There are many reasons for wanting to start a blog. A lot of people interested in this are looking for an additional income stream, with a long term view of replacing the day job whilst others just have a passion for writing and want to get their thoughts across to an audience.

Whatever your reason for thinking about starting a men’s fashion blog, I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear that it can actually be an extremely cheap startup. You will need:

• To purchase a domain name (www.yourmensfashionblog.com). This costs between £6-£10 a year depending on who you purchase it with; we have domains with a number of providers and have always found 123-reg and x10premium to be good value coupled with great customer service and support.
• A hosting provider that will host your blog on the Internet, which can cost around £4-5 a month.
• A WordPress installation. WordPress is a content management system, it is open source and free to use. There are some fantastic step by step YouTube videos that will show you exactly how WordPress works and for a new blogger there is no need to learn any technical coding or anything complex.

You can have all of this up and running in next to no time, perhaps an hour or two. Getting a blog started is cheap and easy to do which is great, however as there is such a low cost of entry it means that a lot of people are also doing it. As with anything in life, if becoming a successful full-time blogger was easy, just about everyone with an interest in fashion would be doing it.

How to make your men’s fashion blog successful

The main reason most bloggers fail is that they give up too soon. Starting your own blog should be seen as a long-term goal, the first twelve months will be a struggle to get traffic. Understandably a lot of people who work full time and spend their evenings and weekends creating content can become disheartened when six months down the line they aren’t getting much in the way of traffic. The first tip to having a successful men’s fashion blog is to plan for the long term; how much content can you sustainably write per week? It’s better to write one article a week for 18 months and reap the rewards later as opposed to pushing three or four articles a week hoping for quick results and giving up after a few months.

If you decide to start a blog make sure that you have something interesting to say. As I touched on above, there are a lot of bloggers out there and they will be writing the same type of content as you; how will you make your blog stand out? Some ideas include:

• Making your blog on a very specific niche e.g. a men’s fashion blog for the legal sector.
• Embracing podcasts and vlogging as well as written content.
• Using humour – make sure you’re actually funny before attempting this!

As a blogger, writing and publishing content really is only half the job, you need to start driving traffic towards it. Twitter is a great tool for this as it is possible to search relevant hashtags and find conversations that relate to your article. A word of warning though, don’t become a spammer; sending a cold tweet with a link to your latest article will usually not go down well. Invest a bit of time in engaging with others and then (if appropriate) send them a link to your blog. A good angle can be to ask people what they think of your content.

Make sure you do your research. You may be passionate about something fashion related but if nobody is searching for it then it could be wasted effort writing content that no one is looking for. Using a tool like Google Keyword Planner bloggers are able to identify what types of searches are getting more/less volume and create content around what is actively being looked for.

If you can have your finger to the pulse then you can have some very quick wins as a blogger. As a men’s fashion writer you may see someone famous wearing an outfit you would like to write about. Being super current can have some incredible results if your content is good (mixed with a bit of luck!). I have seen some bloggers have their articles picked up by news sites and people of influence.

Contacting brand owners and offering to review their products has the potential of putting your blog in front of a lot of people in the long term if the product in question is or becomes popular. It will be harder to get brand owners on board when your blog is brand new so it can be worth investing in some products yourself and reviewing them so the business owner can see a track record of reviews and see if they like your style of writing. Most of the men’s fashion bloggers we have worked with have initially made contact with us through Twitter, this can be a good way to go as opposed to email, the brand owner can very quickly get an idea of who you are from scanning your profile.

There will come a time when you want to take your blog to the next level. By making your website look impressive to visitors at first glance it will instil confidence and make visitors more likely to spend time on your blog. Even this doesn’t have to cost a lot, logo designers are readily available on a number of freelancing websites and Themeforest offers some incredible paid for WordPress themes that can range from $10 - $80+. It will be up to the individual to decide at what point they are comfortable with making a larger investment.

If you do decide to start your own men’s fashion blog after reading this article please let us know, we would love to hear from you. Remember that it’s not going to be easy but as long as you enjoy writing and men’s fashion then it shouldn’t even be like work at all!