The Beginners Guide To Start A Beauty Blog : A Step-By-Step Guide

So you want to start a beauty blog? Well, that’s a great idea!

There are a ton of successful beauty bloggers. And if you work smart and hard, you can become one of them. Just like other popular beauty bloggers, you can also review products, get hired by agencies, become an influencer and ultimately live a boss-free life.

But I know that when you’re first trying to set up your beauty blog, it can be challenging to figure out everything you need to do.

To make it easier for you to create a beauty blog, I’ve created this detailed guide explicitly focused on how to start a beauty blog. I’ll cover all the most important topics like:

• Which platform you should choose for your beauty blog
• Finding web hosting and a domain name to power your blog
• Giving your blog new styling and functionality with themes and plugins
• Writing your first blog post
• Getting traffic and attention to your new beauty blog

Ready to get started?

Here’s how to start a beauty blog:

These are the steps that you would be following to launch your beauty or makeup blog:

• Picking the right blogging platform
• Picking a domain name
• Picking a web hosting for installing WordPress
• Installing a WordPress theme for beauty blogs
• Completing the WordPress setup
• Setting up WordPress plugins to add more features
• Start writing and driving traffic
• Start monetizing your blog for passive income

Step 1: Pick A Platform – I Recommend WordPress.org

There are a lot of different platforms that you can use to start a beauty blog. But based on my experience, I only recommend one platform to people who are serious about starting a blog:

Self-hosted WordPress (also called WordPress.org).

This platform is not the same as wordpress.com. The two are different things, which can be confusing because they’re both named WordPress.

The reasons I recommend wordpress.org over wordpress.com are:

• It gives you more control over your site. You can install “themes” and “plugins” to add new styles and functionality to your blog, without the need for any technical knowledge.
• You 100% own your site. When you use wordpress.org, you’re going to actually host the software on your own server, which means that you’re always in control of your site.
• It’s easier to monetize your site because, again, you’re in full control. If you use another platform, they might have rules about how you can make money.

Beyond that, self-hosted WordPress is just plain popular. It powers more than 32% of all the websites on the Internet, and it’s also what most of your favorite beauty bloggers are probably using (as well as what we use here at ShoutMeLoud).

To use self-hosted WordPress, you’ll need your own “web hosting”. I know that may sound intimidating and expensive – but it’s really not. It will only cost you a few dollars per month, and it’s easy to use – even if you have no technical background (I’ll show you how).

Step 2: Pick A Domain Name

Your domain name is your site’s permanent address on the Internet. For example, the domain name for this site is “shoutmeloud.com”.

Every website needs a domain name. And because your domain name is a huge part of your beauty blog’s brand, you should put some time into picking a great one.

With beauty bloggers, you’ll find a lot of people who use their own name for their domain. That’s fine!

But you can also get more creative if you want – and a domain name suggestion tool can help you come up with some outside-the-box ideas.

While there aren’t any specific rules for what makes a good domain name, you should follow some basic rules to avoid picking a bad one. Notably:

• Don’t use numbers or hyphens in your domain name because it makes it difficult for people to remember your domain name (e.g. is it “4” or “for”?)
• If available, try to use a .com. Again, this is easier for people to remember. But this isn’t an absolute rule.

So once you pick a domain name – how do you actually purchase it and connect it your website?

Good news – you don’t have to, because I’m about to show you how to get an already-configured domain name for free.

Step 3: Sign Up For Hosting And Get Your Free Domain Name

Once you’ve settled on a domain name for your beauty blog, you’re ready to sign up for web hosting.

Hosting is basically the “engine” that powers your beauty blog. It’s what “serves” your site up to visitors from around the world. You may not see it – but every single website on the Internet is powered by some type of web hosting.

Don’t worry, though – setting it up is straightforward – you don’t need any technical knowledge.

In this section, you’re going to knock out three crucial steps in just a few minutes:

• Signing up for hosting
• Claiming your free domain name
• Installing the WordPress software so that you can start blogging

For new bloggers, I always recommend Bluehost for hosting because it’s affordable and has a user-friendly interface that makes everything really easy. They’ll also give you a free domain name, free SSL and auto install WordPress blog for you…all for ~$5 per month.

Here’s how to set up your beauty blog

Sign Up For A Bluehost Account ( Comes with one free domain name)

To start, click here to get my special Bluehost discount. Then, click on the Get Started Now button:

To get started, I recommend choosing the basic plan – you can easily upgrade later once your blog starts growing:

Then, you get to pick your free domain name. Enter your desired name in the new domain box and click on the next link:

Now, to finish the process, you need to enter your account information and choose a hosting package:

You will need to pay for at least one year at a time – but you can also get even bigger discounts by paying for a more extended period. I also recommend that you uncheck all the add-ons – you don’t need to pay for any of them right now.

If you pay for just a year upfront – it should cost you ~$60 for the entire year, or about $5 per month.

Install The WordPress Software

Once you finish signing up for Bluehost, Bluehost should give you the option to install WordPress right away automatically – so you don’t actually need to do anything to install WordPress.

Again, this simplicity is why I like Bluehost for beginners:

If you don’t see an option to install WordPress, you can also follow our guide for how to manually install WordPress on Bluehost.

After installing WordPress, you officially have a working blog. Congrats! You can log in to your blog by going to:

yourdomain.com/wp-login.php

You’ll need to use the WordPress login credentials that you got during the installation process to log in. And once you’re logged in, here are some good housekeeping steps to take after installing WordPress.

Step 4: Pick A Fashion Blog Theme For Your Site

Your blog’s “theme” dictates how it looks – it’s kind of like your blog’s clothing. You can find both free and premium WordPress themes – so you can pick something that matches your budget.

To find a full selection of beauty blog themes, you can Google something like “best beauty blog themes”. But to save you some time, I’ve collected some of my favorite free and premium beauty blog themes below:

Clementina – $49

Ashe – Free

Fashion Guide – $59

Once you find a beauty blog theme that you love, follow our beginner’s guide to installing a WordPress theme to add it to your site.

Step 5: Useful WordPress Plugins To Add Functionality To Your Beauty Blog

Your blog’s theme is mainly focused on looks, but plugins help you add new functionalities.

For example, if you want to display a feed of your Instagram pictures, a plugin can help you do that without any technical set up.

Finding a plugin is not at all difficult considering WordPress is so popular.

The exact plugins that you’ll need depend on what functionality you want, so we can’t give you a specific list. But here are some recommendations for plugins to get you started.

All bloggers should consider these must-have plugins. And because beauty blogs are very image-focused and social, you might want an image gallery plugin or a social media plugin.

And here’s how you can display your Instagram feed on WordPress using a free plugin.

If you need help installing any of these plugins, check out my beginner’s guide to installing WordPress plugins.

Step 6: Share Your First Blog Post

Now that you’ve got the setup out of the way, you’re ready to share your first blog post – here’s an idea of what to write.

WordPress makes it easy to create a blog post. Once you log into your WordPress dashboard, go to Posts → Add New:

You can use the text editor to write and format your post – it’s a lot like Word in that you can use the toolbar to add formatting, insert links, and perform other actions. You can also click the Add Media button to upload and insert images.

Once you finish your blog post, all you need to do is hit Publish to make it live:

How To Make Your Beauty Blog A Success

Congratulations! You’re officially a beauty blogger, which means that we’ve reached the end of this tutorial.

Before I go, though, I want to share some resources to help you grow, and maybe eventually monetize your beauty blog.

To get traffic to your site from Google, you should learn about keywords and SEO. And there are also lots of other ways to get traffic, like a smart Pinterest strategy. Then, once you get some traffic, you can look into how to make money from your beauty blog.

Best of luck with your new beauty blog!

Let me know if you have any question regarding launching your beauty blog? If you know someone who wanted to start a beauty blog, do share this complete beginners guide with them.

 

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The Beginners Guide To Start A Beauty Blog : A Step-By-Step Guide is a post from ShoutMeLoud - Shouters Who Inspires

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