How to Start A Fashion Blog in Nigeria (Step-By-Step) -

Do you plan to start a fashion blog in Nigeria and don’t know where or how to begin?

In this post, we’re going to go through the steps of starting and building your own fashion blog in Nigeria from scratch.

Starting from:

Selecting the perfect fashion niche
Choosing your blogging platform
Getting your unique domain name and hosting
Customizing your blog
Choosing the right plugins
Publishing contents
Monetization strategies

Plus, a bunch of other things you need to know about fashion blogs and setting up a successful one.

Let’s get started!

Steps to Start a Fashion Blog in Nigeria

Step#1: Selecting your fashion niche

Fashion happens to be one of the popular blogging niches out here anyone with interest can go into. And if you’re familiar with the fashion industry, you’ll agree with me that this could also be a very wide niche.

Fashion is broad and contains over a dozen of smaller niches.

And to delve further – you can still find sub-niches within most of the fashion niches. My point here is that you shouldn’t go broad when starting your fashion blog.

Do niche down to the smallest category or fashion style you’re knowledgeable or interested in. That is where you’re likely to have more success as a new fashion blogger.

You don’t have to compete with all these BIG fashion bloggers.

Like its always said:

The RICHES are in the NICHES ?

If you’re a female fashion enthusiast having interests in ladies’ bags. Start a blog on that. If it’s female shoes. Start with that. If it’s a gown, local made dresses or wedding dresses…

Just pick a category/style and start with that.

You’ll get authority faster with that. Imagine being a category ‘queen’ in ladies’ bags.

How does that sound?

In fact, there hundreds of sub-niches in the fashion industry, you can dominate and be the ‘go-to’ expert. Landing sweet deals and implementing various monetization tactics on your fashion blog.

Step #2: Choosing your blogging platform

Without a blogging solution – there’s no way to host, build and have your blog on the internet. You’ll need a Content management system (CMS) for you to be able to blog.

This is a platform that controls how your blog looks and what it does.

Even though there are quite a few blogging platforms – NOT all of them can actually help and give you the type of user-experience and flexibility you desire to make your blog a successful one in Nigeria.

Options like:

WordPress.com
Free Blogger
Joomla
Squarespace
Drupal
Wix
WordPress.org

Before I proceed – let me warn you that you should never use a free blogging platform or solution in starting your blog.

You’ll be limited to lots of stuff and to make it worse:

You won’t make any money. Nobody will take you seriously.

Use WordPress.org!

WordPress.org is the leading CMS in terms of trust and popularity. That’s why it has several million users around the globe.

It has no restrictions whatsoever, no coding involved, supports millions of plugins, themes, and integrations as it’s an open-source CMS.

Next…

Step #3: Domain and hosting

Your domain is a unique name you give to your fashion blog. For example, the domain of this site is SmartBizFreedom.

You need to secure your domain from a domain name registrar like Namecheap and it costs around $10 for a year. But no need for that since there’s a way we can get you a domain name for free without paying separately.

Before I reveal that to you – make sure you follow the below tips when choosing a domain name for your fashion blog:

Keep it short (less than 12 characters)
Should be easily remembered and same time catchy
Avoid adding numbers to your domain name

To host your blog would cost you around $8 or so. and that could sound like a lot for a beginner starting out.

Luckily for you, we have partnered with Bluehost so you can get a free domain, a free SSL and crazy discount for you get your fashion blog up and running as fast as possible.

You get started for as low as $2.95/month.

You will need to go to Bluehost.com and start the setup process of your fashion blog.

You’ll have to click on the get started button.

On the next screen, you’ll be asked to choose a plan (Choose the basic plan)

Next, you’ll arrive at the screen below to choose your domain (free) for your fashion blog

The next screen will be where you will have to fill out your personal details and billing details, choose the years you wish to pay for, making sure you deselect other things.

You will receive your hosting account details in an email sent to the address you provided during registration. This email contains your web hosting dashboard link and log in information.

Please keep those very safe.

The next step is to install WordPress. Thankfully, that is a one-click thing on Bluehost. You can also follow the instructions in our step by step guide on how to start a blog.

Step #4: Customizing your fashion blog

Installing our favorite content management platform – WordPress may take only a couple of clicks, and if you’ve decided to use a company like Bluehost, then you’ll actually get a working WordPress to install in a matter of seconds.

Your fashion blog or website will be up and running without any problems.

That out of the way, it’s time to get a fashion WordPress theme, install the crucial plugins and other stuff.

When it comes to theme selection for your fashion blog – you need to go with that has a cool, unique, elegant and stylish design.

You know, fashion blogging is all about visuals.

You need a theme that makes it very easy to showcase images, designs, artistic works in a prominent and unique way.

If you take a look at the top fashion blogs around the world – you’ll have an idea of what I mean.

Don’t worry.

There are thousands of pre-designed themes you can select from to make your fashion blog look exactly the way a professional blog is supposed to look.

To help you further…

Here are a few of the nice fashion themes I already hand-picked:

You can start with a free fashion theme if you’re on a budget. You don’t have to overthink this. The fashionista theme is good to get going.

After choosing a theme, you can go ahead to install the necessary plugins for your fashion blog. Starting with the basic ones:

Fashion is even more about the images than most media. You need to showcase cool new looks in a prominent, unique way.

A blog about fashion and style cannot just go with a plain-looking business or blogging layout. Your website needs a design that represents your unique sense of style and creativity.

Most fashion bloggers are not website designers, so how do they create a website design that is unique, elegant, stylish, and of course creative?

Luckily there are thousands of pre-made WordPress templates that you can choose from:

Yoast SEO: One of the best SEO plugins to help optimize your on-page for search rankings.
Contact Form 7: A plugin for creating contact forms
Social share plugin (Sassy social plugin): For adding social media share buttons to your blog posts.
Gallery plugin (photospace): showcasing your fashion gallery.
Pinterest Hover Pin-It Button: An easy pin-it button for your images.
Image optimizer: For optimizing your images for faster page loading.

Step #5: Start publishing contents

If you’re a complete newbie to blogging, then I think this is the stage you need to master it as a skill.

You can have all the knowledge in the world about fashion BUT if you’re bad at putting up contents together then you’re likely not to have success with your fashion blog.

I want you to know that blogging is an art.

Don’t sweat it, my friend.

It starts from trying to write from your heart and tap into your readers’ weaknesses and strengths. If you have an idea, tip or trend you want to share with the world – you can do that from your fashion blog.

Despite the fact that there lots of fashion blogging ideas like:

What to wear
Types of what to wear
Latest or trending fashion wears for men, women, etc.
Types of outfit for a particular occasion
A fashion guide for selecting the perfect wear for festive seasons
Advice on fashion
Best wear for X
Critics, myths and facts about a fashion style

The list goes on and on and on…

You can decide to talk about your own personal life and experience with some fashion wear and stuff.

Get it?

To be a successful fashion (or any blogger at all) you have to make it a discipline to publish always. Having a content calendar is the best.

Make it a part of your life.

If you come with a fashion blogging idea, you can quickly pop that sentence into your Google search bar and see the type of results Google presented you with.

If the results aren’t encouraging, you go and write something better about such a topic and publish it on your blog.

Don’t forget to create social media handles!

I don’t create social media handles for all the blogs I create – but a blog talking about fashion should have a social presence on the popular platforms.

Create a social media page for your new blog on:

Facebook
Pinterest
Instagram
Twitter (optional)

Especially Instagram. Instagram seems to be a thriving ground for fashion-related topics. Even if you change turn handle to be that of your blog. Still okay!

Step #6: Monetization

There are tons of ways you to monetize your blog. And for fashion blogs – the opportunity is HUGE for you as a fashion blogger.

Initially don’t bother about making money loads of money from your blog. Just focus on doing your thing, sharing what you know with the world through your blog.

With time the money flows. And you will begin getting messages on sponsorships, deals, and promotions.

It’s quite lucrative.

Here are the monetization methods you can go with your blog:

Affiliate marketing: Promote fashion brands on your blog and make commissions
Display Ads: You can apply for Google AdSense so you can display ads on your website and make money from your blog.
Sell your services or products: You can as well sell/render your own fashion services or products from your blog as a designer or fashion consultant.
Sponsored posts and promotion: You can land sponsorship deals to promote fashion brands on your blog or through your Instagram handle.

Final Thoughts on Creating a Fashion Blog in Nigeria

There thousands (if not millions) of fashion blogs on the internet. This means that it can be very hard to stand out among the noise and in the blogging space and have massive success as a blogger.

Must it be that way?

Of course not!

That’s why we highly recommend you to niche down into the sub-niches in the fashion industry. By doing that you’re sure to fasten your success and stay unique.

You will be doing it differently from the majority of bloggers out there. Hence, greater success in your blogging career.

Starting your own fashion blog, it can be an excellent way to build a secondary income, or even someday a full-time business.

Just make sure you start with a self-hosted site and getting your domain and hosting from Bluehost, then customize your fashion blog in Nigeria, then take it up from there.

I hope you liked this article on setting up your fashion blog in Nigeria?

Do you have any further questions about how to start a fashion blog in Nigeria? Ask us in the comments!

How to Start A Fashion Blog in Nigeria (Step-By-Step)