Being a beauty blogger can have many perks: if you’re successful at it, you can get free beauty products and opportunities to work with famous brands. You could build an audience of thousands of fans. These days, a lot of people are starting blogs online – even those with zero technical experience. Right now, there are over 500 million blogs in the US alone, and that number continues to grow every year.

Beauty blogs are among the most popular types of blogs that people start online. They are great as they let people express their creative side and showcase the things that they are passionate about. If you think that the beauty niche is saturated, the fact that the industry is experiencing growth means that there are still opportunities for a beauty blooger who wants to get started right now.

If you work smart and hard, you can become a successful beauty blogger yourself, and 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.

To make it easier for you to become a beauty blogger, we’ve created a basic guide focused on how to start a beauty blog and make it work.

How to be a successful beauty blogger

beauty blogger

The blog

The first step to take to become a beauty blogger is – of course – to create a beauty blog. The two main sites that are available to easily set up a blog are Blogger and WordPress.  Blogger is the simpler of the two and WordPress allows a lot more personlisation if you were to turn it into a more ‘professional’ website in the future. It is easier for a web developer to ‘code’ a WordPress blog, but also blogger can be personalised as much as you want. These websites will say either ‘blogspot’ or ‘wordpress’ in the URL, so if you want your own personalised URL you can easily buy a domain name from a host.

Plan your strategy

Decide who you are willing to work for. You may choose to start a beauty blog on your own or you may want to start out working for another company or through an agency. You can also do both. Keep in mind that if you decide to work for someone else, you may be responsible for maintaining a certain amount of social media interest in your material.

If you choose to work for another company, you can do so as a freelance journalist or a salaried employee. To browse current opportunities, enter “hiring beauty blogger” into search engines, or use keywords like “beauty blogger,” “beauty journalist” and “freelance beauty” on career search websites.

Choose the audience

You need to think about who you want your blog to be aimed at, which will in turn help determine the content of your blog. For example, if you want to inspire teenagers you’re looking to write about affordable brands such as Rimmel and Natural Collection. However, if you’re aiming at women aged 25+, you need to look more at skincare and anti-ageing products from brands such as Rodial and Dermalogica.

You have to be constantly aware of considering your audience when choosing your style of writing, layout and the general vibe of your blog. If teenagers read your blog, keep your writing chatty, your layout girly and pink! For an older audience, keep it clean and simple.

Choose quality over quantity

To be a successful beauty blogger, it is very important to remember that quality is so much more important than quantity. Posting a really insightful article with beautiful images once a fortnight is much better than posting a quick, half-hearted review every day. Moreover, to get good quality content, it’s always a great idea to own a good camera. If you can’t afford one you can always consider collaborating with a photographer. Often, student photographers are happy to work together in exchange for a credit on your blog.

Choose your special content and stick to that

It’s important to know specifically what your focus will be. A focused blog makes blogging easier. Here are some examples. If you’re a product junkie, you can write helpful reviews. If you’ve got skills, you can show off your looks, or if you are interested or expert in it, you could focus on drugstore and affordable brands.

If you love nail polish and have a talent for nail art, you could make it your main focus. If you love ALL things beauty, you can figure out your focus as you blog. Content is by far the most important part of blogging. Even if you have the most beautiful blog design, if the content isn’t great you won’t get a lot of returning visitors. So what is ‘great’ content? Try and be original.

Your own opinion, the way you’d use a product and your own writing style is what will make your audience want to come back to read more.