Whether you have a passion for writing, enjoy documenting your life, or want to simply showcase your skills for journalism in a way where you can make money and reach a large audience, this is the blog post for you. Since starting Glamour and Guide, I have received a lot of questions via dm’s and from personal friends as well telling me they have always wanted to start a blog but don’t know where to begin.

It is not as difficult as it looks, but you do need to dedicate a lot of your time to perfect your blog in order to reflect how much work you put into it. When a reader comes to your website, the homepage and any pictures you have on there are going to leave them with a first impression on whether they should continue scrolling down, or find another blog. Keep reading for the step-by-step on how I started my blog and how you can too.

Source: Pinterest

1. What kind of blog are you going to start?
   1. Turning something you are passionate about into a job or a way to make income from is one of the best things you can do. Not only are you going to enjoy what you do, but you’ll be able to also make money from that. If you enjoy fashion or styling like this blog, you can easily make one about that. If you like business, stocks, real estate, and topics in that niche, you can make a blog about that.
      1. The possibilities are endless for topics and all you need to do is make sure you are able to make a profit from the niche you are going to be choosing. People have to be interested in what you are writing about or else no one will stay and follow.
   2. Some questions you also need to ask yourself are:
      1. Who Is the targeted audience you want to reach?
         1. If you are a mom and want to target other mom bloggers, be specific. Do you want to target moms with over 3 kids, moms in the city, moms in the countryside, moms that are currently pregnant and are expecting soon? The more specific, the better.
      2. Do you see yourself sticking to this topic and niche for years down the road?
         1. Fashion is something I have loved for years and I am going to be pursuing this in college in the Fall by studying Fashion Business Management, During college, I am planning on pursuing a full time career in the fashion industry to then graduate with a job already. Since I already so invested in this industry, and I am going to school for it, I definitely see myself being able to write on this topic for several years to come.
         2. If you pick a topic that is trendy right now and isn’t going to something you can expand on with multiple sub-topics to write about, then you are going to have a hard time finding any content to produce. Especially original content for your readers to want to stay if you don’t stand out from other bloggers.
      3. Here are some blogging topics you can start off with for inspiration:
         1. Cooking / Recipes / Food
         2. Health
         3. Fitness
         4. Fashion
         5. Home Decor / Inspiration
         6. Finance / Business / Investing
         7. Real Estate
         8. Beauty / Makeup
         9. Parenting / Mom Blog / Dad Blog
         10. Writing / Poems / Authors
         11. Vacations / Travel
2. Figure out what website you are going to be using for your blog
   1. Once you figure out what blog you are going to be writing about, now you need to decide the platform you will be putting your content into. Some blogging platforms include:
      1. WordPress (where this blog is on)
      2. Wix
      3. SquareSpace
      4. Joomla
      5. Gator…and more.
   2. This is one of the most important steps and it is important that you do a lot of research because if you start a blog on a platform that is cheap or easy to use and then a year from now you decide you want to move to something better, transferring all of your blog content onto a whole entire new platform will be extremely time consuming.
3. If you need to pay for a website template or package just to make it look a lot more professional, than do it.
   1. When you are starting your blog content, you want it to be displayed in a way where it is easy for the reader to scroll through, isn’t too complex, and will be a true reflection of who you are as a blogger.
      1. WordPress provides hundreds of themes, free and paid, for you to choose from. Etsy also is a great source to find cheap and affordable, but beautiful layouts. You will need a business plan though in order to install plug-ins such as templates for your website which costs $300. Very pricey, but when it comes to your blog, you want to ensure that is the best it can be and if you need to pay the price to get it to look how you want it, then it will be worth every penny.
   2. If you decide to purchase a package or a template, make sure that the package includes a domain that is free for you to use which include a “yourwebsitename.com.” If you choose a free WordPress site, it will say “yourwebsitename.wordpress.com” at the end and will not look as professional. Once I bought a domain name, I was able to reach out to influencers and companies with confidence knowing that my website looked and sounded more professional.
4. Create a content calendar to organize your ideas, posts, and a concise schedule.
   1. Creating a schedule and a calendar for your blog is so important to control all those ideas for posts that you want to create. I created one on spreadsheet which is seen below and it is so easy for me to move around my ideas and figure out which days I want to post certain content.
      1. My schedule for my content is:
         1. Monday: Fashion
         2. Tuesday: Lifestyle
         3. Wednesday: Finance
         4. Thursday: Business / Influencer Interviews
         5. Friday: Home Edit / Fashion
         6. Saturdays: My Off Days to start creating content for the week
         7. Sunday: Inspiration
      2. Although my schedule is extremely packed, I love writing and want to ensure my content is producing the best content it can. I always work on my blog posts several days in advance and then WordPress gives the option to schedule a post so if I know I am going to be busy on a posting day, or won’t have time to do it myself, I can schedule the day and time for when I want it up.
      3. When you are creating your content calendar, make sure you are writing about topics that are unique and creative to get readers to stay on your site. If you are going to look at other bloggers and try to re-write what they are doing or put it into your own words, no one is going to enjoy it or they might even catch on to what you are doing.
      4. For inspiration, I use my Pinterest boards and find pictures I can turn into a blog post. I use my fashion board to put together looks for a blog post. I use my home board to put together a apartment or home inspiration post. The list goes on and this helps me stay creative and makes it so fun. I always give credit as well to the pictures I use since they are not mine which is very important when you are putting them into your blog.
5. How can you make money from your blog?
   1. If you want to use blogging as a simple way to try to get quick cash, it is not going to work and you are going to be too focused on producing bad content to just get your check right away. Just like Youtube, you need to make $100 worth of money from your blog in order to start receiving those checks. This is why you need to broaden ideas when it comes to money making, beyond just Google Adsense which barely make you anything.
      1. The first way to make money is of course through ads but you are going to need thousands of page views a month in order to start making a steady income from your ads and this isn’t going to be easy. Marketing and making sure your content reaches people is a difficult road but it takes practice and patience.
         1. A popular site that many bloggers use for ads is Mediavine. You can make up to $1,000 a month just from them! But there are several requirements that you need to be approved of when you apply for them. Their minimum traffic requirement is at least 50,000 sessions per month on your blog which is a lot of work but if you’re passionate about what you do and getting your content out there, should take a few months. If you want to read more about their requirements, check here.
      2. The second way to make money is through affiliate marketing. If you don’t know what that is, it is basically advertising other people’s products but you are making a profit from it as well as them.
         1. An example of affiliate marketing that I use is Amazon Associates. I applied for their program and was accepted which allows me to take links from their website, place them into my blog, and when someone adds a product I mention on here into their cart on Amazon, I will make a earning from it. If you are a beginner blogger, you obviously might not have your own products yet to sell so affiliate marketing is definitely something you should research on and figure out how you can get started. Even if you’re a Youtuber, you can still use affiliate marketing in your description links for viewers to see.
      3. The third way you can make money is through sponsored posts and brand deals. Whether you’re a big or small blogger, you can actually make a decent amount of money through these kinds of posts. You see influencers on Instagram do this all the way with the #ad in their caption or the “paid partnership” at the top of the post, and even in Youtube videos they will tell you it is a sponsored video.
         1. There are so many opportunities for bloggers of any page view size to start. You can even reach out through Instagram dm’s to companies you would like to work with and tell them about your blog, what it’s about, and what products you’d like to have from them or promote.
         2. Whether you are a small or large blog, you still also need to have rates for how much you are going to be charging these companies when you work for them. If you’re not that big, starting under $200 might be good, but once you’ve been blogging for almost a year or are getting a lot of page views, don’t be afraid to increase your rates to over $500, even $1,000 per post. This all depends on how much traffic you draw to your website which is why posting, promoting, and marketing your content is only going to help benefit you in the future when you want to start reaching out to companies.
            1. Here are some websites to get started on sponsored posts and deals:
               1. Real Clever
               2. Izea
               3. Influenster
               4. Linqia
               5. Acorn
               6. BlogPRWire
6. What are the best ways to market my blog?
   1. Pinterest!!! There is almost no better way to promote your blog than through Pinterest. I turned mine into a business account as soon as they announced users were able to, and my page views go as high as 70k a month for my viewers. I am able to use this platform as an immense way to help my blog views. It is extremely underrated and will bring you so much traffic.
   2. Create and produce interesting, but unique popular content! This is so important because no one wants to read a boring blog. Although my website is glamourandguide.com and you’d assume it is completely based around fashion, I explore to other niches such as business and home decor because fashion ties into those topics so well and even Influencer Interviews. As I mentioned before, Pinterest is one of the best ways for me to come up with creative content off the top of my head because I simply scroll through pictures and think of something fun but interesting for people to read. Make sure when you write, your spelling is correct, you’re inserting pictures and even videos, and making it fun for the reader to see.

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Thank you so much for reading! 

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Disclaimer: All photos not mine are given credit to their owner/source. Photos which are mine will be included in a caption.