” Every time you post something online, you have a choice. You can either make it something that adds to the happiness levels in the world—or you can make it something that takes away. ”
Before I started blogging I had it stuck in my head that blogging was dead. That there was no point anymore, who reads blogs? Everyone’s on Instagram now surely? But my thinking this had nothing to do with fact, I had never been told this by anyone or read it online from reputable sources. No, this was all a huge assumption!
A wildly incorrect assumption!
Blogging fact – each month, approximately 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages and 77 million new blog comments are generated by readers each month. Just based on numbers alone its easy to see, blogging most certainly is NOT dead!
The top blogging niches are typically Lifestyle, Travel and Beauty. Unless you niche down to something super specific, its hard to find a niche where you DONT have tonnes of competition, for example you run a travel blog specifically focusing on Madrid’s best wine bars! Very specific, you will have a very specific audience who will come to you for it.
Lets talk about being a Lifestyle Blogger…
What is a lifestyle blog?
A lifestyle blog is best defined as a digital content representation of its author’s everyday life and interests. A lifestyle blogger creates content inspired and curated by their personal interests and daily activities.
I love to think of lifestyle blogging as sharing content to help others live their best lives! Over the years this has meant different things however. Look back just a few years and it felt like everyone online and on social media had perfect lives and were perfectly happy, and if you followed them, used the products they used and the seemingly impossible routines they had then we could be perfectly happy and content too! There have been influencers around since the dawn of Blogging, we just didnt have the term yet. Selling the perfect lifestyle to you, selling their audience a dream.
But thats all it was. A DREAM. Because over the last few years we have started to see a real change happen. For one, us the audience have become much more perceptive of when we are being sold too or lied too. There is so much use of photoshop and the hundreds of editing apps easily accessible to anyone, but often we can now tell if these have been used! Wavey lines in the background or missing limbs… as i said, we are getting much smarter to it (Norway has even introduced a law which means influencers must declare if they have edited a photo when they share it!)
A new era of Lifestyle Bloggers & Influencers….
Nowadays what more and more of our audience and followers want to see are REAL PEOPLE! Real life people with flaws and struggles who make mistakes and own up to them. And that is SO freeing as a content creator. No more do we have to try to be so perfect all the time and I believe this is why we have seen such a huge rise in influencers and bloggers in the lifestyle niche over the last couple of years. We can share our real life tips and experiences, we can be our real, relatable selves and thats what helps people even more than faux perfect lives.
Its easier than every to create in the lifestyle niche with so many apps and sites out there too, check out this 2021 Influencer Compensation report from Intellifluence here for some interesting info!
There has never been a better time to become a blogger or content creator, because you can be truly YOU and there will always be a awesome audience for it!!! You can be unapologetically you, in fact ITS ESSENTIAL to be successful.
AND if you are a brand or business looking to get into influencer marketing, the market is perfect right now! There are so many micro / macro influencers and bloggers with small, extremely engaged audiences ready to work with! Intellifluence are a fab platform to check out to share work on, but be sure to avoid the top influencer marketing mistakes!!
Share your best selves my loves xo
Oh I love how you wrote this article. All with such a light and positive touch! <3
Great job, and as long as someone enjoy the blog they run, it is worth running 🙂
Hi Rachael,
I completely agree. There is no value, for you or your audience, in just imitating what others have done. Make it personal and share what you think – nobody does you better than you do!
I’m a lifestyle blogger and I love being a part of this niche, I find I can create my best content and I love talking about all things lifestyle, a great post! x
Lucy | http://www.lucymary.co.uk
I loved this post. I’m a newbie blogger. I started as a faith blogger but I’m switching to lifestyle blogging with a section for faith content. I realise that I can create great content when I’m not restricted to only faith blogs so I’m rebranding soon.
I didn’t know about that law in Norway but I think that’s absolutely brilliant. I hope more places introduce things like that. I love the fact that lifestyle bloggers are getting more real and honest than ever. We’re no longer constantly being sold this unattainable lifestyle of glitz and glamour and instead looking up to real people that we can relate to!
Thanks for this post.
I’m glad we’ve reached the stage where honesty prevails, because it’s real life and you can connect with someone better when they are being honest about their struggles.
I remember when there was a huge boom of beauty and lifestyle bloggers making new content every week but as you mentioned blogging is not dead.
With the algorithm, it can be tricky finding new bloggers and or new content.
Something that I enjoy from reading other lifestyle bloggers is that you feel that you can relate to what they’re saying whether it’s a shopping spree or talking about their mental health we can see their transparency.
Michelle| http://www.brokebutflawless.com