Considering becoming a lifestyle blogger but don’t know where to begin? In this complete guide, I’ll share how to start a lifestyle blog in 10 key steps.
Lifestyle blogging can be very rewarding. My first blog evolved into a lifestyle blog that was both fun to run and great to grow into a business.
But what is a lifestyle blog? What does a lifestyle blogger do? What are the steps to starting a lifestyle blog?
Starting a blog can become overwhelming if you don’t follow a plan.
In this post, I’ll take you step-by-step through the process of planning, building and launching a lifestyle blog that’s set up for success.
DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links, meaning if you click on a product or service, and decide to purchase it, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. All recommended products and services are based on my positive experience with them. For more information, please read my Disclaimer.
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Why Should You Become A Lifestyle Blogger?
You’re here because something is attracting you to create a lifestyle blog.
There are many reasons why somebody starts a blog. There are many different blog niches to explore.
However, what are the benefits of becoming a lifestyle blogger?
- Creative Outlet: Share your creativity with others.
- Help Others: Share your knowledge with others, helping them solve lifestyle-related problems
- Make Money: Monetize your lifestyle blog and generate a passive or active income
- Showcase Skills: Learn content development, digital marketing, SEO and business skills.
These are some of the key reasons why people become lifestyle bloggers.
If you’re in it to make money with a lifestyle blog, you’ll have to adapt to a business-focused and money mindset.
It can take more than a year to start generating enough income with a blog to leave your full-time job.
Nevertheless, lifestyle blogging can be a fun, creative activity that many start as a hobby and eventually turn into a business.
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What Is A Lifestyle Blog?
Before we get to the steps of starting a lifestyle blog let’s figure out what it is and isn’t. There’s a bit of confusion about this that needs to be cleared up.
Some think of blogs like Cup of Jo as the benchmark for lifestyle blogs. They’re more like lifestyle websites than lifestyle blogs (although they probably started this way).
With the rise of E-E-A-T in the SEO world – Google’s measurement for expertise, experience, authority and trustworthiness – it’s important to position yourself as a lifestyle blogger with expertise in a specific niche area.
Let’s get back to what a lifestyle blog is because it’s important that you know.
Here’s my definition of a lifestyle blog:
A lifestyle blog is a blog niche that often includes several topics connected with a common overarching issue that the target audience faces.
What does this mean exactly?
It all comes down to one key thing: the reader.
You’ve heard that blogs should be “niched down”, and so should a lifestyle blog.
One of the key mistakes many new bloggers make (and one that I made for a while) is to write about several topics they like under a “lifestyle blog” umbrella. They want to be like Cup of Jo.
But they need to be lifestyle blogging before transforming it into a lifestyle site (almost an online magazine of sorts).
You can still have a lifestyle blog with several key topic categories, but they should have something that unifies them: your key audience’s key problem.
How To Start A Lifestyle Blog
Before starting your lifestyle blog, you’ll need to think through a few key things: from your niche to blog goals.
Do you want to turn this blog into a business? What will you want to blog about in the long term?
The next few sections will take you through the planning process into the set-up steps.
Start Choosing A Niche
Starting A Lifestyle Blog By Niching Down
Now that you know that you need to choose a niche within the lifestyle category, how do you do this?
And what are lifestyle niches?
A successful lifestyle blog will focus on the ideal reader and a key general issue, such as lack of time, budget or desire for balance and less stress.
So it can be something like a lifestyle blog covering self-care, organization and personal growth tips for working moms seeking to live a less stressed life.
This is how you niche down a lifestyle blog.
| RELATED: How To Find Your Ideal Blog Audience In 4 Simple Steps
What Are Lifestyle Blog Niches?
Lifestyle niches can cover a number of topical areas that affect our daily life.
They can be:
- Fashion and style
- Food and drink
- Home and interior design
- Personal development and self-improvement
- Health and wellness
- Travel and adventure
- Parenting and family lifestyle
- Sustainable and eco-living
All of these are very broad niches.
I highly recommend you niche them down into “sub-niches”, as this makes it easier to be viewed as a topical expert. This is good for SEO and overall your long-term success.
Want to check out the top 10 lifestyle blog niches and their respective sub-niches? I recommend you do this before you choose your niche.
So let’s jump into step number one: determining your lifestyle blog niche.
| RELATED: Why Personal Branding Is An Important Marketing Focus For Bloggers
1. How To Choose Your Lifestyle Blog Niche
Now that you know you have to choose a niche within the lifestyle category, it’s time to make a decision.
Ask yourself a few key questions:
- What are you good at?
That’s the first question you should be asking yourself when you’re determining what your lifestyle blog niche will be.
- What is the big overarching problem you can help your reader solve?
For example, are you great at finding life hacks that save time? Or reduce stress?
The third question to answer is:
- Who is going to be your key audience?
You can go two ways with your audience:
- broad audience (tougher to rank for)
- niched down audience (easier to position yourself as an expert)
Broad audience means you are writing on topics that may interest somebody looking for a food recipe or somebody seeking self-care tips. There’s nothing topic-wise connecting your audience.
A niched-down audience is more specific – for example, busy working women who are seeking self-care and productivity tips for less stress and more balance.
Over time, the niched-down topic area for your lifestyle blog will be easier for ranking blog content and positioning you as a niche expert.
2. How To Name Your Lifestyle Blog
Next on the list of key steps for starting a lifestyle blog is choosing the blog name.
With any of the methods I’m about to share with you, you’re going to have to do some research.
- Do a free search on Domain for which domain names are available
- Check your preferred blog name on social media to see if somebody isn’t using it already
- Do a brief search to see if the name has been trademarked
Here are some easy ways to name your lifestyle blog:
- Use a blog name that includes your name (works well if you want to become a coach or freelancer)
- Choose a name that reflects your niche
- Make up a name – consider Gwyneth Patlrow’s “Goop” for inspiration
- Use a convention such as “x & y” – for example, we have a shop called “Spruce and Heron”.
- Use alliteration – with words starting with the same letter
There are many more ways to come up with a blog name.
Keep it short, with a URL that’s easy to remember! Now that you know how to name your lifestyle blog, it’s time to get things set up on WordPress.
3. Find The Right Hosting Provider For You
This next step for starting a lifestyle blog is an important one because it involves an investment.
My top recommendation for a blogging platform is a self-hosted WordPress site. It gives you more flexibility than some of the other blogging platforms like Wix or Squarespace.
For this, you’ll need to purchase a shared hosting plan with a hosting provider with servers where your site content will be housed.
WordPress comes in two versions:
- WordPress.com which is limited
- WordPress.org, which is hosted on a hosting provider’s platform
You want the latter (WordPress.org) because you have much more flexibility with this version of WordPress.
Hosting providers usually have it installed for you, ready to use once you’ve set up your hosting service.
| RELATED: Best Hosting Providers For Bloggers – Choosing The Right One For You
Which Hosting Provider Should You Choose?
There are hundreds of them out there!
Rather than just recommend Bluehost (not always the best option), as everybody else does, I’m going to share with you some options and tips for finding a better hosting provider for your WordPress blog.
- Look at your budget first
- Determine what your long-term blogging goals are (do you want to turn it into an online business?)
- How comfortable are you with learning technical things related to websites?
- How important is top-notch customer service to you?
If you’re serious about lifestyle blogging as a business, I recommend choosing a hosting provider that will help you rather than hinder you.
You don’t want to be stuck trying to constantly figure out technical issues that you didn’t cause. Yeah, you’ll make mistakes.
Here are my three top recommendations for hosting include:
A quality hosting provider, with 99.9% up-time and great customer service. Using fast LiteSpeed servers. Free daily backups. Great for bloggers serious about growing their blogs into businesses.
A growing hosting provider, fast LiteSpeed servers, great up-time and customer service perfect for new and growing bloggers (affordable packages for beginner bloggers). Immediate WordPress site setup.
An established, independent hosting provider with excellent customer service, fast servers and very good up-time. Ideal for serious bloggers open to investing in their blogs.
These are all independently owned hosting companies that offer quality service and hosting options ideal for bloggers and growing businesses.
They aren’t part of a group that owns many hosting companies, so quality and attention to features are important to them.
I’m using NameHero for hosting this blog, and find their service is professional. Several of my clients have been using BigScoots and have only good things to say about them.
In chats with website experts, several have recommended ChemiCloud as a great option.
Take a look through each and decide which one is perfect for you!
4. Purchase Your Domain Name And Hosting
The next step to starting your lifestyle blog is to purchase your domain and hosting.
You can get these through your hosting provider of choice. In many cases, if you’re getting a multi-year hosting package, they will offer the domain for free for one year.
If you’re in it for the long haul, choosing a multi-year package is worth it.
Start with a package that offers you backups if possible. This helps if anything goes wrong with your site, or if you accidentally do something that may affect it.
Here’s how to do it with NameHero, which often has great deals for new customers.
When you choose your WordPress shared hosting package, you’ll see this:
Add your chosen domain and press Search. If your domain is available it will pop up and you can continue with the process.
It will take you to a page that looks similar to this but with different pricing based on your chosen package. This is for their most popular Turbo package for long-term growth:
Once you’ve paid, follow the prompts to get your site set up.
You’ll receive an email to verify your domain and ownership. The SSL certificate will be set up. Reach out to customer service if you’re encountering any issues.
It may take a couple of hours to up to a day for your DNS to be properly configured and set up. Once done, you’re ready to start setting things up to launch a lifestyle blog.
| RELATED: 10 Smart Things On Your Blog Checklist After Starting Your Blog
5. Add A WordPress Theme For Your Blog
Before you get started with WordPress settings, I recommend choosing a WordPress blog theme so you can see how your settings look and work.
What are the best lifestyle blog WordPress themes?
You’re going to one that:
- Looks attractive and is well-designed
- Has features that work best with your content
- Creates a great user experience
- Ideally is fast and light
The last point is important as Google places importance on fast-loading sites. However, in some cases (like with a business-related blog) you may need to use one with a page builder like Elementor.
These can be slower to load on their own, but with caching and optimization features, you can speed them up as well.
Here are my recommended theme developers and themes:
- Kadence – a super light theme with many template options and customizations with the premium version
- Studio Mommy – beautiful template themes for the Kadence theme that are feminine, functional and reasonably priced for beginner lifestyle bloggers.
- Restored316 (many beautiful lifestyle-themed child themes for the ultra-fast Kadence theme)
- Bluchic (a number of options – this is where I got this ChicRadiant business theme, Elementor-based themes)
- Pix And Hue (gorgeous Elementor-based themes)
- 17th Avenue (Using the Genesis platform)
- OceanWP – a light theme with many template options
- Generate Press – a very light theme, considered to be one of the fastest-loading
Remember that you aren’t married to your blog theme for life! You can change it over time if it no longer works with your needs.
6. How To Start A Lifestyle Blog On WordPress
Now it’s time to set up your WordPress settings.
Log in by entering your URL to your browser and adding /wp-admin at the end like this:
https://yourdomain.com/wp-admin
Enter your username and password and you’re in the WordPress dashboard.
Here are the key things you’ll need to set up:
In General:
- Adjust the site title to your blog’s name
- Add a tagline (optional)
- Set your preferred site language
- Set your time zone
- Set your time format
- Choose which day your week starts
In Reading:
- Check your Theme’s documentation on how to set this before making changes. Some themes are static pages (usually with page builders like Elementor). For these leave it as a static page. For those with a constantly updating blog “post roll”, choose “Your latest posts”.
- Choose how many posts your blog page shows.
No other changes are needed.
In Discussion:
For “Before a comment appears” click on “Comment author must have a previously approved comment”.
This will make it easier to automatically approve pre-approved commenters’ comments.
In Permalinks:
Choose the “Postname” option, as this is the best for SEO, keeping your URLs short.
| RELATED: 15 Free Blogging Tools That’ll Help You Grow Your Blog Faster And Better
It’s now time to add your blog logo and set up your navigation menu.
For this you’ll need to do a few things:
- Create a blog logo that reflects your lifestyle blogging niche and style
- Determine what your blog categories will be: keep it to 2 to 3 for now
- Set up the navigation bar
For the navigation bar consider the order of your key blog pages: About, Blog, Contact is all you’ll need in the beginning.
You can add more later as you grow your lifestyle blog.
To update your navigation, head to “Appearances” in the WordPress dashboard and then “Menu”.
Navigation menus are hierarchal, so you can drag an item and place it under a main item to have it show in a dropdown function.
| RELATED: How To Set Up Your Menu Navigation Bar In WordPress
Create Your About Page And Contact Page
For now, let’s keep things simple!
When you launch a lifestyle blog and it starts to evolve over time, you’ll get a better understanding of what your blog is all about.
However, you should have something on your About page, even from the start.
The mistake bloggers make is to write all about themselves. However, it should be first about the goal of the blog, what your readers can expect and then about you.
To make it easier for you, I’ve created a mini workbook that walks you through the details:
For your Contact page, keep it brief. Use a form for your contact info. Themes usually have this info in their documentation.
Forms prevent people from using your email address for spamming purposes.
I use the free WP Forms plugin to manage my emails.
| READ MORE: How To Write Your About Me Page Like A Kickass Pro
7. Add Key Legal Pages For Blogs
This is often an overlooked step when starting a lifestyle blog: the legal part.
To protect yourself and your blog from potential lawsuits or fines (from the FTC if you promote sponsored content or affiliate links), you’ll need three key pages – a privacy policy, disclaimer and terms and conditions page.
While there are many free options for your key legal pages, they are often not thorough or up-to-date.
I’ve been using A Self Guru’s legal page templates on all of my websites. She’s a lawyer who’s developed many different legal templates, specifically for bloggers and small business owners – like you and me!
They are up-to-date and easily customizable, and they work internationally.
Purchase at least the starter legal bundle and protect your site with:
- Privacy Policy
- Disclaimer
- Terms and Conditions
TIP: Remember to update the copyright info at the bottom of your footer to include the current year.
| READ MORE: How To Blog Legally And Protect Your Site And Yourself From Lawsuits And Fines
8. Set Up Key Plugins And Google Analytics
The next step in this guide to starting a lifestyle blog is the plugins. These help speed up your site and improve functionality and the user experience.
There are several plugins that I recommend you use:
- WP Rocket – an easy-to-set-up caching plugin that speeds up your site better than free caching plugins. Worth every penny and it truly makes a difference in the site visitor experience.
- EWWW Image Optimizer or Smush – free options are ok, but upgrade for more features.
- Wordfence – a free security plugin
- Rank Math SEO (free version) to help you improve your on-page SEO.
- Pretty Links (free) that will help you with affiliate links, masking the ugly long link with a customized one with our domain name
- WPTasty Pins for adding Pinterest Pin Titles and Descriptions for your Pinterest pins for each blog post.
- UpDraft Plus – a free backup plugin. Read why it’s important as a blog backup
- Antispam Bee or Akismet (both free) to reduce spam comments.
- WPCode plugin (free and previously called Insert Headers and Footers) to easily add HTML code to your header
| READ MORE: Best Free WordPress Plugins For New Bloggers
9. Start Blogging: Write Your First Blog Posts
Now it’s time to start writing your first blog posts.
Please don’t write a post about your reasons for starting a lifestyle blog. Nobody cares.
Start with a big topic in your niche that helps solve a common problem your readers have.
Read up on cornerstone blog posts and why they are a great place to start.
There are a few things to remember when you’re writing posts:
- Start learning about SEO and how to use keywords in blog posts
- Edit your posts so that your paragraphs and sentences are short and easy to read
- Use bullet points whenever you can
- Add relevant visuals, but remember to optimize images for fast loading and SEO
- Think intro, body and conclusion and you’ll be fine
- Use headings to make your posts easy to ready
A table of contents is nice to have. You can get free plugins that help with this. In some cases, the RankMath plugin’s table of contents block works nicely with certain themes. You can use it without an extra plugin.
PRO TIP: Use the free Grammarly browser extension to review your content as you write it to fix grammar and spelling errors.
| RELATED: Over 100+ Lifestyle Blog Post Ideas Ideal For Beginner Bloggers
10. You’re Ready To Launch A Lifestyle Blog!
Now you’re ready to launch your lifestyle blog, so prep for the big reveal!
By now you should have set up your key social media accounts: Instagram, Facebook (a Facebook page), and your Pinterest account.
Start teasing out your launch!
Get your friends and family excited about your project and have them join your social media accounts.
Start following others in your niche, and engaging with them. Make sure your profile is filled out with info on your niche and what you do (i.e. lifestyle blogger!).
And now it’s time to launch your blog.
Share your launch with others – especially in Facebook groups like my Blog It Better Society. We’re here to support each other as we blog and grow them into successful sites.
Time To Start Lifestyle Blogging!
Congratulations- you’ve gone through the process of starting a lifestyle blog and succeeded!
Start creating content and promoting it to grow your blog.
You can begin playing around with monetization as a beginner blogger. Just be aware that it make take time to start making money blogging.
Don’t be disappointed if it takes you time to start making money with your blog in your first year. Most bloggers don’t make much until year three.
Consistency pays off!
But in the meantime…
Learn what you need to do in the first month or so of blogging. Make sure all of these key things are done.
I have a series of blog posts that will help you figure key things out:
- How To Write Exceptional Blog Posts Your Readers Will Love
- How To Find Blog Post Ideas
- How To Brand Your Blog: A Mini Guide
- How To Set Realistic Blogging Goals: Tips For Beginners
- Three Smart Social Media Strategies For Promoting Your Blog As A Beginner
- 15+ Places To Promote Your Blog For Free
- How To Get Started On Pinterest
- How To Use Facebook Groups To Grow Your Blog
- The Best Stock Photo Sites For Bloggers
Check out my Blog Tools page for other solutions to your blogging needs including free resources that will help you grow your blog!
Shop my Confident Blogger Academy for courses, ebooks and templates that will improve your blogging skills and content creation.
QUESTION: What are your questions about starting a lifestyle blog?
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