Writing about your personal experiences, hobbies, and interests can be the turning point in your life and career. You can freely share a part of your life with readers and, maybe, turn it into a full-time business. But if you have never created a blog before, how to start a lifestyle blog can be difficult to start.
If you're thinking of how to be a lifestyle blogger and make money from it, but don't know how to go about it, this guide is all you need. It covers every detail, step, and foundational knowledge you need to start a lifestyle blog today.
From picking the right lifestyle blog niche to monetization tactics, you'll learn everything you need to succeed as a lifestyle blogger in this post.
Without wasting more time, let's dive in...
What is a Lifestyle Blog?
A lifestyle blog is a type of blog where the blogger talks about his personal daily interest, experience, journey, activities, or life. It is more about sharing personal stories than teaching people a subject or digital marketing advice.
In nature, lifestyle blogs are more personal and resonate with people like minds than other types of blogs. A lifestyle blogger can talk about any topic or discussion that comes to mind without thinking about the SEO aspect of it.
Lifestyle blogging gives the author the freedom to write on more than 1 topic on the blog. You can discuss parenting, habit, travel, fashion, pet caring, nature, family, etc...all on the same blog without losing your audience.
Here are some examples of lifestyle blogs.
Examples of Lifestyle Blogs
If you want to learn how to write a lifestyle blog that makes money, here are some examples to get you inspired. All of these lifestyle blogs are built on WordPress and make decent annual income to call it a full-time business.
1. Camille Styles
A blog born out of passion and love for beauty, now reaching over 50 million monthly impressions across the blog and social media. And now has a team of 15 including the founder plus editor-in-chief, Camille Style, this lifestyle blog has come a long way.
Camille Styles offers fresh and original content on fashion, lifestyle, food, wellness, design, and gathering. It also discusses topics such as health, motherhood, sleep, thanksgiving, holiday, etc. As you can see, there is an endless topic discussion on this lifestyle blog.
She combines affiliate marketing, products sale, and display advertising to monetize the blog.
2. The Skinny Confidential
This is an amazing blog that combines podcasts, Youtube, and blog content to give you the latest in healthy living, fitness, skincare, beauty, and recipes. Created by Lauryn Evart, the blog focuses on the aspect of life that concerns women.
You can expect topics from birth control, surgery, legal s*x work, organic tampons, camel toes, etc...in her word, the blog " It's like a bag of Chex Mix- you never know what you're gonna get "
The Skinny Confidential is one of the best women's lifestyle blogs you can follow to get ideas on what comes under a lifestyle blog. The blog is monetized with Amazon and book sales on other marketplaces like Barnes and Noble. In 2021, she launched her own product line.
Here is the official YouTube video of her product announcement.
3. Down Shift Ology
Her YouTube channel has over 2.6 million subscribers, Lisa writes one of the best lifestyle blogs and YouTube channels on the internet. She covers lifestyle topics from food recipes, travel, healthy travel tips, kitchen advice, cooking tutorials, etc.
Taking her experience in the healthcare industry as a company executive, she started DownShiftOlogy in 2014 and quickly turned it into a real business. That experience gave her a massive opportunity to publish fresh and original content on her lifestyle blog.
She is also a certified health coach from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. She discusses topics from health, cooking, recipes, dinner, and travel. And her blog is well monetized through display advertising - Adsense, product sales, and affiliate marketing.
How to Start a Lifestyle Blog
Okay, now that you know what a lifestyle blog is and the topics that come under a lifestyle blog, it's time we dive deep into the actual processes.
If you want to learn how to write a lifestyle blog that makes money, these are the steps to follow.
1. Choose a Lifestyle blog niche
Though many lifestyle blogs talk about topics related to the author's daily activities, interests, and personal experiences, you need to be focused and narrow down a bit. You must decide the topics of your blog.
But that shouldn't be a difficult thing to solve.
Since the basis of a lifestyle blog is to cover discussions from your personal self and environment, your lifestyle blog topic should be about you. The things you are interested in, your passion, past experience, what makes you who you are today or where you're heading to.
In a nutshell, the blog is all about you. This is why bringing your personality and face to the blog is important to build a brand on a lifestyle blog.
If you're an introvert, which can be channeling in real life to deal with, it doesn't really matter in online marketing. Blogging will bring the best out of you, and force you to be social, speak with more confidence, and learn to be part of a community.
To help you decide on how to choose your lifestyle blog topic, here is a simple exercise you should do;
- Ask yourself what you are passionate about. Things you enjoy talking about for more than 30 minutes without any preparation or third-party help.
- What skill do you have worth teaching others?
- What are the life experiences that made you who you are today?
- What habits or challenges have you overcome in life worth sharing with others?
By the end of this exercise, you should have more than 10 lifestyle blog niches or topics listed. But you don't need all the topics on your list, you need to evaluate yourself and pick the best 3 to 4 topics you're very good at or going to be better at.
Let's look at some of the best lifestyle blog niches you can pick from
- Family and Parenting
- Motherhood
- Marriage and Divorce
- Hobbies and interest
- Food
- Health
- Wellness
- Women's world
- Cooking and recipes
- Adventures and travel
- Fashion and Style
This is just to give you an idea, it is not a conclusive list. You can branch out or expand from any of these lifestyle blog niches. Or even start your lifestyle blog on different topics that interest you.
But in whatever you do on how to be a lifestyle blogger, make sure to keep your blog topic not too narrow, and not too broad. Not too narrow that you run out of discussion too soon and not too broad that your audience won't know what to expect next.
You need to keep the balance between staying focused and running a profitable lifestyle blog business. If you want to create a lifestyle blog that makes money, your blog topic shouldn't be about everything that's happening in your life. It will be difficult to monetize and your blog topic might also be all over the place.
However, you need to start a lifestyle blog that you're passionate about and have a genuine interest in its topics. This is how you can blog for the long haul without burnout.
2. Pick a Blogging Platform
If you check the list of the most profitable lifestyle blogs, you will notice a trend - about 90% are built on WordPress. There is a reason for that...
WordPress is the most popular beginners friendly blogging platform. It's easy to use for any level of online marketers or bloggers. And I highly recommend you choose WordPress as your blogging platform.
If you're just starting out, it is easy to think of free blogging platforms like blogger, Wix, Squarespace, Tumblr, etc...many of these free blogging platforms will host your lifestyle blog for free. This means you don't need to buy a hosting plan. You might consider buying a domain name to look more professional.
But there are always downsides to building with a free blogging platform. The most significant being you're not in total control of your blog and limited monetization freedom. You can not experiment or monetize your blog as you would want. You have to play by the platform's terms of service, otherwise, your blog may be deleted without any prior notice.
WordPress has two blogging platforms - WordPress.com and WordPress.org.
If you need a free hosted WordPress blog, you can do that with the wordpress.com platform. You don't need to purchase a hosting account or buy a domain name. Everything is set up for you, but if you don't like the domain name to read like this:
Youlifestyleblogname.wordpress.comYou need to purchase and register your domain name. Then your blog name will be Youlifestyleblogname.com - This is more professional and helps with personal branding.
WordPress.org - Self-Hosted
I advise you to start with the self-hosted WordPress.org. You will have total control and endless growth possibilities over your blog. And it allows you to deploy more resources, tools, and plugins to grow your blog.
You need to purchase a domain name and buy web hosting. Depending on the domain extension, it costs less than $10 for most domain names (except premium names). And you can start with a monthly web hosting plan if you don't have the money to pay annually.
Most professional blogs you see today are self-hosted.
One of the advantages of a self-hosting blog is the choice of hosting. You can move your blog to another host at any time if necessary. You're not stuck to any contract length or restricted to a certain growth limit.
In the next section, I give my recommendation on which web host you may consider.
For a more in-depth guide on how to start a blog on WordPress, read my comprehensive guide.
3. Choose a Domain Name
For many lifestyle blogs, picking a domain name is not a difficult thing. You can go with your name if you're comfortable with it and doing this for a long time. Also, if you have no plan of selling the blog in the future.
Another way to choose a lifestyle blog name is to think about why you're starting the blog. Your interest, passion, and activities that lead to starting the lifestyle blog. If you're creative, you can craft a name from the passion or interest that led you to start this journey.
However, if you're stuck and don't know what to name your blog - let some artificial intelligence name generator help you out. For a list of blog name generators and how to find the perfect blog name, check out this article on the Hostinger website.
For a good blog name, remember these simple tips:
- Pick a top-level domain name extension. If you're going global, pick .com, but if your topic is targeted at a local audience, consider your country's TLD.
- It should be unique and memorable
- Keep it simple, under two to three words.
- It should be easy to spell and say on the phone
- Your domain name should give room for topic expansion in the future. So don't narrow yourself to a corner.
4. Choose a Web Host
Every blog and website on the internet needs a place to store its file and content. That place is what is called hosting or server. A web host provides the service and infrastructure required to store and maintain your website files so it's accessible to your website visitors.
Our recommendation for the best WordPress web host is Bluehost and Namecheap. Bluehost is recommended by the WordPress community and Namecheap is the most affordable and beginner-friendly web hosting solution.
Here is what makes Bluehost and Namecheap our top picks:
- Dedicated customer support services
- 24/7 help service from WordPress experts
- Free SSL Certificate
- Free 1-year domain name registration when you purchase annual hosting plans.
- Optimized WordPress manage hosting built for speed
- Custom user dashboard
- One-click WordPress install
- Automatic updates and backup
- Unlimited bandwidth
- SSD Storage
- Unlimited websites for selected hosting packages
It costs less than $3/month to start a blog with Bluehost or Namecheap. There is no reason or excuse not to start your lifestyle blog today. Start now, so that you can grow tomorrow.
5. Design Your Lifestyle Blog
Your blog is live and ready but without a blog design. You need to give it a beautiful look that speaks well of your brand and personality.
This is where WordPress themes come into play. Thankfully, WordPress has over 5,000 free themes you can pick from. You can install and activate any theme you like without paying a dime, but there are things to look for when choosing a blog theme.
- Mobile Responsive - In today's marketing world, you need a blog design that works on all device screen sizes. Mobile or desktop computer, your blog must be usable for all users.
- Clean Codes - Many blog themes are poorly coded which might lead to poor performance and user experience. Always use a WordPress theme with clean and optimized codes.
- Regular Updates - You need a theme that receives regular updates from its developer, not a theme that has been abandoned or only receives updates once in a few years.
- Simple Design - Before you pick a theme, check out all the bells and whistles if you need them. Pick a theme that puts focus on content rather than unnecessary elements that will only slow down your site speed and get you busy.
- Your Message - Can you find prominent places to display your core brand message? This is important for your home and other core pages. You will discover that some themes put emphasis on getting your message front and center than others.
Okay, let's look at some of the best WordPress themes for a lifestyle blog you can choose from.
- Divi yearly plan - $89/year (Unlimited websites)
- Divi Lifetime plan - $249 (Unlimited websites)
Divi from Elegant Themes
Divi is the flagship product of Elegant Themes and it's also a page builder. It comes with over 40 drag-and-drop elements to build amazing WordPress sites in minutes without knowing how to code.
It has hundreds of pre-built blog niche layouts to start with. You will find layouts specific to your lifestyle blog, food blog, travel, and many blog-specific niches. However, Divi is a premium theme you need to purchase.
There are two plans on the website:
- Astra Pro (unlimited websites) - $47/yr ($227 for a lifetime deal)
- Essential Bundle (unlimited websites) - $137/yr ($677 for a lifetime deal)
- Growth Bundle (unlimited websites) - $187/yr ($937 for the lifetime deal)
Astra
Astra is a free WordPress theme with over a million installations. The good thing about Astra is the starter templates. You can have any website design setup quickly by picking the right templates from its templates pack.
Each template's design comes with core pages, demo content, images, widget, etc...you can upload and start editing your content quickly. This gives you the advantage to have your blog setup doing less.
- Personal (1 website) - $23.50/yr ($139 for a lifetime deal)
- Business (3 websites) - $33.50/yr ($199 for a lifetime deal)
- Pro (100 websites) - $48.50/yr ($299 for a lifetime)
If you want more, Astra Pro gives you advanced features and tools to build high-quality professional designs. More layout options, header control, footer, sidebar, and more elements. The premium plan has three pricing options:
Cyberchimps
Since it was launched, Cyberchimps themes have been downloaded over 1 million times. And it is one of the best responsive affordable WordPress themes. You can install it via your WordPress admin and start using it immediately.
The premium option gives you more control and add-on to extend theme features. There are three paid plans:
6. Create Important Pages
For many WordPress blogs, these pages are important. And you need to consider creating similar pages for your lifestyle blog, too.
At least, you need contact and an About us page. These two pages are important to give users a means of contacting you and learning about your online journey.
To create new WordPress pages, log into your WordPress admin and hover on Pages, click on Add New.
On the next page is the WordPress block editor, here you can enter your page title, write your content, add images, and format and publish the content.
Let's go over how to write a good about page and a contact us page for a lifestyle blogger.
About Page
For a lifestyle blogger, the about page is important because it is the page where your audience can get to know you better. How your life experience resonates with them and how you can be of great help to them.
They want to know more about you, your personality, a bit about your life, things you can share openly, and what to expect from reading your blog. Remember, a lifestyle blog is about you, so try to give a sense of transparency and the story behind yourself.
It will create a bond between your audience and you which is important for community building around your blog. If you need inspiration on how to write an about me page for a lifestyle blog, here is an example from Lisa of DownShiftOlogy.
In Lisa's About Page, she goes beyond to talk about her health issue, and how she had to quit her corporate job to find the balance between life work and healthy living. As you can see, she's more open about her life. This has a way to bring people closer to your blog and create a sense of followership.
Contact us Page
Every website or blog needs contact us page, including lifestyle blogs. The contact us page is the primary way readers can reach you through. You must create this page if you want people to contact you via the blog.
And it is not difficult to create a contact us page in WordPress today. WordPress now comes with its built-in contact form features. To add a contact form in WordPress, open the contact us page, and click on the + sign in the editor.
Type form in the search box and click on form from the options.
Next, choose the type of web form you want to create and apply settings from the right side panel.
However, if you need advanced contact form features like payment form, polls, survey, order form, conditions form, etc... you may want to consider other options like WPForms or Gravity form.
7. Install WordPress Plugins
One of the best aspects of WordPress is the plugins that extend its core functionality and features. There are endless possibilities and customization you can achieve with your blog.
At this time, there are over 60,000 WordPress plugins. And most are free to use on your blog. Let's look at some of the MUST-HAVE WordPress plugins for most blogs including lifestyle blogs.
All-in-one SEO
To drive traffic to your blog, you need optimized web pages. All-in-one SEO makes it easy to optimize your website to improve search engine visibility. It has tons of features including automatic sitemap submission, structure data, redirection manager, internal links suggestions, woocommerce SEO, local SEO, etc...
The setup wizard makes it effortless to configure the plugin, even for a newbie, you can set up the plugin within 3 minutes.
The free version is ideal for most blogs, if you need more advanced features and tools, you can unlock its full potential by subscribing to one of its premium plans.
WP Rocket
At one point in your blogging career, you might feel the need for this plugin. WP Rocket is the number 1 speed and performance optimization WordPress plugin. As you add more content and files to your lifestyle blog, it will start slowing down and bulky.
You need a cache plugin like WP Rocket to optimize images, improve file delivery, minify JavaScript and improve CSS file delivery. WP Rocket also fixes most of the Core Web Vitals errors you get in Google and pagespeed testing tools.
However, WP Rocket is a premium-only WordPress plugin. The Single plan cost $49/yr which is what you need at this stage.
Yoast SEO
Yoast is one of the most popular WordPress SEO plugins and by far the most downloaded. It will guide you through on-page optimization. And also gives you detailed SEO guides on what to do to make the content better.
The onboarding process is easy to complete. You have a setup wizard that guides you through the process. Yoast has some features that set it apart - sitemap submission, internal link management, on-page optimization, fletch reading score, Wincher integration, Semrush integration, etc...though Yoast is not as feature-rich as All-in-one SEO, it is still one of the best WordPress SEO plugins.
8. Write Your First Post
After installing plugins and blog design, it's time to write content.
If you're wondering what to write on your lifestyle blog, think about your experience, interest, and passion. You need to find an angle to tell the story better and make it interesting to your readers.
However, you don't have to be perfect at this stage, the most important thing is to get started and just write. You will improve with continuous writing and practice.
You can get inspiration from top lifestyle blogs in your niche. This is an easier way to discover blog content and ideas you can write about on your blog. If you do a Google search for the "top lifestyle blogs", and "best lifestyle blogs", you will discover many blogs to follow.
Scroll through these blogs to find your ideal style and voice. Consider looking through posts that attract comments and shares, then try to come up with similar content topics. If you discover something that resonates with you, you can start writing from your perspective and experience.
Do not copy and paste content, rather, write from your own experience and add your view to the subject. But since you're writing a lifestyle blog, most of your content should come from personal experience.
Here are some posts to help you improve your writing skills.
9. Promote Your Content
Now that your content is ready, it's time to promote it. If you don't market your content, nobody will. And nobody will know your blog exists, either.
There are several content marketing methods you can use to promote your lifestyle blog. We will go over a few options here so you can begin right away.
1. SEO - Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is an important part of any website traffic growth. The earlier you start optimizing your content for SEO traffic the better.
You need to make sure you're optimizing for industry keywords while your content appeals to your readers. If you write from the heart and know about the topic, your content will appeal to both humans and search engines.
But you need to learn how to do keyword research and it's not complicated, you can start with this guide on keyword research. Also, we've created a few guides on website traffic you might want to check out.
2. Social Media Marketing
A few blogs can do without social media marketing, not a lifestyle blog. You need to invest time, resources, and energy in social media marketing. For most profitable lifestyle blogs, social media is a big part of their marketing strategy, especially Instagram.
You need to create an Instagram account for your lifestyle blog. And also a YouTube channel. These two platforms are essential to the growth of your lifestyle blog.
You can even start a lifestyle blog on Instagram where you upload photos and short videos. And build followers to engage with you. Then you can drive traffic from your Instagram page to your lifestyle blog.
For example, look at how Lauren Conrad, an Instagram lifestyle blogger with 6 million followers creates beautiful photos for her Instagram account. And linked out to her lifestyle blog - Scent Beauty. This is a smart way to drive traffic from the Instagram account to the blog.
With a smartphone and a beautiful environment, you can create high-quality photos for your blog and social media accounts.
Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are platforms you should look into also. Create a Pinterest account, and share your pins regularly.
3. Build Your Email List
You can decide to wait for a few months before building your email list or start from day one. But the earlier you start the better.
An email list is one of the best marketing channels and you should leverage it. Building an email list requires a few tools. You need the right tools to build your email list fast.
Here at CyberNaira, we use Getresponse to build and manage our subscribers. You can try it for a 30-day free trial period.
10. Monetize Your Lifestyle Blog
If you want to know how to start a lifestyle blog and make money, you need to pay attention to this section.
I will give you a few monetization tactics that are proven to work for any type of blog topic, including lifestyle blogs.
Let's get into the details...
Display Advertising
If you like the idea of running ads on your lifestyle blog, display advertising is a good choice. However, it requires significant traffic volume.
To make a decent income from display advertising, you need to generate at least 20,000 sessions per month or 50,000 pageviews.
Google Adsense is the most popular ad network. Each time someone clicks on the ad, you get paid a token. So it is a number game, the more traffic you get, the more you can earn.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is great, you don't need to have huge website traffic or audience to make money with your blog.
What you need is targeted traffic, an engaging audience, and high-converting affiliate products. The products you promote to your audience have a direct correlation with your conversion rate.
Your affiliate products must be relevant to your blog topic and solve a problem. To find affiliate programs in your niche, here is a list you can go through today.
- High-quality traffic
- Blog followers
- And a highly valuable blog.
3. Sponsored Post
- Increase traffic
- Get more brand exposure
- Increase SEO value
You can get paid for publishing other people's content on your blog.
Companies and brands will contact you to write about their products and services on your blog in exchange for money or other values. And sometimes, you just need to publish the post. The brand will write it for you.
However, to reach the level where companies will ask for sponsored posts, you need to work on three important marketing metrics:
When marketers or companies want to feature on other niche blogs, they are looking to achieve one of these things:
If your blog has the potential to give one of these, you're likely to get more sponsorship deals and charge more for your services.
Conclusion...
I believe you have everything you need to succeed as a lifestyle blogger. The only thing stopping you is your ability to learn and take action. This is a complete guide on how to start a lifestyle blog and make money.
I have tried to make it your one-stop guide to becoming a lifestyle blogger for beginners. If you still need help getting started or stuck along the way, never hesitate to reach out.
If you think this guide has helped you in one way or another, kindly subscribe to the blog newsletter so you can be the first to know about helpful guides like this one.
