How To Make Money With A Fashion Blog

This post may contain affiliate links. See full disclosure.

Have you ever wondered how to make money with a fashion blog? Perhaps you’ve heard — making money with a fashion blog is a great business idea for women (men too) who want to start making an income online. But as a beginner, who perhaps knows nothing about making money online or monetizing a website, making money as a fashion blogger can be confusing, to say the least. But the truth is, it really doesn’t have to be.

I have been making money with what some might call a fashion blog for a few years now — although I blog about all kinds of things and not just fashion (entrepreneurship, growing a blog from scratch, home decor, dating). I tell anyone who will lend me their ear for half a second about it because it’s still so mind-blowing for me.

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting at a friend’s apartment in Greece. We spent much of this Summer on the island of Kos enjoying the ocean and great food. On this trip, I made some mental notes about some topics I perhaps wanted to share on my fashion blog, which I eventually did (what to pack for Summer in Europe, travel tips for solo female travelers). I also made sure to snap plenty of photos of my different experiences. All the while my fashion blog was making money online — a full-time income, quite passively.

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It’s incredible. I’m so humbled and grateful to be able to make a living this way. With this said, I know a thing or two about how to make money with a fashion blog.

If learning how to make money with a fashion blog is something that interests you, I’m happy to share with you exactly how I’m able to make money with my fashion blog. Read on…

What is a Fashion Blog?

fashion lifestyle blog
Screenshot of Fashion Blog Hello Bombshell

Before we get into the details of how to make money with a fashion blog or how to make money as a fashion blogger, let’s clarify exactly what a fashion blog is, shall we.

A fashion blog is a website or web page, typically one run by an individual about topics related to fashion and style. As opposed to fashion influencers who post on social media or fashion vloggers who create videos on platforms such as youtube, a fashion blog is created in written format and is often done so in an informal or conversational style.

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Personal fashion blogs will also often cover other related lifestyle topics offering stylish inspiration, advice, and recommendations to their readers.

Take this blog, hellobombshell.com for example. You may technically consider this a fashion blog because I create lots of content related to women’s fashion and style. I however also create different types of blog content related to home decor, entrepreneurship, travel, dating, and various other topics that interest me personally.

A Successful Blogger Making Lot’s of Money With Her Fashion Blog

Chiara Ferragni, theblondesalad.com

fashion blogger Chiara
@chiaraferragni

Chiara Ferragni is one of the first fashion bloggers to make it big in terms of making money.  

Ferragni, an ex-law student from a small town near Milan, started The Blonde Salad blog in 2009, documenting her camera-ready personal style, full of prints, blowdried hair, and kooky cross-eyed faces. Today she’s among Forbes’s top fashion influencers earning an insane $8 million a year — which all started with her fashion blog.

How Chiara Ferragni makes money with her fashion blog: Chiara is also an entrepreneur and a shoe line owner, which brings her the most of her income. But sponsored posts and ad revenue from her 21.6-million blog also do help a lot bringing her about $58,000 per post.

Can small(er) Fashion Bloggers be successful? Here’s my story…

I got started as a fashion blogger when I started creating fashion posts for fun, and people started finding and sharing my content. When I realized people actually enjoyed what I was creating, it encouraged me to continue creating more.

How I Started Making Money As A Fashion Blogger

Jenaae Jackson, hellobombshell.com

traveling alone as black woman
@jenaae

Initially, I didn’t even know that blogging was something you could make money from. When I learned that I could actually make an income with a fashion blog, I consumed myself with learning everything there was to know about how to make money with a fashion blog (or any type of blog for that matter).

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After many many months of trial and error, writing and posting on a regular basis, and following all the blogging tips and tricks I was learning, I was eventually able to monetize my blog for the first time in December of 2019.

One of the first ways I started making money with this blog was with display advertising via a display ad network (sort of like an agent that connects bloggers and advertisers). That display ad network is named Monumetric (I wrote a Monumetric review of my experience here).

Soon after I would diversify my monetization streams and make money with my fashion blog in all sorts of ways — more on that a bit later.

These days I’m able to make a full-time income with my fashion blog.

How To Start A Fashion Blog That Makes Money

blogger
Working on my blog this Summer in Greece.

The first strategy on how to make money with a fashion blog that I’d like to share, I’m going to also make a shameless plug (this is one way that I make money with a fashion blog). It’s called affiliate marketing.

You see, when I recommend products and services to you, should you decide to make a purchase via the tracked link I provide you with, that company (that I recommended and from which you made the purchase) will give me a commission from that sale.

One of the companies I am partnered with as an affiliate (which also happens to be a company that you will absolutely need to start a blog that makes money) is named Bluehost.

Bluehost is a website hosting company that enables you to start and manage your own independent or “self-hosted” fashion blog that makes money. Signing up with them is the first step every new blogger must take to a new fashion blog website up and running.

THIS is my unique affiliate hyperlink for Bluehost. If you use that link to sign up for a Bluehost account to start your new fashion blog, Bluehost will send me a little kickback for the sale. They will also give you a free domain name via my link (you can check if your dot com is available below).

So you have an idea, the commission that Bluehost pays is between around $70-100 for each new sign-up. Pretty awesome right? So make sure you use my link to help support me in creating awesome free content like this.

Additionally, if you use my affiliate or “referral” link to sign up for Bluehost and send me your receipt as proof via email (hello@hellobombshell.com), I’ll also allow you to pick my brain in a free consultation ($350 value) (that’s another way I make an income as a blogger).

How Long Does It Take To Start Making Money With A Fashion Blog?

Jenaae in Washington Square Park after moving to New York City alone
@jenaae

To start making money with a fashion blog, it can take anywhere from 1-12 months. It really depends on a variety of things including if you already have an audience, how you plan to acquire an audience, and how you plan to monetize.

For me, it took about 3 months after I first started my fashion blog before I was able to make any money. In retrospect, I definitely could have started making money earlier, had I known how to make money with a fashion blog from the get-go.

If you know what you’re doing, do your research (which you’re doing now, good job), do the work, and stick with it, you can definitely start making money with a fashion blog pretty quickly.

How Do Fashion Blogs Make Money? How Do Fashion Bloggers Make Money?

black woman blogger jenaae
Working on my blog in London.

From what you’ve read thus far, I hope you’re starting to get a basic understanding of exactly how fashion bloggers make money with a fashion blog.

In short, you make money with a fashion blog by doing what is called monetizing your website. The term monetize means to convert something into money. In practice, this means implementing strategies to generate revenue.

As a fashion blogger (or any type of blogger), there are so many different ways to monetize a fashion website or blog and make money from it. So let’s get into some of those ways.

How Do You Monetize A Fashion Blog?

solo female travel
@jenaae

Ok, here we go with the meat and potatoes of how to make money with a blog. The actual ways and strategies. I’ll start with the ones that are most profitable for my own personal blogs and the blogs of my students and mentees.

1. Displaying advertisements on my blog.

Example of what a small fashion blogger might make in display advertising each day. This can vary greatly depending on a few factors.

I shared a bit earlier about how I was first able to monetize my fashion blog by working with a display ad network named Monumeric. As my readership has grown, I’ve since switched to an ad network named Mediavine.

Displaying ads on my website with the help of Mediavine is one of the main ways to make money with a fashion blog (Mediavine is awesome, but you will need to build up a generous amount of visitor traffic to qualify for them).

If you’re just starting out, you may not qualify for either of the aforementioned ad networks, but you can still make money with ad revenue! There’s a little know loophole for new bloggers (with not a lot of web traffic yet) via Ezoic that I honestly wish I had known about when I first started out.

Ezoic Access Now gives you the tools you need to start making ad revenue with your small blog now, as you learn and grow. I definitely recommend you check Ezoic Access Now HERE and get started ASAP!

Wondering how making money with display advertisements or ad revenue works? Take a look around this webpage — likely somewhere on this page that you’re reading right now, you’ll see some sort of advertisements being displayed. You probably don’t even give it a second thought when you see ads like this on websites, but website owners are paid by these companies to display their advertisements. 

display advertising
An example of Display Advertising provided by Mediavine

As a fashion blogger, you can essentially sell advertising space on your website to businesses. And let me tell you, these companies have massive ad budgets to spend.

If you create a fabulous website that people regularly visit and love, advertisers will pay you big money for even a tiny piece of real estate on your website.

2. Promoting products I love (affiliate marketing).

affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is another way to make money with a fashion blog.

I mentioned above how I make commissions from recommending my hosting company for this blog, Bluehost. But if you want to start a fashion blog that makes money, this particular company perhaps isn’t as relevant for you to promote.

Most fashion bloggers make money by recommending fashion and lifestyle-related products and brands. Items such as clothes, shoes, make-up, etc.

Perhaps you’ve styled some beautiful outfits for the Summer… you can make money by recommending and linking these particular items when people actually buy them.

To help facilitate this for bloggers, just as there are display advertising networks like Monumetric and Mediavine, there are also affiliate networks that connect fashion bloggers who want to make money with fashion brands who want their products promoted. Popular affiliate networks for fashion bloggers include Reward Style, Shop Style, Share A Sale, and many many more.

Affiliate marketing is basically recommending products that you love to people. When those people buy those products using a special referral link unique to you, the company pays you a commission of the sale. The reader gets recommendations for something they want to buy. The recommended company makes money from the sale. Blogger gets paid. It’s a win-win-win for everyone involved.

3. Selling things.

selling things on blog to make money

Another way that you can make money with a fashion blog website is by selling things directly to your readers. Here are some examples…

If you’re great at shopping and snagging nice finds, you could shop things and feature a sort of online fashion closet on your website. People who stumble upon your website can then buy those items. For the “personal shopping” service provided you can include an upcharge on the items, you sell for a profit.

Here’s another idea for selling things on your website… buy items wholesale such as mugs, shirts, shoes (heck whatever you want) and sell on your website.

Some popular wholesale vendors include Alibaba and Wholesale Central.

4. Dropshipping.

drop shipping

To mitigate the risk of perhaps spending money to buy items upfront and then not being able to sell those items, or perhaps you don’t even have any money to buy things to sell in the first place, you could dropship items from your website or fashion blog.

Dropshipping is an order fulfillment method that does not require you to keep products in stock. Instead, you would sell a product and then pass on the sales order to a third-party supplier, who then ships the order to the customer.

Popular companies that you can use to dropship from your fashion blog include Spocket and AliExpress. Become a #bombshellentrepreneur and sell clothes, eyelashes, lip gloss, face masks, dog leashes – you can sell any damn thing you want on your fashion blog. 

5. Selling digital products.

selling digital products on fashion blog

One of my favorite things to sell on my own blog is digital products. 

Digital products sound all fancy and complicated, but it’s basically selling things that people can just download. So there are no production costs, no overhead costs, no shipping hassle. With just a click of a button and a sale is complete.

Some fashion-related digital products I sell are for example a Capsule Wardrobe Workbook to help ladies create a stylish wardrobe for themselves. I also created and sell an online course to help women look they’re very best — it’s hosted on Skillshare, but I sell and promote through my fashion blog.

The best part is that once you create a digital asset, you can sell that asset and make revenue from selling copies of that asset over and over again for years to come.

More Ideas of How To Make Money With A Fashion Blog 

6. Sponsored posts.

A sponsored blog post is content blog owners publish on behalf of a business seeking to get their content, product, or services in front of a group of targeted readers. This is one of the most significant ways to make money as a fashion blogger.

7. Paid Shoutouts

Similar to a sponsored posts, only instead of writing a blog post for a sponsor, you would shout them out on your social media such as Instagram or perhaps a Youtube channel. This is how influencers make money with the more “modern” version of a fashion blog — Instagram, Youtube.

8. Provide services.

A fashion blog is a great way of promoting a service you offer. Online fashion consulting for example is a great service for a stylish fashion blogger to offer website visitors.

I personally offer business and marketing consulting services. If you’re interested in picking my brain about a blog you’re starting or any other type of online business, I’d love to hear from you at hello@hellobombshell.com. You can also follow everything I’m doing business-related over at BombshellEntrepreneur.com

9. Put on events & summits. 

Organizing meet-ups and events is a unique and fun way to make money as a fashion blogger.

10. Create a membership program.

Or even private Facebook groups that connect like-minded fashionistas. If you own a group that offers lots of value to its members, a certain percentage (not all of course) of people would be happy to pay to be a part of it.

11. Speaking engagements.

Know your fashion stuff? Or stuff that would be interesting to people interested in fashion? Find some events or platforms that you can offer value to by speaking or perhaps teaching something and pitch yourself.

12. Accept donations. 

Services like BuyMeACoffee.com make it easy to monetize a fashion blog or website from day one.

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, as you see making money with a fashion blog is not quite rocket science, it’s rather easy actually. It’s just something you have to learn, take action, and remain disciplined with.

If you’re interested in learning more about blogging or making money with a blog (fashion or any other genre), website, or would like my guidance on starting and building another type of successful online business, I do offer consultations. Just reach out via email at hello@hellobombshell.com. Additionally, be sure to follow everything I’m doing business-related over at BombshellEntrepreneur.com

  • Ethan Williams says:

    I really loved your Idea of making money using our fashion sense and converting them into magnificent writing piece which can helps to earn our living while being cool and fashionable .
    The other ideas like promotions, events, drop shipping has really made sense for earning while living your dream of being fashionista. Your ideas has helped me lot to start my career as fashion blogger without worrying about my finances.

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