How to Start a Beauty Blog in 5 Steps? : Beauty Blogging Vol.2

Thank you for all the comments on my newly started Beauty Blogging series on MABH! After sharing few things to know before you start a beauty blog, I am back with another post today. This time, I am sharing 5 basic steps I know, to start a beauty blog. These actually differ from person to person depending on the variations in interests, blogging skills etc. But I am listing out the most common things one should be ready with before hitting the publish button of their first post!

1. Pick Your Beauty ‘Niche’

Nice is nothing but the topic of your blog. When you start a beauty blog, you of course may plan to feature reviews, skin care/hair care tips, makeup tutorials, haul posts, outfit posts etc. It is alright but first, find your ‘interest‘ out of everything. When I first started this blog, I knew nothing about SEO or niche and hence, I went with the a niche that covers everything related to makeup and beauty. (Not a good decision) But If I were asked now, I am sure I would have picked some other topic – that revolves more around hair care and natural beauty as I don’t do makeup everyday.

2. Domain Name

Your domain name should be short, easy to remember and most importantly – related to your niche! Pick something totally related to your niche – that has a keyword of your niche in it and keep it short (Example : mymakeupstash [dot] com) or go for a brand-name like domain even if that doesn’t contain the ‘keyword’ of your topic. (Example : temptalia.com)

One kind suggestion – keep the domain name short and simple, or you will might regret it later, as I do now. I wouldn’t have picked makeupandbeautyhome.com as my domain name if I had known a little bit about SEO earlier! That’s quite long. Isn’t that? I thought of changing it to mabh [dot] com but then started an online shopping site with that domain (mabh.in); no more worries. So that’s what I am trying to say – pick your domain name VERY wisely. It is going to be with you forever and it will really be hard to change it in future because you’ll be losing the brand reach, search engine traffic etc at least temporarily. And that is a headache you know!! (Experience!)

3. Hosting

If it is going to be a blogger blog, you only will need to register a domain and start blogging just like that. However, if you are going with wordpress, you need to pay for the hosting as well. MABH was first on blogger but due to some SEO glitches, I had to migrate it to wordpress. Though a bit trickier earlier, I learnt wordpress pretty quickly and now I find it VERY better compared to the blogger platform.  I use Hostgator on MABH and I highly recommend it to bloggers! It is reasonable priced + your site will have no down time! They’ve SEO and marketing options as well. Whenever I experience a glitch with the site, I chat with their customer support team and they’re very helpful!

Blogger is still a great option but wordpress has multiple options when it comes to SEO, plugins and editing. It was a very edgy experience what I had gone through during the blogger to wordpress migration; however, I am glad I managed to do it right.

Note: You can still start a blog without purchasing a domain name. In that case, I recommend you to start a blogspot blog or a free wordpress blog which of course will be a sub domain blog.

4. Beauty Blogging Camera

This is really up to one’s personal choice but I recommend getting a decent camera before you start. When I started blogging, all I had was a mobile camera – that clicks the worst-est clarity photos. My parents were not ready to get me a camera for blogging as they thought I waste time sitting in front of the PC all the time, leaving my school works. But then, I had to get a camera; if not a dslr at least a decent camera to click photos for the blog posts. If you get it before you start, your blog will look neat even after years when someone reads it. I now use a Canon Powershot camera that I am not very fond of. It still does good then it comes to product photos and swatches of creams but when it comes to lipsticks and ‘colors’ overall, the color capture is not good. I am thinking to get a DSLR soon; alteast before I turn 20 next year! Any suggestions? (Update : I purchased the Nikon D5300 DSLR in January 2015 and it’s a wonderful camera!)

5. The Topics!

This is an easy part! Before you register your domain name, list out at least 5-10 topics on which you will be writing first – if you are to take blogging as a profession. This is what something I failed to do but I highly recommend you to pick topics before you start. Rather than making posts in random topics, write what you love – but make sure they fit into your niche!

I lately started learning a bit about keyword research which is an important part of SEO; I will share with you what I’ve learned, in coming up volumes! If you have any suggestions for my next post on this series, share it with me on the comment section!

P.S: Few of you asked me to do a post on my income report. I shall soon start the series which has everything (everything I know) about monetizing a beauty blog. Hope you will find it useful. Stay tuned!