You’ve decided to start a lifestyle blog and know you’re likely to be more successful if your blog has a focused topic. But what are lifestyle blogging categories and niches anyway?
Here, we’ll discuss.
Lifestyle blogging is a fun and flexible way to make money while doing something you really enjoy- so long as you’re also willing to put a bit of elbow grease in. One of the key ingredients in a successful lifestyle blog is finding your niche.
If lifestyle blogging is something you’re doing purely for fun, the niche you choose won’t make much difference. However, if you’re looking to turn your interest into a business, choosing a niche is both important and requires a bit of thought.
The good news?
While lifestyle blogging is a subcategory of blogging itself, it encompasses a huge range of niches and focuses – leaving potential lifestyle bloggers with a ton of specialties to choose from, and loads of flexibility within each niche.
In this article, we’ll tackle the main lifestyle blogging categories and niches, although it should be taken into consideration that we’re going to be focusing on the big ones – the possibilities are, after all, nearly endless.
Fashion
Fashion blogs are the heavy hitters of the lifestyle blogging world. This is primarily due to the visibility that successful fashion bloggers achieve- after all. However, it’s usually fashion bloggers that end up parlaying their blogs into partnerships with major retailers on curated clothing collections and design partnerships with fashion brands.
A cursory search on the net will yield many examples of fashion bloggers who took their penchant for writing about their #OOTD (outfit of the day) and turned it into an empire.
Fashion bloggers can write about everything from the latest and greatest fashions coming out of major brands and labels to budget-friendly fashion dupes and restyling vintage.
From thrifting blogs to sneakerheads – there are as many potential fashion categories as there are variations in taste and style. Fashion blogs are great opportunities to utilize affiliate marketing and have a broad range of micro-categories within the niche itself.
Using the methods outlined in the ultimate guide to make money blogging will show you how to get organic traffic to your blog, start building an email list, and publish sponsored posts. A few small adjustments in the right direction can have you tripling your website traffic.
Travel
Another major lifestyle blogging category, travel, is probably the second most well-known category for lifestyle bloggers.
Travel bloggers write about various locales and are able to incorporate a broad range of travel-specific categories, from road trips and motels to luxury vacations and exotic experiences abroad.
The key for travel blogging is to go beyond simply writing an online diary of your travels and instead seek to answer frequently asked questions about travel-related topics.
Where are the most budget-friendly places to stay that are actually nice? What are some off-the-beaten-path dining spots that shouldn’t be missed? What travel accessories are the best? Which cameras and camera accessories work best for documenting travel adventures? Which spots are best for families, romantic getaways, etc.?
In lifestyle blogging, where specificity is key, travel bloggers have a variety of sub-niches they can expand into, which makes this category another one ripe with possibilities.
Beauty
Beauty blogging is a category of lifestyle blogging that focuses on makeup, hair, skincare, and nutrition.
Beauty bloggers often include tutorials, reviews, and lots of video content. With beauty being a huge source of retail spending internationally, beauty bloggers have loads of potential advertising partners available to them.
Within the beauty blogging niche, there is a variety of specific focuses lifestyle bloggers can choose from, from ethnicity and hair texture beauty specialties to age-appropriate skincare and more. Additionally, the beauty niche has successful lifestyle bloggers within a variety of subcategories.
Beauty lifestyle bloggers have gone on to partner with major international beauty lines to create hair and skincare product lines of their own, product partnerships with makeup brands to create limited runs and micro-lines, and even formulated entire beauty brands of their own.
If hair, makeup, skincare, and the like are your passion, the potential for creating a successful beauty-focused lifestyle blog is there.
Fitness and Nutrition
Source: Free image from Unsplash
While lifestyle bloggers can focus on either of these categories specifically, they tend to go hand-in-hand.
Fitness bloggers focus on workouts, healthy lifestyles, weight-lifting routines, specific workout styles, and fitness-specific nutrition for optimal health or to meet workout goals. Jump in and out of this list of the best health and fitness blogs currently on the web. Focus on content style, delivery, and design. Think about what is the unique key factor of each site; what do they do differently or better? Constant review and analysis of bloggers in your niche are important if you want to stay in tune with what’s trending and what’s influential.
Nutrition bloggers can spotlight a variety of concerns—overall health, keto-friendly recipes, Whole30 recipes, Atkins-friendly recipes, paleo-diet recipes, etc. There is a broad range of subcategories commonly seen in the nutrition blogging field.
Fitness and nutrition bloggers commonly monetize their blogs through partnering with specific diets and diet-friendly foods, workout regimens, gyms, and more. They’re also a natural for creating digital products they can use to monetize their blogs, such as diet plans, recipes, coaching plans, exclusive workouts and workout content, and more.
Parenting/ Family
Another standout community within blogging is parenting and family-focused blogs. There are several major contributors within this field, including a plethora of “mommy bloggers” and a handful of successful dad-focused blogs, such as HowToBeADad.com and ScaryMommy.com
Parenting blogs commonly build large and engaged communities on social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, writing and sharing about parenting strategies, parenting struggles, and parenting humor. Rather than the typical “aspirational” lifestyle blogs, parenting blogs are more often self-deprecating and relatable.
There is also a considerable sub-community of religious and faith-based parenting and family blogs, which address issues common within their communities, such as faith-based schooling, raising children within the associated faith, and so on.
There are as many sub-communities within parenting and family blogging as there are types of families, so like many lifestyle blogging niches, there is a wide range to choose from and many opportunities to engage an as-yet untapped audience.
Mental Health
As the stigma of mental health diagnoses has begun to ebb, more and more mental health support and awareness blogs have begun to pop up.
This niche focuses on diagnoses, daily management of conditions like anxiety and depression, community support, and personal and relatable content.
The general focus for mental health-related lifestyle blogs is on fostering community, normalizing mental health, offering resources, telling personal stories, and destigmatizing therapy and medications, among other things.
Mental health-focused lifestyle blogging is a growing category that is likely to continue to do so, with more people becoming open about their mental health struggles and many finding catharses in sharing about their condition with others.
Mental health blogs often offer motivational content, coping strategies, positive affirmations, workouts, meditations, yoga stretches, nutrition, and other lifestyle-related content as support methods. This means mental health bloggers have access to many potential partnerships and digital product possibilities like other lifestyle blog categories.
Professional Development
Professional development lifestyle blogs are another niche on the rise. Successful professionals looking to capitalize on their unique skill sets and those seeking to expand their careers and grow within their fields are brought together on professional development lifestyle blogs.
Offering tips and tricks, resume polishing, interview skills, networking help, and more, professional development blogs are full of opportunities for useful content- a surefire way to build an audience.
Freelancing and working-from-home lifestyle blogs also fall into this category, which has rapidly expanded in recent years. Freelancers and those who work remotely enjoy engaging with professional development blogs as a way of fostering community. Professional development bloggers can offer various digital products, including coaching, community resources, e-books, and more.
Eco-Friendly & Green Lifestyle
Eco-conscious living has become a goal for many, and eco-friendly and green living bloggers offer tips, tricks, and skill-sharing in this vein.
From lists of sustainable clothing companies and cleaning products, making your own eco-friendly hair and skincare, breaking up with single-use plastics, and starting your own compost- eco-friendly and green living lifestyle blogs encompass all things earth-friendly.
There are many companies and affiliate marketing opportunities for green bloggers to partner with, and a savvy green living blogger can simultaneously make an income and a difference in the world.
Culture
Broadly, culture lifestyle blogging can mean a variety of things. From focuses on social movements, college living, music, and pop culture to street fashion, politics, and more.
Lifestyle blogging at its core is a curation of interests, and for many bloggers, this means blogging about the cultural aspects of their lives. There are a variety of culture-focused blogs that have gained significant traction on the world stage, and in some cases, have managed to turn that notoriety into a digital magazine, cultural hub, or gossip site.
Culture bloggers also focus on more niche and specific interests, catering to specific subcommunities like anime enthusiasts, gothic fashion, English cottage life, animal husbandry, the arts, and more.
While the above categories represent a wide range of lifestyle blogging categories, this is by no means an exhaustive list. It’s safe to assume that if there is a specific interest, a lifestyle blog may be created to cater to it. Many lifestyle bloggers choose to focus on more than one specific niche, combining concepts like fitness and nutrition with fashion and parenting.
Lifestyle blogs and bloggers have the benefit of being flexible and evolving. Curating interests, sharing useful content, and focusing on what makes you relatable is a step toward creating a successful lifestyle blog.
Now that you’ve looked over this list of potential niches, choose your own, and get writing!
