Getting out into the real world and brings your blog to the next level… it’s intimidating, but Tierra M Wilson, breaks down how to get your media cred and how not to blow it.

Recently, I had an interesting conversation with a fashion photographer at a local fashion event. He was bragging about his full media pass to a local fashion week in the area which included some big names in the industry. I mentioned that I had the same pass he looked at me incredulously and asked, “How does a blogger get media credentials?”

Well, after giving my “fashion bloggers are important too” speech and politely walking away, I thought about the media barriers that fashion bloggers face. As a result, here are eight guidelines to getting the media credentials that you deserve as a fashion blogger.

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Today’s post is written by IFB Contributor Mademoiselle Robot! This is part two of the post All the Pretty Voices… Noise or Symphony?

Nowadays, everyone and their dog has a blog, and even the fashion blogosphere is getting incredibly crowded. So how do you make your blog stand out from the crowd? By developing a unique & personal voice. Here are some tips to help you doing so. [Read more]

This post is by the lovely Mademoiselle Robot,when you’re done reading this post, stop by her lovely personal style blog.

I decided a few months ago to start interviewing artists, designers & other bloggers for my site. I have worked as a journalist for a while, so interviewing became something I do on autopilot. Recently, I have seen a lot of people wondering how to get interviews & how to approach people they want to interview. Here are some tips you can follow if you want to start doing interviews on your blog:

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When it comes to Fashion Blogs, there is no more personal way to create original content that the ol’ “What are you wearing” post.

Image via Snowshoe Rabbit

Even if the main focus of your blog may not be personal style, WAYW photos help personalize your blog and connect with your readers. From experience, taking photos of myself was tricky at first, and through a lot of trial and error, I’m a lot happier nowadays with my wardrobe pics than in the early days of my blog. Here are some tips to help you achieve the quality photos you want for your blog.

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Image by Montrasio International

If you’re blogging for extra cash, there are easier ways to make money.

However, if you are going to be writing about what you love, you might as well make extra money if it’s only going to take a few extra steps.

Affiliate Programs can work, if you know how to use them. Personally, I’ve had my share of rage/resentment when it comes to affiliate programs, as I put an ‘ad’ up on my blog for months and only bring in a few cents. It took some time before I was able to figure out ways to make money off them, without comprising editorial content. [Read more]

Bazaar’s 2008 Editorial Calendar

The single most important part of a blog is the content.

It might sound like a redundant statement, but without consistent, quality content, readers won’t have a reason to come back. An Editorial Calendar will not only help you decide what to post, keep you inspired, but it also helps your readers know what to expect. Magazines use editorial calendars to plan a year in advance allowing time to develop content properly. While most blogs may not need to plan posts a year in advance, having some kind plan for your posts will help save time and curb blogger’s block. And don’t be afraid, editorial calendars come in all shapes and levels of detail, you can work what’s best with minimal effort, and still reap the rewards. [Read more]

Image via Garance Doré
Blog vs. print may be coming to a close, or maybe “independent blogs” vs. “media corporation blogs representing print magazines” may be coming to terms. I think. Scrolling through my rss feeder today, I came across Elle Magazine’s New Style Blogs article… It got me excited to see which blogs they picked, and what they had to say about us.

While the slew of Internet startups that emerged around this time [the mid-90's] tanked when the boom went bust, blogs have prospered, evolving into the creative outlet for people to share (and typically over share) information about their lives, for anyone interested�-or bored-�enough to read on. As a result, we’ve noticed that more and more quality, style-focused blogs are cropping up, offering a visual cornucopia for the fashion savvy in the way of street style images, “Last Night’s Party” type scenes of downtown debauchery (that often include inadvertent galleries of choice vintage pieces and designer duds) as well as the occasional eBay link for items you may have missed but, turns out, need to own.

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Anna Wintour may be one of the few people on the planet who can say to us “buy this, because I say it’s good” though opinions of US Vogue may vary widely the fact remains that it is one of the top selling fashion magazines in the world.
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Negative comments seem to be a fact of life on the internet.

They are everywhere, forums, on big corporate websites like the BBC and the Times and on people’s personal blogs. Where there’s an opinion, there normally seems be someone hanging around waiting to discredit it. Criticism is fine, but when someone starts harassing you, what do you do?
Thankfully, so far on my own blog, we haven’t had any outright abuse. I try to foster debate, but as the debate is normally as inane as what colour suit looks best, I wouldn’t expect this debate to turn nasty. And yet I’ve seen that, time and time again, on other people’s blogs it does. I’m not talking the ‘oh this is a silly idea’ comments either, I’m talking the full-blown ‘you are fat and ugly and I think your face is stupid’ ones. Here are my suggestions of few ways of dealing with it.
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Originally uploaded by icanteachyouhowtodoit

Let’s face it… there’s not a whole lot of money in fashion blogging. At first anyway. You have to work hard, work smart and be in the know.

You also have to have nice looking content, good writing, and be persistent.

Unfortunately… the nice content can be a challenge if you want to make your blog original. There are lots of free resources out there if you take the time to learn about internet culture, programming and professional blogging. One concept I’ve only recently come across is open source. If you are running your blog on Wordpress.org, you are probably aware of the amazing capabilities of this concept.

Open source is a set of principle around developing software, more specifically to us, it’s code that’s openly available. I find this topic really interesting, but for now… we can stick to the fact it’s free software… it’s free, but you can donate to the programmers if you like. I use WordPress and an open source template… the good part is it’s free, and I can customize it. The bad part is, I’m the one who has to do all the work.

Finding good programs to use is another issue so here are some places to look:

Images: Blogs like Just JR and Miss Dior Couture make wonderful collages with found images. I don’t know what software comes standard on you computer, but chances are, you may not have Photoshop. It’s an essential tool for blogging. I used it for nearly every post. If you can’t shell out the $1000 for a licence for CS2… try GIMP, it still has a bit of devlopment to do… but you can give it a try. I’ve seen the features, and it looks pretty extensive particularly for what we do as bloggers, so if you have a super old copy of Photoshop… you might want to give this a try.

Email: I don’t know what kind of blogger doesn’t need a good email program. I use gmail for all my accounts. I recently bought a domain name, and didn’t want to have to pay for the extra hosting for the emails, so I used google apps. With that, you can have like 100 email addresses and it uses the gmail interface, so I didn’t have to learn anything new. I’ve also heard that Mozilla Thunderbird is a great email application.

Hosting: If you are just starting out, and are intimidated by paying up front for hosting (many companies give a discount if you pay up front) going to NearlyFreeSpeech allows you to pay for what you use. A beginning blogger may not use too much space… so it’s worth a dabble. As you learn what you need, you’ll feel more comfortable about investing in your website. Again… I know I should have said this earlier, but it helps to have your own domain name. They aren’t expensive… but after I had to move from Blogger to Wordpress, it was a hastle to inform everyone… change all my feeds, etc… I lost traffic, and my new site doesn’t have the same pagerank as my old one. But now I have way more traffic than before… pagerank… well.. that’ will change too.

Templates: When I moved, it was because I couldn’t find the right templates to with my old platform. Wordpress has tons of open source templates it was just a matter of finding one I liked with a support forum that I gelled with. Once I got my site up and running the author of the code complimented on the work I did! It was really nice.

Tracking your blog: I used to use Technorati, but lately I’ve lost interest in them because I knew that there were links that weren’t showing up. Google now has a blog search that you can Google your blog address and it will search the entire internet for every link that pops up. It also has an RSS feed option so it can also email you when someone links to you!

Image by icanteachyouhowtodoit