Over recent years, lots of fashion bloggers have decided to turn
their hobby into a money-earner alongside their full-time jobs.
For some, they produce a blog simply for the love of fashion and/or
writing, but with money-making opportunities available, what’s the harm?
Every couple of pounds you make is a bonus, right?
Publish a sponsored post
Brands or agencies working on behalf of brands often want to publish
guest posts which have a link back to the brand’s website, which will
help drive traffic to their website. So you could receive emails which
ask you if you’ll either write a post for them, with a specified link,
or if you can publish a pre-written post on your blog. This is something
that more and more fashion bloggers are doing, and it’s a great way of
making some money for doing very little!
If you’ve received payment – in money or products – in exchange for
writing about something, you are required by law to tell your readers
about it. An example of a disclosure statement is “Thanks to Zara for
providing this post”.
Review a product for a brand
Similarly, as a fashion blogger you’re in the envious position of
receiving clothing for free in exchange for writing a review about it.
The brand or marketing agency that sends the item to you will simply
want some promotion in return. Make it clear when arranging to review a
product that you’ll give an honest review (if it’s not honest than
what’s the point?), and it might even be worth stating this somewhere
permanent on your blog (perhaps your contact page) so that agencies are
aware of this up front.
Add ShopSense to your blog
Affiliate fashion website
ShopStyle
sells a range of brands, from designer to high street to suit all
budgets. ShopSense is a service that ShopStyle has developed which you
can add to your blog and will pay you whenever you send traffic to
retail sites. You can access the API to have custom integration (you can
add things like banner ads, photos of products and interactive shopping
widgets) and you’ll get paid for each click. Now Magazine, InStyle and
Banana Republic all use this service, so what are you waiting for?
Sell advertising with Google AdSense
Google AdSense
will let you show targeted adverts on your blog and then earn revenue
from the clicks that are sent through. It’s a completely free service
which you can monitor and remove at any time. If you choose
fashion-related ads, you’re more likely to get click-throughs (as you
can make a pretty educated guess that you’re readers are going to be
into fashion and are likely to click on fashion ads). You’re given an
HTML code which you can insert into a text widget to display on your
blog.
Affiliate schemes
Another way to monetise your blog is through affiliate promotions. For
example, Amazon has an affiliate program where you can link to a product
on their site and show information about it on your blog. There more
products which are purchased via a click on your link, the more you can
earn. Similarly, Apple’s app store and iTunes have an
affiliate program
which lets you link to songs and apps, and earn a commission on sales.
If you’re promoting specific services or products that are related to
the content on your blog post, then your readers won’t mind and the
promotions won’t look out of place.
This post was brought to you by Afro Boudoir partner, ShopStyle.