Advertising on a Fashion Blog - How the successful ones do it

If you run or want to run a successful fashion blogs such as Kayture, The Blonde Salad or The Man Repeller, you need think about how you are going to place ads on your blogs (if you are going to do so, but then again, it's easy income so why not go for it). Most importantly, where you will place them and what you will place.

Let’s look at the ways different bloggers with different styles place ads on their blogs. Maybe one of those styles will seem best for you!

Let’s start with Kayture!

Placement

Advertising on Kayture is done through three ads strategically placed on the right side of the page. However, the ads only appear after you’ve scrolled approximately half a page. This is very smart because it does not frighten readers away by showing them ads as soon as they enter the blog; they only come gradually after you have started scrolling. This is the ideal placement and satisfies both the reader and advertisers.

The ads placement is also very consistent and appears the exact same way on every page of the blog.

Content

Kayture advertises for three fashion companies, relatively high-end: net-a-porter.com, an online retailer of luxury clothes and accessories. Kristina also has a wish list on net-a-porter, which is displayed on her blog. She also advertises for ShopBop, a bag designer and Revolve, another online retailer of high-end fashion brands that Kristina is known to wear. In all three cases, the ads link directly to the website's homepage.

Our thoughts?

Overall advertising is done very well. The ads are placed carefully and with consistency and their content is very relevant to the blogger’s style and image. Business-wise, this is very well done and it must probably achieve a decent number of impressions and a good click-through-rate! The only drawback is that all the ads are clustered together, thus making them a bit less appealing that if they were placed individually.

Now on to a very different style: The Blonde Salad.

Placement

Advertising on The Blonde Salad is very different than Kayture’s and much more discrete. You have to scroll to the bottom of the home page to find a single ad, which is located next to Chiara’s Youtube’s videos and could easily be missed. Furthermore, this single ad is only located in her home page. There are no ads in any of her blog post.

So why advertise in such a minimal way? Remember that Chiara owns her own fashion brand from which she makes most of her income, something Kristina Bazan does not have. So maybe, Chiara does not need to rely on advertising just as much to make money!

Content

In terms of content, the only website The Blonde Salad advertises is Depop, an online marketplace that’s interactive and fun where you can buy and sell second hands fashion goods. Contrarily to Kayture, the ad on The Blonde Salad website actually links directly to her own account on Depop and not the website’s home, where she sells some of her own clothes and accessories. So while Kristina remains objective in her ads by linking them to the websites’ homepages, Chiara uses the ads as an opportunity to make profit by advertising both the website and her own marketplace.

Our thoughts?

This is a very discreet and minimal form of advertising. If you do not have any other source of income besides that, maybe it is not the best choice for you. Your ads will probably have a very low impressions, click-through-rate and ROAS (Return On Advertising Spending) and that’s never good business-wise. Other words, Chiara advertises like that because she can afford to! And so should you…

And now let’s look at our final example, The Man Repeller.

Placement

If The Blonde Salad was the Ying of online advertising, The Man Repeller is its complete opposite, the Yang. Ads on The Man Repeller are all over the place. First, there's a banner located at the top of every page, home and posts alike. It’s probably one of the first things you see when entering the blog. There are also extensive ads on the right side of the blog, from the top to the bottom of every page, sometimes interrupted by a short text or image. The size of the ads is also important, as they are much, much bigger than the ones on both Kayture and The Blonde Salad. For example, the ad displayed below (second photo) on the right side of the page is bigger than the picture which the article discusses! The interesting detail is that the ad picture and its model actually ressemble the picture presented in the article. On purpose or not?

Content

Again, The Man Repeller seems to be doing things completely differently than some of its fashion counterparts. Just like Kayture, The Man Repeller advertises for net-a-porter.com. However, the ads are not linked to the website’s homepage but to a specific page called “Editor’s Pick” where over 900 clothes, bags, jewelry and other accessories from dozens of different brands are listed. This leads us to believe that Leandra Medine could have picked those items herself. This makes the ad more intimate and definitely more interesting from a fashion perspective.

While both Kayture and The Blonde Salad were relatively discreet in the displaying of theirs ads, The Man Repeller seems much more flashy and does not hesitate to display big “SALES” ads with flashy colors such as seen on this ad. While those promotions probably generate a lot of impressions and click-through-rate, they might damage your blog's image and should not be done too much.

Our Thoughts?

It seems that The Man Repeller must rely must more on advertising as a source of income than Kayture and The Blonde Salad. We might not know why that is. Maybe that’s just something that works best for her! Just keep in mind not to do it too much. You don’t want your readers to feel like they’re getting spammed. And you do not want your blog to look “cheap”.

Conclusion

Overall, the one thing you should remember is that there are many different ways to advertise and you will find one more tailored to your needs!

You can do very minimal advertising and find a way to make it serve your own needs like Chiara! You can do high-end advertising like Kristina by limiting your ads placement and focusing its content on high-end fashion. Or you can go ahead and max out your income and impressions by advertising all over the place. Make it fun and it might work! Just remember that they way you advertise has to be consistent with the image you want to display. Keep it consistent!

It’s all about whatever works best for you!