I have been staring at XoxoEmmy.com for a bit, and a dark gloomy feeling as been hitting me: I suck as a beauty blogger. There might be worse websites out there, but I don’t feel I have been putting my 110% percent on this project. And its tough to realize that. But its important to know when you’re failing if you want to improve. I wrote these points to myself on a piece of notepad, only to realize, hey these points are probably applicable to every rising beauty blogger. So here they are, take them in and see what resonates with you. Remember that a beauty blogger can be the best beauty blogger she can be as long as she (or he) still tries.

1. You do not update daily

This may seem kind of weird. Why do you mean I have to update daily? In a world of fast fashion, changing trends, and a mass collection of beauty items out there, there are countless of websites trying to grab your audience attention. How often do you visit your favorite sites? Daily, right? You won’t be someone’s favorite beauty blog unless you update daily. While 1 post daily is good enough, multiple posts is even better. Temptalia went from 1 post a day to sometimes up to 12 posts a day. It keeps people coming to your blog. My last post before this post was on November 5th. That’s about 2 weeks ago. Yep, I failed.

2. You review items from ages ago

Right now, everyone is speculating about the new Naked 3 palette from Urban Decay.

It just launched. Right now, this product its maximum interest available, ie. because it just launched, most people do not own it, so most people want to see swatches, reviews, etc to see whether or not they should by it.

Your “maximum” audience its always during a product’s initial launch.

If you’re blogging right now about Essie nailpolishes that were released 2 years ago, which you bought cheap on eBay, you lost your audience. The audience for that Essie nail polish was 2 years ago, not now. When people Google that Essie nailpolish, other blogs might beat out yours because they were there first, and thus have comments, etc. If Google changes the algorithm, and everyone has the same chance, you still at a lost. Why? Because there is less interest in people knowing about that specific nail polish now than there were 2 years ago.

 

Lacy Not Racy is a great shade… but most people googled it in 2008. You will still have people searching for it, but they will not compare to the numbers in 2008.

This is were we reach the beauty blogger dilemma:

You need money to buy new products, because no company will sponsor you (i.e. give you free stuff) but you probably don’t have the money to constantly review a million items that you may or may not only use once. and that’s where we reach number 3.

3. Your Beauty Blog has No Niche

If you are a rich girl that can afford the entire Sephora catalog, good for you (Can I be your new best friend?) If you’re like me, you probably have limited funds. The successful blogs are the blogs that are specific. Are you the Chanel nail polish guru? Do you know everything there is to know about Urban Decay?

Remember that not every audience is the same. A girl living in NYC who lives the affluent lifestyle will visit blogs featuring Tom Ford nail polish swatches. This girl will not be looking at Sally Hansen. So who’s your audience? If money is tight and you know consistently which Cover Girl nail polish is highly pigmented or which ELF product is good to buy, you’re blog’s niche could be “the frugal beauty blogger girl” (or something similar). When you know you’re niche/audience, you know what products to buy (or not). This keeps your budget nice because you know what your weekly expenses are going to be. You will also get a nice enough consistent audience, that you might get some free products along the way to review. Free products are nice, because they give room in your budget to spend your money on other items. If you have no trouble with money, buy and review what you want, girl (though people do love consistency).

4. You Want to Be A Beauty Blogger for the fame/free stuff/money

I know a lot of beauty bloggers that quit because they don’t thought blogging was going to be easy. Just write a paragraph on something, wait for the ad check to come in the mail, for the companies to call you to give you free stuff… WRONG!

Companies will only give away promotional items when you are already established. You must already have the money/time investment already in place. No company will give something away for free for a site that only gets 200 views/day.

As of November 21st 2013, I have had no sponsorship, everything has been bought by me.

And ads? You make pennies every time someone looks at your page. And every person using adblock is diminishing any potential income. If you want to be the next Beauty&Makeup blog, you have to treat beauty blogging as a real job. This means working a few hours a day (4 hours minimum), taking clear and CLEAN pictures, giving genuine reviews and writing in a style that would appeal to your audience.

Michelle Phan may have started on Youtube, and its free to upload videos there, but you still have to put in the time to create nicely edited, clean, polished videos. Its work, just like any other type of work. And you may not be compensated at all for it. And you have to be perfectly okay with that. Same with actors have to be perfectly okay if they never get their big break or 15 minutes of fame. This doesn’t mean to give up. But it does mean being okay with yourself if you don’t get fame nor the free stuff you were looking for.

and this is where number 5 comes in.

5. You Don’t Really Have a Passion in Beauty

• You have to update daily.
• You have to review the latest items.
• Your chances of free stuff is slim to none and so its any ad income. hell, you’re chances of income is slim to none overall.
• and you have to treat it like job.

so who would do this then?

Easy, the people that have passion in it. If you GENUINELY love makeup, it will show. You will update often, you will have pretty pictures, your audience will show. People can read between the lines. People know when you don’t know what you are talking about. A person with genuine interest in MAC Cosmetics can tell you if a lipstick is cool or warm toned and which are the closest MAC lipsticks shades to said colors. Or if there are cheaper dupes! They can go on and on about the item because they already know so much about it.

Your passion will keep you going and your passion will teach you how to be a better beauty blogger whether it is to use a lightbox to take items in, or how to find out where to get press releases from OPI. Your passion is also what will keep you going when you’re heart and mind says that this is a waste of time. Life is nothing without passion.

 

So If any of these points resonate with you, then its time to take a step back, and reflect. Not everyone can make this their only job. But if you genuinely do love it, hopefully these pointers will help you improve (and hopefully improve my site too!)

xoxo

Emmy