How can I monetize my fashion blog at an early stage?

First things first - you have 2 ways to monetise.
1 - build an audience
2 - get paid to write (not necessarily on your site).

1 - How to get readers and build an audience
If you have an audience then advertisers will pay to promote to your audience.

It's important that you ensure your audience find the adverts relevant and appropriate or they will unsubscribe.

As a fashion blogger you can often get free product (clothes) from retailers in exchange for your writing about them. I recommend you then sell the clothing to raise funds. When you're a very good popular blogger you can charge money, till then, ask for product.

The easiest way to get paid is to install Google AdSense on your site and in your email newsletters. I use FeedBlitz.com as my newsletter distribution service and they also insert adverts (from a different service) into the newsletters.

2 - Get paid to write - go research the online freelance marketplaces like Upwork.com, guru.com, freelance.com and find paid writing gigs.
You can often re-purpose writing for your own site at the same time.

I often re-use Answers from Clarity.fm for my own blog.

Here's a good list of places to learn more
http://www.bloggersclub.com/ is an agency representing bloggers to brands.
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/sites-to-get-paid-blogging/
Read anything by Neil Patel on how to grow your audience
http://neilpatel.com/2016/01/17/six-figure-consultant-4-proven-services-every-blogger-can-offer-to-make-money-online/

Fashion blogging, as you’ve already realised, is a hugely competitive business. You need a huge amount of creativity, connections and most of all luck to break through all that clutter and become a star. Of course, you don’t need to become a top-earning celebrity blogger and maybe if you’re just after an additional income stream, then you may be able to carve out a niche for yourself that can earn you that income.

First, your idea. You’re absolutely right to focus on differentiating your blog from existing ones, but it may not be enough to do so just on the medium, i.e. videos vs photos. Who is your audience going to be? What are the key demographics - age, gender, location - and psychographics - insights about their lifestyle and behaviour? What problem are you solving? Why should someone follow you and not someone else? Video may well be an interesting route, but what are you going to do in those videos and why should anyone take the time to watch them?

Then, taking your concerns one by one:

1. Well done for recognising your own weaknesses, it’s great to acknowledge what you know and what you don’t know, so that you can look for help to fill those gaps. If you know that writing isn’t your strongest suit, then of course writing long blog posts is not going to be for you - you either need to outsource this and pay someone to do it before you, or you should focus on your visual strengths i.e. rather creating photos or possibly videos as you suggest. When it comes to online marketing and social media, if you are willing to learn then there is a host of information available free online; and, of course, you have platforms like Clarity where you can have experts supporting you along the way :-)

2. Finding a unique name can be very challenging! The name should reflect your unique selling proposition that I talked about above in terms of your idea: who you’re talking to, what you’re trying to achieve, how you’re different. You may be able to use your own name, if you are happy to build a personal brand around you as an individual, and this will definitely be unique as only you are you! Again, there are plenty of articles giving tips on how to come up with a simple name that is still unique and relevant.

3. The trend in online video is very much going in the direction of being less formal, more ad hoc and spontaneous. People are doing live video streaming on Facebook and Periscope, while the specifications for Instagram videos are also much less demanding than creating a full-scale professional production. If you’re going to be creating daily videos then you’re going to want to keep things as simple for yourself as possible. You can always get more professional lighting and videographers once you’ve established your business and you have a substantial income coming in.

4. In general, in order to monetise your blog you do need to have visitors. Affiliate marketing and advertising will only generate significant income for you if you have sufficient traffic, while many advertisers won’t even be interested in working with you if you can’t demonstrate a substantial following. To build a following as quickly as possible, once you have those fundamentals in place (an understanding of your target audience, a clear brand, and so on), you need to be creating and sharing search-optimised content, you can do advertising e.g. on Facebook or Instagram if you have budget for this, you can guest post on other people’s sites and have them do the same on yours, you might consider a competition e.g. on Instagram to get some buzz around your new channel…

I appreciate that you are impatient to get going but taking some time to get those fundamentals clear in the first place can really save a lot of time and pain further down the road.

Apologies for the long answer but I wanted to address each of your points! Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss any of them in more detail, whether to get clear on your brand fundamentals first of all, to brainstorm a name, or to define the best strategy to build your following in a short space of time. Good luck!

Hi there!
Like in everything that concerns people (in you case your future readers) there are 2 questions you need to answer first: 1. what makes your blog unique i.e. what will make your blog the preferred blog for your target group?
2. what is your specific target group and what is their unsatisfied need your blog is going to satisfy?

Both go hand in hand, especially concerning blogs as you are the product therefore it's better to find people that will be attracted by your personal offer vs. inventing a different persona (although you could ;).

Let's imagine you have curves and like to dress very smartly. Now, out there there might be a target group (your future audience) who is missing a blogger/fashion expert that explain them how to dress classy when one has curves. Then you have a reason to exist which will transform into getting a followship faster and cheaper than if you are not unique.

Based on that, you will be looking into monetization in a very different way because you will try to partner with companies or bloggers that target the same profile of people.

Similarly you will be selecting a name that is very different from the name you would want to appeal to hard core campers for example.

I am happy to jump in a call to help you transform what is unique in you into a viable blog/business :)

You can also watch my TED talk - it's about marketing applied to online dating, but the same principles I exposed above are treated in the video (plus it's fun ;)
https://youtu.be/zQBUYK3d0fI

Serena

Creating a fashion blog is simple but making money from it is a totally different thing. In today's blog post, learn how to monetize a fashion blog and get paid for having exceptional fashion sense. You will have to have tons of creativity, an awfully specific and engaged target audience, connections, and an insane amount of luck to break through. A fashion blog allows you to express your own unique voice, personality, and taste in fashion from your own perspective. It is this uniqueness that you need to attract your target audience. That said, you need to remember that fashion blogging offers plenty of opportunities to earn an income, and this is precisely why competition is huge. Recent trends suggest that fashion blogging is going to be even bigger in the next few years, at least. Expanding horizons means an expanding audience, which in turn means you are likely to attract your target demographic, whoever they are.
So, you have built your blog, wrote top-notch content for it, promoted it, and now you are ready to make money from it. Let us talk about how to monetize your fashion blog.
1. Affiliate Marketing: Plenty of fashion bloggers, as well as bloggers who write in other niches, have been successful with affiliate marketing as a source of income. We have already written about the basics of affiliate marketing in this article, so I suggest reading it if you are not entirely sure how affiliate marketing works. Choosing the right products and services to promote is critical to the success of your affiliate marketing campaign, so choose them wisely. This is the same message for all bloggers who are into affiliate marketing, but it's a stronger statement when you're a fashion blogger because the content you would normally put out is highly visual, and visual connections are often more powerful and stick more to people's minds than written or even spoken words. Affiliate marketing is a good way to train yourself how to sell in preparation for selling your own products in the future.
2. Sponsored Content: While affiliate marketing earns you commissions when your readers click on your affiliate links, sponsored content is content that is paid for by companies. They cannot help but wonder if what they just read was sponsored by that company because there is just a tad too much praise and too little criticism. Making this worse are content creators who are not at all transparent about their content being sponsored. Plus, make sure your sponsored content is still of high quality. What makes or breaks native advertisement is if your audience remains engaged with your content or not, and if your content is sloppy, your audience will not be engaged. Honesty should also apply to companies who intend to sponsor your content. There will be times you will get offers to write about products that are not a good fit for your readers. Your primary responsibility should be to your target audience. First, you need to get noticed by companies who are a good fit for your blog. Valuable content, plenty of targeted traffic, and an engaged social media following are all attractive to companies looking to sponsor content. Sooner or later, a few of these companies will start to take notice and contact you. This way, their inquiries do not get mixed up with other emails that you receive, such as general questions and blog comments. After you have been doing sponsored content for a while, you can level up and start pitching paid sponsorships. This sponsored post from Always Creating Blog is an image-heavy post featuring the watch as part of an entire outfit, in contrast to the usual promotional photos showing nothing but the wrist where the watch is worn. Plus, note how it is clear even in the title that this is a sponsored post. Another good one is this article from Gypsy Tan sponsored by an online store and featuring a particular brand and model of sandals.
The simplest way to impress Instagram users is to post stunning photos that capture the essence of your blog, your style, and your story. You can attract potential sponsors by simply tagging relevant brands and companies on your photos. Ideally, you want to direct sponsors to your blog to see more of you. Since your Instagram bio is the only place you can include a link, make it count.

Create a bio that catches people's attention and convinces them to click to go to your blog. Make your Instagram a business account so you can add a button so you can be reached by phone and/or email. Example of an Instagram business account profile. You want prospective sponsors to easily contact you, but aside from that, an Instagram business account provides engagement data for your posts.
3. Brand Ambassadorship: The next logical step after creating sponsored content is being a brand ambassador. Influencers can influence purchase decisions, even though their influence may only be limited to the web and social media. Companies usually work with influencers for short-term marketing campaigns to help spread the word about new releases, for example. Brand ambassadors, by contrast, have deeper, long-term relationships with these companies. They may even be asked to attend company-sponsored events or as a representative of the company in other media events.
4. Selling Your Own Products and Services: When you've accumulated plenty of high-quality, non-sponsored content on your blog and social media, as well as acquired numerous engaged followers and traffic, it's time to consider selling your own products and services. Creating your own products gives you absolute control over product aspects such as its quality, how you want to sell it and when, and how much you want your customers to buy it for, which means you get to decide how much you earn for every item you sell and not have to share it with another party. If you have done everything else on this list, you would have experienced how to promote products. You also would have experienced collaborating with other companies and brands.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath