Why YOU should start a lifestyle blog

I talked recently about what a lifestyle blog is – basically, it’s anything you want it to be!
The advice given to new bloggers who want to know how to be successful and get their name out there is to find your niche and stick to it. As I said before, lifestyle blogging isn’t much of a niche; it’s a combination of many niches. While there are blogs out there dedicated to specific topics, a lifestyle blog could combine everything from parenting and food to cars and football. It’s a round up of the personal interests in the author’s life.

So why am I advising you to start a lifestyle blog which doesn’t necessarily have its own niche when all the advice says to just pick a niche?

Why YOU should start a lifestyle blog

1. A lifestyle blog becomes a diary that you can look back on in years to come.

A lot of bloggers always say that they blog for themselves, and while it’s not always strictly true (see further reasons to blog below), it is really nice to have this record. I’ve got images of myself, friends and family members all dated nice and easily for me to find; I’ve got stories about what I was doing on certain days so many years ago; I’ve got records of my outfits and how my style has changed; I’ve got personal posts about what was going on in my life and head in days gone by.

2. You can change what you write about

A blog isn’t a magazine, you don’t have to curate what you’re putting on it to suit a specific style. If you have a blog where you only ever write about carrots, it gets tedious quite quickly. And if you stop writing about carrots, those readers will leave because they were only there for the carrots. If however you write about various topics, you can write about carrots one day, maybe even for several days in a row, then switch to talk about shoes or cats or stationery the next day. You won’t get bored and you won’t run out of things to write about, because it’s your life.
(Seriously though, are there any carrot-only nice blogs out there?!)

3. There’s a big old community of lifestyle bloggers out there

Like I said, there are lots of lifestyle bloggers who started out blogging about one thing or another, outgrew that niche, and started getting more personal about their lives. They’re out there and they’ve got your back. They’ll make up part of your readership if you take part in the community and they’re there for support and guidance. If you want somewhere to share the story of your life, a lifestyle blog is the perfect place.

4. Money, money, money

Let’s not pretend that blogs don’t make money. Some people like to sweep it under the carpet, and others act outraged that bloggers run ads because they’re not being true to themselves. That argument is getting old now!
The truth is that there’s money in blogging and blogging can be a career. Some people say you shouldn’t start a blog just to make money, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong in doing so. It’s not the route I took (because I started blogging quite early on and didn’t know you could even make money by blogging) but it’s not an invalid reason to blog either. And I do make money through blogging sometimes now.
Bloggers can make money a variety of ways:

• Affiliate links
• Paid posts
• Banner/display advertising
• Influencer advertising

We can think about those more in another post (do you want another that focuses on these?), but looking at it from a lifestyle blog angle, if you choose to start a lifestyle blog over a specific niche blog, you’ll find that there are a lot more opportunities available to you. That carrot blog just wouldn’t do well with a shoe related banner ad in the sidebar, but a lifestyle blog could easily have a shoe related ad AND a carrot related blog post because they’re aspects of your life that you enjoy writing about.

So what do you think, if you’re not a blogger, would you start a lifestyle blog?