How To Make A Full-time Wage Lifestyle Blogging

Starting a new blog can be terrifying! Pressing your first publish button is a daunting experience. In this post, I will show you how to start lifestyle blogging and, eventually, the transition from an amateur blog to a full-time business!

Have you heard about WordPress and Blogger, but you’re not technically savvy and have no clue where to begin?

I have been where you are, and I had no clue where to begin. I made many mistakes at the beginning and wasted a considerable amount of time trying to fix them.

I spent many nighttime hours trying to learn how to start a blog while my family slept sweetly upstairs.

Everything seemed so complicated, and it had me tearing my hair out, trying to understand what everything meant.

lady blogging on iMac

I didn’t pay for courses, and I didn’t pay for people to design stuff for me. I did it all myself without spending a penny.

As my blog content grew, I became more confident and became better informed about where I would like to invest money in my blog.

If I didn’t know how to do something, I looked it up on Youtube and did it a thousand times until I got it right!

Enough about my struggles. The good news is that you don’t have to sit until the early hours pulling your hair out! This post will give you a straightforward guide to my tools and a step-by-step guide to setting up a successful blog. And here’s the best bit, it’s not going to cost you a penny! You don’t have to sign up for anything. It’s all in this post in bite-size pieces for free because you’ve caught me in a good mood, and I’d love to share my journey from writing as a hobby to making it a full-time job.

I will define the blogging jargon in the most simplified terms I can, so you can get started quickly without having to wade through tons of information. If you need further explanations of the terms, you can always look up more info as you need it or contact me at [email protected].

In this post, I will show you the free tools you need to blog without spending any money!

Although it is possible to blog without spending money, you may find that you do want to upgrade to some plans to enable you to grow your blog and take it in the direction that suits you. So I have included in most of my recommendations the reasons why I upgraded,  and you can decide whether that would be the best option.

What is the difference between amateur blogging and professional blogging?

There are so many blogs in the universe that it’s easy to become just another lifestyle blogger with only your family and friends as readers. So, how do we transition from amateur blogging to a full-time business? Firstly you need to get monthly viewers to your site to monetize and start making money by using ad companies like Mediavine or through affiliate links like amazon associates. Sounds easy, right? If I told you that you would need at least 50,000 visitors a month to your blog, most of which are from the US or UK, it starts feeling a little bit more out of reach! So how do we get those 50,000 visitors a month to read what we are writing?

How to get traffic to your blog

  1. Write consistently. I try to write at least once a week but mainly 2-3 times a week.
  2. Answer the public questions. Teach your readers something useful, and think about the things you google.
  3. Write good quality, informative posts. Successful lifestyle bloggers produce quality blog posts consistently.
pregnant lady blogging  on laptop at home

Blog post ideas.

There are many lifestyle blogging topics. Here are a few main topics and ideas to get you started!

  • Health: You may write about your experiences with specific health issues of yourself or a loved one and how this affects your daily life and activities.
  • Depression: is a great topic to write about to help and inspire others on their journey through depression.
  • Postpartum depression: Your experiences will be useful for other parents to read about to remind them they are not alone.
  • Weening: This is a vast topic and could be full of tips and tricks to help other mums.
  • Breastfeeding: You could write about breastfeeding, your experience, and how it impacted your life.
  • Toddlers, the list is endless on this subject. If you’re a mum to a toddler, you’re open to any advice you can get your hands on!
  • craft: tutorials, favorite craft stores, how-to posts.
  • Day trips: where you’ve been, places to visit, what to do with kids on a rainy day.
  • Best beaches: this one speaks for itself with the opportunity for lots of photo taking!
  • Pets: who doesn’t like to read about pets! The more unusual, the better!
  • DIY: how-to posts, tutorials, before and after, and of course, the big reveal!
  • Kids: again, the topics are endless!
  • Gifts: the perfect gifts for…, an excellent opportunity for affiliate links.
  • Fashion and lifestyle blogs: outfit of the day, shop my style, and many more!
  • Art: artist of the month, galleries to visit, showcase your artwork, art tutorials.
  • Books: book club, a book of the month, top ten albums, book reviews.
  • Films: film reviews, top ten movies, seasonal films.
  • Tutorials: if you can teach someone to do something, write a post about it!
  • Product reviews: write a review of your favorite product!
  • Essential oils:  cleaning, health, recipes.
  • Home decor: shop the look, favorite products, upcycling.
  • A home lifestyle blog for all things home-related.

How to start a blog.

Follow these 10 simple steps to lifestyle blogging.

  1. Think about your target audience.

    You first need to consider your target audience, and what it is you’d like to tell them!
    If you’ve no idea what you’d like to write about, think about:

    • The things you are passionate about
    • A subject that you spend hours reading about
    • A topic  you enjoy talking about
    • Something which takes up most of your leisure time.
    • Whatever you are an expert in.

    It’s easy to waffle on about not very much in the early days of lifestyle blogging. If you pick a niche, it helps you stay within an umbrella of topics.

    lady blogging on a laptop with a cup of coffee

  2. Pick a niche

    What is a niche blog? Lifestyle blogging can cover a massive range of categories, so, for instance, someone who lives by the sea may write a surfing blog.
    Here are some examples of blog niches:
    Vegan
    Men’s fashion
    Vintage
    Bohemian
    Outdoor
    Holistic
    Creative and craft
    Frugal
    Photography
    Travel
    Food
    Blogging should be about what you enjoy and do all the time; it should reflect you and also impart some information about what you do rather than just storytelling.

    So, for instance, if you decided to write a vegan lifestyle blog, it would be helpful to include recipes, places to eat, vegan makeup brands, and other useful stuff for fellow vegans.

    Although it’s good to write storytelling posts and have a unique voice, most people using the internet are looking for information, and what better place to get it from than your blog!

  3. Answer people’s questions.

    You should always consider what people are searching for on google and try to answer their questions. For instance, if you wrote a post about your soggy camping trip in Wales, then you might be better off writing about the top 10 things to do while camping in Wales and write about your experiences.

  4. Create a brand for your blog.

    Your blog should reflect your personality and be instantly recognizable among the billions of other bloggers. It should have a clear font and be uncluttered to make it easy to navigate. There are several different themes to consider:
    • Minimal
    • Feminine
    • Bright
    • Dark
    • Bold
    Consider the colors you love on the high-end commercial blogs that inspire you.

    You can get help from a web designer to help you with quirky fonts, templates, and graphics to reflect your personality! Check out other top blogs for some inspiration, but remember to be unique!

  5. Choose a name for your blog.

    This is the fun bit of starting a blog. You can make your personality shine here!
    Your name needs to be unique, easy to remember, and preferably relevant to your topic. After you have decided what your name will be, it is advisable to purchase a domain name.

  6. Choose a domain name.

    Now we get to the nitty-gritty part of amateur blogging, where to start!
    It is better to choose a domain name that is less complicated and easy to spell; this will help people when they come to search for you on google.
    Having a domain name is like having an address for your blog; it allows anyone to find you on the internet by typing your domain name into the search engine. You can then connect your domain name to a website or email address.
    Domain names can be bought quite cheaply.
    It’s wise to note that you can buy your domain and host from the same company or from separate companies. The choice is yours!

  7. Choose a blogging platform.

    A blogging platform is where you write your blog.
    In my early blogging days, I started with one of the free blogging platforms called Blogger but soon found that I was very limited with branding, sharing on social media platforms, and monetizing my blog, so I decided to install WordPress, which I felt was a better fit for me.

  8. Choose a theme

    A theme is how your blog looks. Depending on your needs, you can use a free WordPress theme or pay for a premium WordPress theme.
    As I transitioned from a beginner to a full-time blogger, I decided to upgrade my theme, so I could play about with fonts and design.

    white dog next to a laptop and cup of tea

  9. Find a host for your blog.

    Hosting is where your blog is stored and shared on the internet. You will need to find a host to enable your posts to be seen by people other than your Nan!
    There are some free options for hosting by WordPress and Blogger, but their services can be quite limited.
    If you pay for hosting, you can install things such as free plugins which help you:

    • Share your posts on social media
    • Check your statistics and visitors to your blog.
    • Help you sign people up to your website and build your mailing list
    • Redirect any broken links
    • Help you with SEO ( search engine optimization)
    • Stop spam
    • Make a cookie warning
    • Let you see your analytics
    • Monetise your site through affiliate links and advertisements

    If you decide to self-host, you will own your blog and its content. If you are not self-hosted, then the blogging platform you use, such as WordPress, will own your blog and all its content. This means that they can shut your blog down anytime without any explanation. It’s a bit like building a large house on someone else’s land, and they decide they don’t want you living there anymore! They often put ads on your free site, and this may stop you from being able to add your own ads to your site in the future.

    I would  consider choosing a recommended host who will give you the best technical  support, such as:
    GoDaddy
    SiteGround
    Namecheap

    If you decide not to self-host, your blog will have an address that connects to your blogging platform, so, for instance, my address looks like this www.theorganizeruk.com. If I were not self-hosted, it would look like this www.theorganizeruk.wordpress.com or www.theorganizeruk.blogger.com.

    Being self-hosted also allows me to have an email address connected to my blog, which looks like this [email protected], for communicating on a business level.


    open laptop on the settee

  10. Create amazing readable content

    Write, write, write!
    This is the fun bit!
    Keep your voice throughout your post, and remember to give people information in an easy-to-follow, straightforward fashion. Unless you’re writing a food blog, they probably don’t want to know what you had for breakfast!
    People like to read about things that they are going to learn something from, so if you are writing a travel blog, they want to hear about great places to eat and visit or how to travel with kids, rather than what happened when you went to visit great Aunty Mary for her 80th birthday!
    Make sure you save your post as a draft, as you need to add a few extra things and edit your post before you hit the publish button!

    Creating great content for your blog is essential; here are a few examples of what to include in your blog post to remain current and helpful.

    Think about things you may search for if you were to seek advice on your chosen subject. What can you help people with? What can you teach people? What have you experienced in, or are you an expert in? Here are some typical blog topics:

    • Book reviews
    • Product reviews
    • Restaurant review
    • Places to eat
    • Things to see
    • Things to make
    • How-to posts
    • Top 10

    lady using laptop on a coach

  11. Optimize your content for SEO

    To give your posts a chance of being seen on the internet and to get lots of traffic (visitors) to your blog, you need to have good SEO (search engine optimization)
    To get an excellent SEO ranking (to improve your posts showing up on google), you are advised to add a few things at this stage to your blog.

    Outbound links: These are links to other sites that you recommend, such as a favorite website that is relevant to your post, article, or reference source.
    It is better for your blog if you link to more established blogs than yours. So aim for high-quality links and backlinks.

    Internal links: All your posts in specific categories should link together to form a cohesive connection to each other. This helps Google think that you are an expert on the subject you are writing about,  which gives your website a better chance of ranking and getting traffic.
    These links should be relevant to the post you’ve written and interest the reader.
    The more links to internal posts you include in each post, the better your chances of ranking, as long as it’s a relevant link.

    You can link to other posts once you’ve written more articles!
    These links are essential as they create a link juice that flows through your website and enables Google to recognize that you are an authority on the subject you are writing about.
    An example of this would be if I linked to my post about blog planners from this post.

    Keywords: These give your post searchability, so you need to pick a relevant, long-tailed keyword and make sure your post contains this keyword throughout your post.
    You should include your keyword in your title, your URL, your image alt tags, at least one header, and a couple of times in your post.
    Do not overstuff your post with keywords, as it will make you look inauthentic, and google will penalize you.
    I use Keysearch for my keyword research. It allows me to find popular keywords that many people are searching for, but with a low competition level, which means that not many other bloggers are writing about that subject.
    This helps me write posts that will help me reach that all-important first page and number one spot on google!
    Keysearch also has a tool that lets you know the keyword difficulty level that you should be searching for.

  12. Add some graphics

    To create beautiful graphics for my Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook posts, I use canva.com. As with most things I recommend, there are free and paid versions. I am still using the free version, which allows me to create beautiful lifestyle blog branding graphics.

    laptop on a desk with notebook and pen

  13. Edit your posts

    There is nothing more off-putting than stumbling upon a blog post with hundreds of grammatical errors. So make sure you edit, edit,  edit, then edit some more! 
    Read and re-read your post, and check for spelling and grammatical errors. I find it easier to read my post aloud as this stops me from skip reading or speed reading which doesn’t help me spot any errors.
    I use Grammarly to help me check for any errors in my blog posts, it is user-friendly, and there is a free option or a paid version depending on your needs and budget. It corrects spelling mistakes, grammar, punctuation, and passive voice. There is also a section where you can double-check that you haven’t plagiarised anyone else’s work by accident!

  14. Hit publish

    Pressing publish never gets any easier, even after you’ve been blogging for years! It is a terrifying moment, especially the first time.
    Take care not to keep going back, trying to make everything perfect. Get some content written so your audience has something to read.  
    Hopefully, with all these fantastic tips I’ve shared, you should have lots of traffic rolling in soon! As you develop your writing style and gain more experience and confidence, you should find your audience grows and grows, and you’ll quickly be moving on to full-time money-making!
    Nobody is perfect, and a blog is the same as anything. It gets better with practice.
    Every seasoned, successful blogger looks back at their first posts and cringes at their mistakes.
    Don’t beat yourself up trying to be like other bloggers. Just hit publish, and don’t look back!

  15. Share to social media.

    As soon as I have published a blog post, I share it on all my social media accounts.

    Facebook, I have a Facebook page related to my blog and also run a Facebook group within my niche, to which I share all my new posts.
    Twitter is not a great platform for me, and I don’t get much traffic from here, but I know a lot of bloggers who do!
    Instagram, again this is not much of a success for me, but I probably need to spend more time posting stuff!
    Pinterest group boards. This is where my traffic rockets, a considerable percentage of my traffic comes from Pinterest. I also have group boards you can join if you’d like to share your posts, contact me at [email protected] if you’d like some invitations! 

  16. Get people to sign up for your mailing list.

    To enable me to convert traffic to subscribers on my blog, I need to get them to subscribe to my updates.
    To do this, I use the free version of MailChimp, which enables me to send Newsletters, opt-ins, checklists, and weekly blog posts to my subscribers. Again, this is all done via WordPress Mailchimp plugin!

    black dog sitting looking at a laptop

  17. Monetize your blog

    Once you are self-hosted, you will be able to think about monetizing your blog using affiliate programs such as: 
    Awin
    shareasale.com
    Amazon associates
    Affiliate programs such as these give you commission based on products people purchase after clicking on the individual links on your blog, which you create from the affiliate site.
    It would be best to choose links relevant to the subject you are writing about.

    Once you start to get more traffic, you can monetize your blog by putting ads on your site, this is when it all began to change from a hobby to serious money-making for me, and I was able to give up my part-time job and focus on my blog. I now make a full-time wage from my ads, and that revenue is going up all the time.
    The ad company I use is Mediavine, and you have at least 50,000 visitors per month to be accepted, with most of that traffic coming from the USA and UK. At the beginning of my blogging journey, that amount of traffic seemed impossible as I only saw 90 visitors per month! But with hard work and determination, I was able to see my blog grow month by month. There were times when I wanted to give up, but I kept ploughing on, and the hard work eventually paid off as my traffic grew.

I have created a free blogging bundle of worksheets and planners to help you get organized and avoid blogger burnout. The package includes:

FAQ

What areas of lifestyle blogging should I focus on? 

As with any blog, it’s always best to write about something you are passionate about and will not get bored with after writing about it for a while. If you consider yourself an expert on something, then that would be a great subject matter.

How do you choose some great blog names?

Choosing a name is very daunting when setting up a blog. There are a few things to consider when thinking about lifestyle blog names.

1. Your audience, you need to make sure that your name resonates with your audience. The last thing you want to do is alienate your audience. So, for example, if you wanted to write about your parenting skills and be taken seriously, you wouldn’t call yourself  “the drunken mummy diaries”!

2. How your name will look when written as a domain name so, for instance, “teachers talking” will become ” teacherstalking” when it’s written as a domain.
Likewise, “Lilli light bites” will look like” lillilightbites’ which for anyone trying to search is a nightmare.
Make it easy to remember. People need to be able to search for your name immediately and to do that, they need to be able to easily pronounce, spell, and remember it.

3. Make it easy to spell. Keeping your blog name short and easy to spell will make it easier for people to search for you.
Make it unique, be memorable, and make sure no one else has a similar name to you. You need to stand out in the vast crowd of other successful bloggers.

4. Try to make your blog name relevant to whatever you choose to write about. So, for example, I wouldn’t expect   “travel with twins” to lead me to a website about DIY. It wouldn’t be what I’d hoped to see, and I’d bounce right back out of your site, which would tell Google you’re not worth visiting!

I hope you have found this lifestyle blogging guide helpful, and I hope it’s given you the confidence to hit the publish button and start your incredible journey. If you’ve any questions about my journey from amateur to full-time blogging, leave a comment below!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.