How to Start a Beauty Blog and Make Money

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If you are interested in and passionate about the beauty and cosmetic industry and want to reach a global audience, you must learn how to start a beauty blog correctly. 

A blog is one of the best tools to reach your target audience worldwide, and it is easy to create; you can do it. 

Even if this is your first time creating a blog, this guide will help you through all the steps.  

Here’s what you will learn in this guide:

• The tools you need to create a successful beauty blog.
• The best blogging platform to start your beauty blog. 
• How to pick the suitable beauty theme and plugins. 
• Why you should invest in a good camera and recording equipment. 
• How to promote your beauty blog to drive the right traffic. 
• 4 Ways to make money from your beauty blog.

Now, let’s walk through the steps of creating your beauty blog together.

But first, here are some reasons why becoming a beauty blogger can be the best decision. 

Why You Should Create a Beauty Blog

The beauty and cosmetic industry is huge, with lots of income potential. 

In 2022, US online cosmetic and beauty shoppers spent approximately $24.5 billion, with research projects global spending to reach $746 billion by 2025. 

According to Statista, the global revenue from the beauty and cosmetic industry will exceed $100 billion.

If you look at the Google Trend graph below, the search trend for the term beauty has remained consistent for the past year. This is a positive indication that it is not trending downward anytime soon.

There is plenty of revenue potential and content in the beauty industry. It is an ever-growing and trending niche. 

People will always want to look their best, and if you can make them feel more confident in their appearance, you will make lots of money.

However, you must develop a genuine interest or passion for the business to excel in this beauty niche.

The more people trust your content, advice, and tutorials, the better you can build the blog and create more revenue streams.

In this guide, I show you all the required tools, advice, steps, and help you need to create a beauty blog that builds your business and makes money for you.

Follow the steps below to create a successful beauty and cosmetic blog today. 

Pick a Low Competition Beauty Niche 

One of the beginner’s mistakes is creating a blog on a broad or a generic topic. 

For example, beauty blogging consists of a wide range of niches. Creating a blog on the general topic of beauty will be a mistake. 

You must narrow your niche and select a sub-category to create a focused blog. That’s how you can build a successful beauty blog quickly. 

Instead of the broad niche beauty and cosmetics, you can only start a blog on haircare, nail care, makeup, or skincare. 

Some blogs only review beauty products, monthly roundups of top beauty products, or top-selling products of the month. 

You can even break it down further; for instance, makeup has sub-categories:

• Lips 
• Eyelashes 
• Facial treatment 
• Bridal Makeup 
• Effect makeup 
• Evening makeup

If you approach building a beauty blog this way, you will scale years of trying to find your audience. 

The purpose is to discover your expertise and create a blog around what you know how to do best. 

Register a Custom Domain Name 

Registering a custom domain name is the first step to creating an online presence.

It doesn’t matter what type of website or blog you’re starting today; you need a domain name to get started. 

Picking the right name for your beauty blog can be extremely difficult, mainly if you focus on having the perfect name.

There is no perfect blog name; you must focus on having a memorable, short, and easy-to-communicate blog name.

To help you in the search, use a blog name generator to get inspiration or ideas to use. Alternatively, you can combine your name with a niche keyword to name your blog.

For example, MelindaBeauty.com, JaneBeautyBlog.com, and JasmieBeautyandBold.com. I hope you get the idea.

Once you find your blog name, the next step is to register it.

NameCheap is my favorite domain name registrar. 

Go to Namecheap, and enter your domain name in the search bar to check availability. If your domain name is taken, you must enter another or try to customize it.

Again, if your chosen domain name is unavailable for the .com extension, you can purchase other top-level extensions. 

Namecheap offers a variety of top-level and country TLD domain extensions. And they are reasonably priced and affordable.

However, there is a surprise if you purchase hosting from one of the web hosts I recommend in the next section. You will get a free bonus package for hosting with these web hosts.

Purchase Hosting 

Here is the surprise, you get a one-year free registration fee if you purchase an annual hosting plan from one of these web hosts:

• Namecheap
• Hostinger
• Bluehost

The three web hosts offer excellent hosting services, great customer support, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

They also offer other unique features like:

• Free SSL Certificate
• One-click WordPress installation
• CDN integration
• Builtin advanced cache system
• Customize administrative dashboard
• Website Builder
• Free weekly backup
• Staging hosting environments
• Automatic WordPress and plugin updates.
• SSD Storage
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Unlimited website installations.
• WordPress-specific hosting plan
• 24/7 support service
• 30-day money-back guarantee
• And lots more

Web hosting is required to make your blog visible on the internet. You need a place on the internet to store your website files and content; web hosts provide the services to host your files.

Install WordPress

After you’ve purchased hosting from one of the above web hosts, the next step is to install WordPress blogging software. 

Installing WordPress in your host will look the same for most web hosts.

However, if you’re unsure how to install WordPress in your hosting account, ask your web host. Most web hosts provide detailed step-by-step guides and walkthrough video tutorials on installing WordPress in their accounts.

Assuming you purchase WordPress hosting from Namecheap, here is a step-by-step guide on installing WordPress in the EasyWP dashboard.

Install WordPress Beauty Themes

When you install WordPress on your blog, it auto-installs the default WordPress theme, But this theme is far from good for a beauty blog.

A beauty and cosmetic blog needs a theme that fits your brand voice, showcases visual elements in prominent places, and gives it a distinctive design.

While there are plenty of free and paid options today, WP Astra is the perfect WordPress beauty theme. 

WP Astra has over 1.6 million downloads, 5,000 5-star review ratings, and WordPress’s all-time most downloads themes.

Astra comes with starter templates that let you build incredible website designs without being a designer. The starter templates come with 180+ pre-design themes for many industries and niches.

You can pick the suitable templates for your blog design based on your preferred industry or website builder:

• Elementor
• Gutenberg
• Beaver Builder
• Brizy

When you find a suitable template for your blog, you can customize it to fit your brand voice, look, color, layout, and message. 

Walking through it is not rocket science, even if this is your first time. Astra theme is easy to customize: color, menu, layout, footer, etc. 

You can customize any design elements within the customizer and preview real-time changes.

Install WordPress Beauty Plugins 

Next, you’ll need some WordPress beauty plugins to extend the core functionalities of your blog.

You can use several plugins; Salon Booking System is one of the must-have beauty plugins. This plugin helps you with appointment booking and scheduling, so you can schedule customers’ reservations and save time on other tasks.

Here are other plugins to consider:

• Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed – This plugin allows you to display a customizable and responsive Instagram feed from several accounts.
• All-in-one-SEO – This plugin guides you through on-page SEO, helps you create a sitemap, and generates title templates, Schema markup, meta descriptions, etc. 
• Broken Link Checker – It checks and detects all broken links on your website.
• Akismet – Helps you fight spam comments on your website.
• WP Rocket – Improve page speed, Core web vitals, and boost website performance.

You don’t have to use these plugins if you don’t consider them necessary for your blog; there are hundreds of alternatives on the wordpress.org directory.

Write and Publish Content 

There are many tasks to complete when creating a beauty blog; content is at the top of the priority list. 

Your content must be unique, practical, entertaining, and improve people’s appearance. 

You must create content that impacts your readers, helps them learn new things, styles, and looks, and gives them confidence.

Here are some tips for creating engaging and unique content.

• Create Original Content – Millions of blogs create content daily; what makes you different? It starts with creating original content with unique insights and advice. Put your personality and spin on your content to help you stand out. 

• Create Visual Content – As a beauty blog, your audience will love seeing more visual content demonstrating your expertise. You need to create more helpful tutorial video content. Add beautiful images; you can use a tool like Canva to create original image designs.

• Discuss Trending Issues -. The beauty and cosmetic niches are ever-evolving. Ensure you’re discussing trending styles, makeup products, cosmetics, etc.,  

• Start a YouTube Channel – A YouTube channel can be one of the best tactics to explore for a beauty blog. You can attract more audience, do a tutorial, give step-by-step ways to do things, and more.

To experience growth sooner than later, you must consistently publish content. Ensure you’re posting regularly. 

It will help you build your audience community, increase followership, and drive consistent website traffic.

Create Video Content 

As a beauty blogger, you must create high-quality video content. 

Your audience will love it more when you show them how to achieve a better look through visual content. 

Plus, some tips or advice are explained through video. 

For example, a video tutorial will better describe how to make bridal makeup than a text-based step-by-step guide. 

But the problem with many beauty bloggers is getting a high-quality camera and video editing skills. 

Technology has bridged the gap between professional photographers and smartphone users. Now, anyone can take breathtaking images or record amazing videos with a smartphone. 

After recording, you can use video editing software like Invideo to customize and edit your video. 

Invideo is the perfect video editor AI software to transform boring videos into stunning, engaging ones. 

You can transform your blog post into engaging video clips in minutes. Add text to speech, stock images, remove background noise, add music, edit scenes, etc. 

To learn more about Invideo, read my comprehensive review here. 

How to Make Money With a Beauty Blog

How to start a beauty blog is incomplete if we don’t learn several ways to make money from our efforts.

You have several ways to monetize your beauty blog. 

The option you take depends on a few factors – your traffic level, audience category, content type, and what you’re comfortable with, among other factors, to determine the best monetization strategies for you.

Let’s explore the four best ways to make money from a beauty blog.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is simply helping other people sell their products and services to earn/share a fraction of the profits. 

It is one of the best and oldest ways of making money online. And many online marketers have found life worth living through affiliate marketing. 

The good thing about affiliate marketing is that it only requires a portion of millions or tens of thousands of traffic to earn a decent income. 

The quality and relevancy of traffic are more important than the volume. Though you have more earning potential as traffic increases, the essential thing in affiliate marketing is your tactics and traffic relevance. 

After creating your beauty blog and publishing content on it, you should try affiliate marketing on your blog when you start getting decent traffic. 

There are several beauty affiliate programs you can join.

• Shareasale
• Look Fantastic
• Impact
• Sephora
• CJ (Commission Junction)
• Ulta Beauty

Many affiliate marketing programs accept blogs with relevant content and audience, decent traffic, and a highly valuable blog. 

So, ensure you have built a blog worth reading and have followers before applying to an affiliate program.

Consider reading this post for more information on the best affiliate marketing strategies. 

Contextual/Display Advertising 

Contextual advertising is simply serving automated ads on your blog based on the page content or keywords.

Unlike affiliate marketing, which gives you absolute control over the ads or links you place on your website, you have less control over ad serving with contextual advertising. 

It involved middlemen negotiating with advertisers; you only get a profit cut based on the traffic quality, audience location, and the number of clicks.

Another factor to consider is the traffic volume. 

You need lots of traffic to earn a significant income with display advertising. So, if your blog is yet to get tens of thousands of monthly traffic, you won’t make much from display advertising.

Google Adsense is the most popular advertising network among publishers. You can try it when your website starts receiving lots of consistent traffic.

Sell Your Products

If you develop your beauty and cosmetics products, you can sell them directly on your website to your audience. 

WordPress made selling online easy with its woo-commerce plugin. And it’s free; in a few seconds, it will magically turn your beauty blog into a fully functional online shop.

With the Woo-Commerce plugin, you can process payments, generate invoices, calculate shipping costs, display products, etc.

Alternatively, you can start an online store with Shopify for $1/month for the first three months. Here is the link to get Shopify 3-day free trial and $1 monthly for the first three months.

Selling your beauty products can be very lucrative as you can reach your audience globally and sell to international communities. It allows you to expand your brand reach and generates more revenue, leads, and customers.

Sponsored Post

Assuming you build a massive blog following with lots of target traffic, sponsored posts will become part of your monetization methods. 

Though it won’t replace any other monetization methods, you can use it to supplement your monthly income.

As you publish different content types, drive traffic, build a loyal audience, and publish consistently, brands will regularly reach out to request publishing sponsored posts on your blog.

You can charge between $200 to $1000 per sponsored post; it depends on the quality of your blog, traffic, and audience.

However, you must be careful about publishing frequency. Publishing too many sponsored posts weekly or daily may affect your blog’s voice and brand identity.

Learn to say no if you think the content isn’t relevant to your audience or it’s of low quality. 

Don’t get too tempted by the money; your blog and its audience are more valuable than short-term gains. 

How to Promote Your Beauty Blog 

You must promote your beauty blogging content to succeed and generate revenue. 

There is no shortcut to success; if your content is not driving awareness, you will struggle to make an impact with the blog. 

Here are five ways to drive traffic to your beauty blog today.

Publish Shareable Content 

Some content naturally attracts shares, while others don’t. This type of content is either informational or entertaining. 

As you publish more content, analyze their impact and engagement level, then focus on creating more content topics that naturally move people to share. 

The more people share your content, the more traffic potential. 

However, you have to find the balance between creating commercial intent and informational content. 

Even as you want people to share your content, you want to create content that drives sales. 

Join Relevant Beauty Community 

Several online communities are built for sharing common goals, skills, and knowledge. 

You can be part of many beauty blogger communities where you learn from others and share ideas. 

You will find several beauty bloggers’ groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, Twitter, etc.

When you become a member, don’t quickly share your content when you have not contributed positively to help others. 

Spend time reading and understanding community rules, helping others genuinely, and actively participating in discussions. 

As you gradually build recognition and showcase your expertise, you can begin sharing your links if the community allows it. 

Traffic from relevant groups and communities is super-targeted, highly engaged, and converts better. 

Try Paid Ads 

Paid traffic is the fastest route to drive high-quality, relevant traffic, but it’s expensive for beginners. 

However, at some points, you will have to test paid advertisements. 

Google and Facebook ads are the most popular and widely used among marketers. But they are not the only ones you should try.

Several other PPC advertising platforms exist, like Bing ads, Taboola, Revcontent, Quora, Reddit, Twitter, etc. 

You will test different platforms to discover suitable options for your beauty blogging content and audience. 

Though paid advertising is good, the traffic will stop when your balance is empty. So you have to consider budget vs. cost per click and traffic potential. 

For example, to drive 5,000 visits from Facebook ads, you must estimate how much you need to buy such traffic volume. 

Paid traffic is pay-to-play. 

Share on Social media. 

For most beauty bloggers, Instagram is the default social media channel to promote their content. 

Instagram is an image-heavy platform, making it a perfect platform for sharing your beauty content and images. 

If WordPress is your blogging platform, several plugins let you auto-publish to Instagram effortlessly. I have shared a few in this post. 

But you don’t have to limit yourself to Instagram alone; you must also create a profile and share your content on other social media platforms. 

Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and others are excellent places to share your content.

Conclusion 

Of course, this post is a bit detailed and comprehensive, but if you want to learn how to start a beauty blog, this is one piece of information you must read. 

You have many advice, tips, and step-by-step guides to help you build a profitable beauty and cosmetics blog business. 

Following my advice in this post, you’re one step closer to achieving beauty blogging success.