Just about everyone wants to be a style blogger these days, but it takes more than a good sense of fashion to make it happen. If you want to start showering the web with your style musings, here’s what you’re going to need.

How to Be a Personal Style Blogger

1. Great Fashion
Style bloggers don’t just look good, they look interesting. If you want people to read your blog, you’ll have to show them fashion they can’t see by looking in the mirror. Get trendy, even quirky, and go all out with hair styling and accessories to complete your look. The more you’re wearing, the more styled you’ll look, and you can really up the ante by doing something weird with your hair– like crimping it or putting it into one of those Lady Gaga bows. You don’t have to spend gobs of money on the best designers in order to flaunt enviable fashion. Check out thrift stores, vintage shops and your friends’ (or even your grandma’s!) closets to find unique items.

2. Lots of Photos
Most style bloggers’ favorite part of the gig is posing for photos, then posting them on the web. Just like how guys posing shirtless and taking pictures of themselves in the mirror became the quintessential Myspace photo, there’s a formula to style blog photos as well: Find a dusty gas station and give the camera your best sleepy-eyed, forlorn look. The more out of place you look in your environment, the better.

3. A Niche
It’s not good enough just to give a general overview of just about everything going on in fashion, or to simply show a few pictures and be done with it. You’ve got to be special. Find an angle that’s unique, something you love enough to write about every day. You may think that narrowing down your subject matter will shrink your audience, but, though less people will share your interests, the ones who do will keep coming back to your site.

4. A Flare for Copying
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and while some style bloggers get really perturbed when other blogs copy their ideas, many are happy to share, as they’re probably doing the same thing. The bottom line is, if you really want to know what makes a blog successful, study successful blogs. Don’t copy and paste their posts–we’re not talking about stealing–but study the language they use, the news they cover and the way they use images. Whatever you like about their site is most likely what someone else would like about yours.

5. Obsession
To commit to writing about fashion day in and day out, to tirelessly getting dolled up, going out and taking photos of yourself, hunting through those hundreds of photos for the 3 or 4 in which your hair isn’t messed up, and posting your content daily whether or not anyone’s reading it, you’ve really, really got to love what you’re doing. Style, writing, criticizing, you’ve got to be infatuated with it all, and that will keep you going through all the formatting glitches, nasty comments and writer’s block. If you’re really obsessed, stick with it, and eventually it will pay off.