Yuli Ziv may not be a household name – yet – but the founder of Style Coalition, a network that includes over 50 top fashion and beauty bloggers, has made her mark on the fashion world in a few short years. And now the former marketing exec has literally written the book on fashion blogging, Fashion 2.0: Blogging Your Way To The Front Row (CreateSpace), which she hopes will help revolutionize the burgeoning industry.
Cutting through the clutter of the hundreds of thousands of fashion blogs currently rattling around the Internet is no easy task, Ziv concedes. It took her five years to become profitable, but she hopes that with her guidance aspiring bloggers can achieve success – and earn a profit – in much less time.
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Number one, there was no such book in this industry in particular. There are a lot of books, of course, about blogging, but I thought the fashion industry needed one specific to it because it’s a very special industry. As the leader of Style Coalition and a fashion blogger, I am constantly approached by people for advice and tips and questions like, “How do I get into Fashion Week?” Answering individual emails was getting tiring, so I thought packaging all the advice I had into one book would be a better solution. And, because this industry is so new, there are no guidelines or rules. It needs some organization, and as someone who had been working in marketing and blogging and with an ad network before –- I’ve been doing all of that for a decade — I thought I could help. It helps the entire industry in that way.
Is there something you have learned during your five years as a fashion blogger that you wish you would have known before you started?
Most of all, and I talk about this a lot in the book, it’s having a foundation — knowing who you are and why you are there and what you stand for. Many people start blogging because it’s so easy and they don’t put thought into it before they do it. What separates a professional blog, for me, is that you know from the first page who this person is and why they are writing about what they are writing about and what you’ll get from their blog.
Why did you decide to go into fashion blogging to begin with?
Things were starting to happen in the fashion industry, and I was fascinated about the change, and I could smell the revolution, and I wanted to be a part of it when it happened. I am really happy about my decision; I could be part of the change from the beginning and capitalize on it.
But it wasn’t easy for you at the beginning; you write in your book about a few failures along the way.
It took years before I saw a dime from my business, but as an entrepreneur you’re a risk taker and you jump at the opportunity to take a risk, not for a steady a paycheck. It took five years to get here.
| “I could smell the revolution, and I wanted to be a part of it when it happened.” |
When giving advice to aspiring fashion bloggers, would you tell them that it takes five years to make money from your blog?
I don’t think I had a good plan at all. If you want to be successful, you have to have a better plan. If I had known where I was going, it wouldn’t have taken me five years. I have enjoyed the journey, but it pays to be focused from the beginning and think, “How am I going to make money? How am I going to get there?” Also, the industry was so new; I couldn’t imagine five years ago that the industry would be where it is today.
What is the best lesson from your book?
The main thing — and this is why our industry is different – because this industry is driven by fashionable products, it’s hard not to get jaded and swayed by the glitz and glamour. The book tries to show bloggers how to balance that with the business side and guides bloggers on how to still enjoy the benefits that the industry offers, but conduct a business at the same time and keep your ethics and focus and not be distracted by the free stuff.
What is your advice to bloggers to best monetize their blogs?
You need to figure out what your revenue channels are and really separate them from your editorial content. Some revenue channels are appropriate for some blogs and some aren’t. Once you separate that from editorial, that’s a good start. Then you have to start being more and more pushy, especially when you’re approached by marketing people to do features that should be sponsored features. There are some bloggers that aren’t experienced and they don’t have the education, and they are doing sponsored content for free, and it is hurting everyone. The main skill to have is to learn to separate a marketing opportunity or pure promotion. Once you learn to say no to those things and demand payment, it’s an important step to building your blog as a business.
Ziv’s tips for launching a successful fashion blog:
1. Research the marketplace. “Before you do anything, do your research and find a niche that hasn’t been done before. If you don’t have a unique proposition it’s going to be hard to succeed. There are new blogs popping up every day, but there is still room for innovation. For example, there’s not enough comedy in fashion; there’s not enough humorous stuff and people challenging the traditional interviews and putting a comedic spin on it.”
2. Learn the rules. “It puzzles me how many bloggers consider themselves professional, but they don’t know the basic terms of the industry, particularly when monetizing. You need to know what CPMs are and what traffic means. You should know the Fashion Week terms the same as marketing and advertising terms.”
3. Have a plan and stick to it. “Don’t get swayed by anything or other success that you see out there and start to think, ‘This person is doing blogging on celeb fashion; look how much traffic they get; I should do that, too. Don’t get distracted by anything, like freebies or jealousy. Just stick to the plan.”
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