Should you start an interior design blog?
Do you live, sleep, eat and breathe home décor? Perhaps you spend all your free time reading up on interior design trends and learning about interior surfaces such as linen bed sheets, velvet drapes and maple flooring.
Maybe your friends compliment your sophisticated design sense, and you’re hoping to inspire others with workable decorating ideas. If you’re wondering whether an interior design blog would be the ideal way for you to earn a living, there are three questions you should ask yourself before launching.
1) Are you willing to invest money in your blog upfront?
There are many mistakes beginning bloggers make. One of the most common mistakes is not allocating sufficient funds to successfully nurture their blogs. These days, when multi-billion-dollar global corporations are competing for the attention of the same readers you’ll be trying to attract, it’s unrealistic to start a blog with zero upfront investment. You should also expect that there will be some ongoing expenses associated with running a blog.
However, if you’re willing to do most of the work to get your blog up and running, you can get started with a minimal upfront investment. It’s possible to start a blog for less than £150.
3) Are you prepared to invest significant time and effort before you start earning income from your blog?
It’s going to take an investment of either time or money – and quite possibly an investment of both – before you’ll start earning money from blogging. If you’re willing to pay for traffic to your interior design blog, you can start attracting visitors from day one. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll start earning income right away. It can take time to figure out how to actually generate income from the visitors you attract to your blog.
So how long does it take to earn money from a blog, anyway?
There is no universally correct answer to this question. However, a realistic estimate is that it will probably take you between 8-16 months to consistently start earning an income of at least $500 per month.
3) Do You Have a Reliable Source of Home Décor Images?
Interior design can be a relatively challenging topic to blog about. This is because the topic requires appealing, well-lit, professional-quality photographs that will accompany your posts. It is not easy to consistently procure excellent interior photos to share on a blog. You’ll have to either pay for images, find reliable sources for free images, or learn to take your own photos.
In the long term, it’s ideal to take your own pictures. However, you’ll still have to find interesting rooms to take pictures of. How many pictures do you think you’ll be able to share of your own home before your readers start to get bored? Do you have a massive budget for buying new furnishings to photograph?
Eventually, if you build up a huge readership, you may be able to convince manufacturers to send you samples of their home décor products to feature. However, when you have a brand new blog, this is not a realistic possibility. The marketing professionals who give out free samples will typically have questions about your blog’s traffic volumes before they send you anything.
If you’re an interior designer, the obvious answer is to take pictures of your interior design projects to post on your blog. In that case, an interior design blog would be the perfect complement to your existing business.
You don’t have to be an interior designer to succeed as an interior design blogger; but if you aren’t an interior designer, you’ll have to work harder at coming up with interesting rooms to photograph. Perhaps you could renovate your home, help a friend with a home renovation project, or find a similar creative solution. If you aren’t able to solve the problem of where to consistently get excellent photographs, it would probably be better to start a blog on an easier topic such as parenting, business or finance.
These are three of the most important questions to ask yourself before you start an interior design blog. If you can honestly answer “yes” to all of these questions, you should give serious consideration to starting your blog, because the odds are good that you could be successful at it.
