Dear Budget Fashionista,
I love your site and was wondering if you have any advice or tips for becoming a professional blogger.
Answer: There’s no magic, instant way to become a professional bloggers. I blogged for 2 years before TBF started to really take off. But with hard work and persistence you can make your blog a success. Here’s some tips I’ve learned along the way.
- Be an Original. Read other fashion blogs and do the exact opposite. The celebrity blog has been done and done and done. So have most of the fashion blog topics. At this point in the game, the only way to be a successful blogger in terms of financial success is to be an original.
- Write everyday, twice a day if you can. Write posts that people can use and that people want to link to—limit the personal chatter and focus on providing real information.
- Read blogs about blogs. Read blogs like Problogger.com, Chrisg.com, Dailyblogtips.com, and Techcrunch.com to learn about the tech side of building a professional blog.
- Join a Community. Whether it be Glam, Coutorture or another community. The traffic they generate isn’t going to make you much dough—but it will help you to build relationships with other bloggers.
- Get Media Training. If you really want to be a professional fashion blogger, then you will need to seek and get offline media coverage. I can’t tell you how many times reporters and television producers have told me about how poor bloggers perform in interviews. Learn how to get your message across in 20 words or less, what angles work best for you, etc.
- Learn Search Engine Optimization SEO. Buy Aaron Wall’s SEO Book. It’s the best $79 you’ll ever spend for your blog.
- Buy Your Domain. A-list bloggers own their own domain name. Many folks in the advertising and pr communities use this to determine whether or not you’re a professional.
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Comments
Kathryn, thanks for the lead to the SEO book. Your tips are right on. Every time I check into TBF, I find new info and thoughtful commentary. This is definitely one of the best blog sites out there.
I would add that the reason this site is so successful is that your content stems from a unique point of view, you have a theme and something to say, you aren’t just telling us, “oh I love pink!” or whatever.
There is a great blog book I found recently, “Nobody Cares What you Had for Lunch,” and the author makes some of the same points. Good blogging is good writing, which stems from clear thinking. Happy New Year!
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Thanks for the advice! If I ever started my own fashion (or other type) blog, my biggest worry would be that I would sound repetitive in comparison with other blogs of similar topic out there. There’s so many! Yikes!
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Thanks for the tips Kathryn! You’ve been such an inspiration!
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Great advice - thanks! Another tip I would add is to just have fun with it. If you aim to “get rich and famous” by blogging, you’re setting yourself up for failure. There are literally millions of blogs out there; very few of them become notable.
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Dear Budget Fashionista,
I have tried various free methods of marketing my blog and one of the most useful has been participating in blog carnivals. For anyone not familiar with this, a blog carnival is where someone with a web site or blog acts as a host, featuring posts by other bloggers on a given topic. Because I write about different lifestyle related topics, I have submitted articles on everything from beauty to personal finance to different blog carnivals. After checking the guidelines for a carnival I am interested in, I usually submit two or three articles that would be relevant to that particular carnival. I wouldn’t consider the increase in traffic to my blog to be huge numbers, but I believe consistently participating in blog carnivals is a cheap and easy way to build an audience over time.
Check out blogcarnival.com for more information or just google the phrase blog carnival for more opportunities. I am a relative newcomer to blogging and I found your advice on How to Be a Professional Blogger very insightful. I hope my suggestions are helpful to aspiring bloggers.
