the only difference being that Wix provides you with Visual Creation tool where you can build your website from scratch just by Dragging & Dropping elements. Yes, you can actually design the whole website even if you have no idea of how to write code.

In all of the three platforms, you just have to create an account and then set-up the blog from then on. Its pretty straight forward and intuitive.

What is free Blog & Self Hosted Blog:

A free blog will have the domain of the platform attached to the name of your blog. Let me explain that with an example. If you choose to go with WordPress, your free blog will be "fashionblog.wordpress.org" where "fashionblog" is the name of your blog.

In a self-hosted blog, your blog can be "fashionblog.com". You will have more control over your website and it will be easier to integrate money making things like Affiliate and Ads on a later stage.

What makes a blog stand out:

There are millions of Fashion Blogs out there and as a pseudo blogger & Digital Marketing expert myself. Let me be honest, the competition in Fashion Blogging space is fierce. You are not competing with just one or two fashion blogs or fashion bloggers.

You are competing with Millions of Blogs out there. For people to notice your content & blogs about Fashion out of all the noise, your blog needs to stand out. But what is it that makes your Fashion Blog stand out?

Content Quality:

It has been said a gazillion times by gazillion people that “Content is King”. It indeed is. The quality of the content you write dictates the quality of your blog. Just because you have set up a blog does not mean you start to churn out content weekly once or a blog per day. Take your time in doing research on the topic you are writing, write high quality content. Give users what they are looking for. It’s okay to publish just one blog per month which is very high quality. That does not mean you just keep on procrastinating and at the end of the month write a blog in a day and publish it.

If you are confident that you can write high quality content within a week on a topic, finish it in a week and publish it. More the merrier. But never compromise on the quality of content. There are loads of posts on internet about content writing. Here is one where you can learn about How to write content.

Consistency in posting:

Consistency is another important aspect of Fashion Blogging. People who are following your blog are Fashion enthusiasts and you need to be consistent in terms of when you are posting your blogs so that they know when you will be posting next and can look forward to it. That being said, you also have to be consistent in-terms of following & writing about current Fashion Trends. Coz, let’s be honest – that is the main reason why most of the people follow a Fashion blog. If you miss out on writing/covering the current & latest fashion trends, you might lose some of your audience.

8. How to market your new fashion blog:

The best way to get visitors to your blog initially is through Social Media. Learn basics of Social Media Marketing, create pages for your blog and start building audience on the social media pages. You can then promote your blog on all those Social Media pages.

Another option is through referrals i.e. getting help from your friends to spread a word about your blog. This one kind of depends on whether you are an extrovert or introvert.

Since it’s a Fashion Blog, concentrate on Instagram & Pinterest since both of them are image-based platforms. Post on these platforms on a consistent basis. It’s not necessary that you just post links of your blog on these social media profiles. Post important information, pictures of your designs, illustrations and Fashion related thing you are doing on Social Media. Engage with your audience.

The last & best option is learning some basics of Website optimization & Search Engine Optimization. Once you have learnt the basics, start applying them onto your website. It will take some time for your blog to gain rankings on Google, but once it does, you will start getting a lot of consistent number of visitors and they will increase over time for sure.

9. Money Making opportunities from a Fashion Blog:

Once your blog is ready and you start getting visitors, you can start making money out of it. There are various ways of doing it. The first one is showing ads on your Blog. Though there are various advertisers out there, I personally recommend starting with Google Ad-sense. The setup is user-friendly and you don’t have to look out for advertisers. Google will provide you with a code and you just have to install it on your blog and Voila! Your blog starts showing ads.

Another way is using Affiliate Marketing. Since it’s a Fashion Blog you can use Amazon’s affiliate program and affiliate programs from various other Fashion eCommerce sites. For those of you who don’t know, Affiliate Marketing is when you promote a product from websites like Amazon and a purchase happens on Amazon because of you, you get commission out of it.

Apart from these there are always things like promotion of events, covering events & advertising for Brands where you reach out to brands and convince them to advertise on your Blog and you get paid a certain amount for that.

As a collateral of Social media marketing you are doing for your Brand, you can also start out with Influencer promotions if your page gains a significant number of followers.

If you have any questions regarding any part of this blog and anything related to blogging, you can either comment down your questions or reach out to us on Social media. If you have a friend who wants to start a Fashion Blog, make sure to send this post to them, after all Sharing is Caring..! Ain’t it?