Are you wondering if you can make money from creating the fashion blog of your dreams?
The good news is, you can make a good living if you take the time to grow a successful fashion blog, but it will take some work to get there.
You might already know some of the most popular fashion bloggers who are making millions of dollars. These include Cole Sprouse, who was a leading actor in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and then in Riverdale. He is also a photographer and now a fashion influencer.
Chiara Ferragni started out as a law student sharing her passion for fashion on social media and eventually through blogging. She now has a multi-million-dollar fashion business.
If you are completely new to blogging and want someone to guide you step-by-step, there are plenty of sites where you can learn to make money blogging.
Keep in mind that for many of the ways you can generate income, you’ll need to already have a fashion blog up and generating traffic. A good goal is to reach your first thousand followers organically before monetizing.
If you haven’t started your fashion blog yet or are in the early stages, you’ll want to learn about growing a following.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing has long been a popular way for bloggers to earn some extra cash. In fashion blogging, this can become lucrative.
Basically, affiliate marketing works like this:
You’ll need to contact a company who sells the kinds of clothing and accessories you will want to promote and you think your audience will like.
Each company has their own process to become an affiliate. For example, Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic and Athleta have an affiliate program that is easy to apply to and use. You fill out their application form online and then use links on your site to specific products to earn a commission on anything someone buys after clicking your link.
Another way you can earn through an affiliate program is to be paid a few cents every time someone clicks on a link (instead of a sales commission).
If you are promoting lower-costing items that might get more clicks, this could end up being just as or more lucrative. Remember that with the sales commission programs, you only get paid when someone buys something after using your link.
If you are already an influencer looking to make some money off an affiliate program, you might want to look at some affiliate programs such as collective voice, which is geared towards influencers and includes thousands of brands and any type of clothing, accessories, or beauty products you can think of. You can earn as much as 20% sales commission!
Sponsored Posts
Another way you can make money as a fashion blogger is to create sponsored posts. You’ll have to reach out to the companies you want to sponsor your posts. As you build a following, some companies might find you!
These posts will showcase the company’s products. Instead of earning a commission, you’ll be paid a single fee by the company who is sponsoring the content. Ideally, you’ll want to partner with a brand that would sponsor posts at least a few times a year.
You’ll want to have an idea of a reasonable fee to charge for a sponsored post: if you charge too little, you’ll end up doing a lot of work for a slim hourly rate. If you charge too much, companies might choose to go with other bloggers and influencers.
Keep apprised of the going rates. For Instagram, the rule of thumb in 2023 is to charge $10 per every 1,000 followers you have. The value you have to the company you want to do a sponsored post for entirely depends on the number of followers you have, as that is a measure of your current advertising reach. The same goes for blogging.
Christina Galbato, online educator to influencers, advises to take stock of your monthly traffic and base your fee off of that. Look at the last three months of views and take the average monthly number of views.
You can base your fee off the views, charging a few dollars per 1,000 page views. You’ll need to have these numbers handy when you reach out to a business about doing a sponsored post to prove your value and how you came up with the rate you are charging.
When posting sponsored content, always let your audience know it is sponsored. No one wants to feel they are being tricked into reading through an advertisement.
You also want to make sure the post fits with the rest of the content on your blog and is something your readers will really be interested in, or else you risk losing their trust, attention or respect.
Brand Collaborations
If you are looking for another popular and straightforward way to make some money through your fashion blog, you should consider a brand collaboration. The way this monetization strategy works is by having two brands or a brand and an influencer work together to gain more of a following or interest for both of them. In short, it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.
You’ll want to start by pitching the idea of a collaboration to a brand and show them what you have to offer. You’ll want to include information about the following you already have and the audience you are trying to reach. Show them your value and why you think the partnership could benefit both of you.
Collaborations should feel natural. If you have a blog all about shoes, you might want to collaborate with Nike, but you probably won’t collaborate with Maybelline.
The collaboration might include content you create for them or with them. You might be featured on their page, and in exchange offer a review of their products. Whatever arrangement you work out with them, make sure everything is detailed in a contract, and how you will be paid for doing your end of things.How much you charge for a collaboration depends on how much work you will be doing. Add up the time you think you will spend and way that against the number of followers or views you think the content will have.
There are plenty of resources that offer more guidance about brand collaborations for bloggers.
Advertising
The most obvious and perhaps oldest way to make money through an online blog is through advertising. This means you will have advertisements pop up, on the side, or in the middle of your content. These can be very effective and fit a fashion blog well, but be careful that your blog doesn’t become too overcrowded with them.
Ads are not much work once you set them up. Simply go through the steps to set up your account with an online ads platform. Then, you’ll need to decide how many ads and where to have them in your blog.
Make sure your ads fit well with your content so that they don’t stand out and annoy your readers. If you decide to use Google AdSense, for example, you can select the fashion fields and categories that fit your blog best.
If you blog on a platform such as Wix, it’s easy to add Google AdSense ads. You make a small amount of money every time someone views or clicks on those ads.
If the above ideas for monetizing your fashion blog don’t appeal to you or you want more, look at some more ideas on how to monetize a blog.