Mactavis

Category: Websites

  • How To Start A Money-Making Fashion Blog

    How To Start A Money-Making Fashion Blog

    Do you own a fashion blog or website? Or you want to create one and don’t know where and how to begin. While it is easy to create a blog, making money from it can be the more difficult task. If fashion is something you can write, talk or generally passionate about, then getting paid for what you love doing is an added incentive to getting it done.

    The best time to have created a fashion blog was like two years ago but the next best time is now. You don’t need to be a stylist, designer or tailor to get started. You might just love outfits, and voila!, you start earning a lot of money. To be a fashion blogger, you must have a unique perspective on fashion.

    This article highlights how you can get into the fashion blogging industry. Let’s get started.

    What Should Be On A Fashion Blog

    A fashion blog should be a reflection of who you are. To be an authority on the online fashion space, there are some things you should have on your blog. The best fashion blogs in Nigeria such as Bella Naija and Madivas keep attracting a lot of readers due to the amount of information they churn out.

    We have highlighted some of the best sections a fashion blog should have:

    Weddings: Having a Wedding Section is surely advised. People keep looking out for new trends, new fashion tips and the best accessories combination for that special day. Partner with top brands and even budding entrepreneurs to promote their wedding gowns, shoes, and accessories. Also, write on wedding colour themes and event decoration.

    You can give tips on how to accommodate different cultures on the wedding day. You can also decide to sell wedding apparel yourself by integrating payment gateways and e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce.

     

    Fashion News and Opinion: This section should be what readers and users see first when they access your blog. Push the latest news in the fashion space, what a celebrity is wearing, the best and worst dressed celebrities at shows.

    You can also write opinion articles. For instance, during the rainy section, you can create a post titled, “How To Ensure Your Fashion Game Is Still Tight During The Rainy Season “. For so many people, this is a challenge. By writing a post that talks about a common and recurring problem, you become an authority.

     

    Trends: You must be in tune with the latest trends in the fashion world. What are the new colour combinations people are trying? Which accessories are trending? These trends must be featured on your blog. Research a lot and also go for a lot of fashion events and meetups to be abreast of the latest designs and happenings in the industry.

     

    Beauty and Lifestyle: On a fashion blog, you can never go wrong with having a Beauty and Lifestyle section. Write blog posts on topics such as Skincare, makeup, hair care, manicure and pedicure, and anything that relates to beauty. Feature products that focus on different skin types to attract a wide range of visitors. You can also talk about lifestyle with topics such as Relationship Talks, Healthy Living, and even Nutrition. They help drive traffic as well.

     

    What You Need To Start

    The first thing you should do is choose the platform on which you want to build your blog. There are a lot of Content Management Systems that you can use, but WordPress is highly recommended. It’s support system and ease of use are excellent It is very user-friendly, meaning you don’t need to be a techie to get the hang of it. To get started with WordPress, there are a few things you need:

     

    • Web Hosting – This is where all your website files will be stored. When using wordpress.com, you don’t have to bother about this, hosting is taken care of.

     

    • Theme: A WordPress theme provides the frontend of your blog. You can search the WordPress Theme Repository for a theme that suits your taste. There are free themes and premium themes which cost about ($45 – $60). You can also get a custom theme built to fit your brand or your specific design preferences. You can get in touch with us for that.

     

    Choosing a Design

    Being a fashionista, your blog shouldn’t be drab. It doesn’t matter if you only do product reviews, or a designer showcasing your products or a blogger that shares fashion news. Your blog should look appealing and needs a design that appeals to the reader. It must also represent your unique sense of style and creativity.

    There are thousands of WordPress theme for fashion blogs that you can choose from. A lot of themes have creative designs which are flexible and easily editable. You can add your logo, choose colors and change basic settings. The most important feature of a theme is responsiveness.

    A responsive site is a website that looks just as good on mobile devices as it looks on a computer. It’s easy to read on any screen size without the need to zoom, resize, or scroll horizontally.

    Content Quality

    While a pleasing design will attract people to your website, having good and useful content is what will keep them coming back. Pages such as About Us and Contact Us help make you look professional. Once you have set up those pages, you can start adding posts, images, and pictures.

    Research for fashion topics that people search for, and write content around it. Your blog posts should be entertaining, informative, and helpful. Keep up to date with fashion trends and update your blog with new trends and news. You also need to be consistent, as regular updates mean that more people will get to read what you are writing.

    Visit popular blogs in the fashion industry to find trending topics you can blog about.

    While doing this, you can’t copy and paste content from other sites. This is plagiarism, and is illegal, especially if the source has a copyright on the article. Your site would also get penalized by search engines like Google if your blog contains plagiarized content.

     

    Social Media

    Leveraging social media is important to build your audience and the reputation of your blog. A lot of your intended audience is already on different social media platforms, especially Instagram. You can get access to that vast audience by following trends and making sure you are in the conversation. You should also direct your social media followers to your website by sharing links to your articles.

     

    Page Optimization

    Getting users to find your website out of the millions of websites out there is a skill that will set you apart from the rest. Here are ways you can improve your website visibility.

    • S.E.O: Search Engine Optimization is a long-term and continuous effort that pays large returns. Ensure that your blog posts contain keywords that your intended audience search for. This would make your website rank higher in Google search results.

     

     

    • User Engagement: Put yourself in the place of the user. What would you do when you first arrive on a website? You must be able to track what your audience is doing, this helps you know what you need to improve on as you will see the pages with the most and least visits and other useful information. You can use Google Analytics for this.

     

    Let’s Make Some Money

    Once your fashion blog is established and has a sizable audience, brands may pay you to promote their brands. That should be your goal, as it offers you the opportunity to earn while doing what you love. A lot of successful bloggers their income from paid and sponsored content.

    Here are some other ways to monetize your fashion blog.

    • Google AdSense: AdSense is an advertising program by Google that lets you display ads on your website and make money. You get paid based on the number of views and clicks that the ads on your site get. In a future post, we would explain more about Google AdSense, but you can find out more by doing research online.

     

    • Become an affiliate marketer: How cool is it to get paid for referring people to buy a particular product? That is how affiliate marketing works. You get paid a commission when you recommend a product. You can be an affiliate marketer for fashion brands and online fashion stores. Once people buy these products via your site, you get paid a commission.

     

    • Sponsored Posts: A sponsored post is a post written on behalf of a brand or company to promote their products or brand. You can write sponsored posts for brands and charge for it. Another form of sponsored posts is featured posts. For a featured post, a brand provides the content but post it on your blog in order to get access to your audience.

    Setting up a money-making fashion blog requires a lot of patience and consistency. You might struggle to earn at the initial stage, but doing the aforementioned puts you in the right direction, though you must also research and keep up with emerging trends in the fashion space.

    If you liked this article, connect with us across all social media platforms @MactavisDigital, and do check out our portfolio to see examples of the projects we have done in the past.

  • 6 Tips For Choosing The Best Domain Name for Your Website

    6 Tips For Choosing The Best Domain Name for Your Website

    The first thing most people try to figure out when they want a website is what domain name to use. A domain name is basically the address and name of your website (e.g. mactavis.com). It’s what people type into their web browsers to get to your site. Most people try to have a domain name that’s the same as their brand name. That’s good but there are chances that it is in use by someone else. Don’t be too dispirited about it, you are not alone.

    It is good practice to decide and check the availability of a domain name first before settling on a brand name. This is important because you might register your business name (with the Corporate Affairs Commission if you are in Nigeria) and by the time you want to have a website or presence on social media, you discover that the name is already in use. This article highlights important things you should consider to get the best domain name for your website.

    It can be argued that the success of a website is closely tied to its name. If you make the mistake of choosing wrongly, it can be difficult to switch names without hurting your brand and affecting your search rankings.

     

    Brand first, keywords second

    When choosing a domain name, it is important that you use a name that is unique. For SEO purposes, it is beneficial to have keywords in your domain. By doing this, you tell search engines what your website is about. This will help you rank higher in search engines such as Google, though having quality content and good user experience is equally as important in ranking on Search Engine Results Page (SERPs).

    Finding a domain name with target keywords that are not taken already is like finding a needle in a haystack, but you can be creative and combine your keywords to ensure your domain name stands out. You can check for the availability of a domain name by using this site.

     

    Use .com if you can

    We’d personally recommend a .com domain name extension and here’s why. Dot com domains are the most common and most likely to be typed in browsers. Many users, especially those that are not too techy automatically type .com at the end of every domain without thinking twice.

    There are a lot of top-level domain extensions available at the moment such as .net, .org and even niche extensions such as .pizza, .blog and even .photography. That said though, .com is still the most widely used domain extension that most users are familiar with.

     

    Make it brand-oriented

    To make your domain name stand out in your reader’s mind, it should express your brand name which should be unique. For example, Mactavis sounds good and is unique.

    Your domain names should be unique, catchy and memorable as well. Truth is, this is not easy, but not impossible. Only takes time and a lot of creativity.

     

    Keep your domain name short, spell-able and easily pronounceable

    Most brands make the mistake of using homophones when selecting a domain name. Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelt differently. Examples are air and heir, stair and stare, and shore and sure. Words with suffixes such as psy-, ph- should generally be avoided, as their complete word pronunciations don’t always have the same spellings.

    You should be able to easily share your domain when speaking as well as writing. It should spell as it sounds.

    Domain names with long character length may result in typos when users try to look up the website, and that may mean you lose traffic to other websites. It is recommended that you keep your domain name under 15 characters as longer domain names are more difficult to remember. Also try keep the number of syllables under 3 or 4. Domains with 1 or 2 syllables are the easiest to remember.

     

    Avoid double letters and hyphens

    Try to avoid hyphens when choosing a domain. Remember our rule:

    A good domain should spell as it sounds.

    Hyphens are generally not easy to remember. They are also a common feature in domains used by phishing sites used for fraud as the fraudsters try to mask legitimate domains by adding hyphens.

    Users may also end up at your competitor’s site if they forget the hyphens in yours, and that’s a great risk.

    Also, try to avoid the use of double letters, because they increase the chance of typos, which ultimately lead to a loss of traffic. Imagine a website with the name, “happinesssecrets.com”, there is a big chance that one of the “s” may be skipped which leads the user to an entirely different website.

     

    We hope the article helped inform you on the necessary tips to consider on choosing the best domain name for your website.

    Connect with us across all social media platforms @MactavisDigital for your website and mobile application design and development, training, Search Engine Optimization, and other digital services.