How to Start a Celebrity Gossip Blog in Under 20 Minutes
Celebrity gossip blogs are all over the place, and collectively they receive billions of page views per month and make a lot of money in the process. For this reason and many people, people are always looking for information on how to start a celebrity gossip blog of their own.
If that happens to be the reason why you are here today, then you are in luck, as we are going to break down everything you need to know about creating a celebrity gossip blog of your own in less than 20 minutes.
As mentioned, there are many gossip blogs on the internet today. Many of the started out as fun side projects, but have evolved into so much more. PerezHilton.com for example was a side project for Mario Lavandeira back when he wanted to be a celebrity reporter. He decided to start the site on his own and broke a few stories from it, and now he’s making over six-figures per month with the site and has also built a multi-million dollar brand in the process.
Based off what we’ve seen with Perez Hilton and thousands of other successful celebrity gossip blogs on the internet, we can now break down all of the important factors to creating a celebrity gossip site of your own. Let’s get started!
How to Start a Celebrity Gossip Blog – (Approx. 20 mins)
Before jumping the gun and just throwing a web site or blog out there, we first want to make sure you understand how to create a celebrity gossip blog with the right foundation and purpose in place. That’s exactly what each of the next few steps is going to break down for you. Don’t worry, it will only take a few minutes to go over the important areas, and it will make a huge difference for the success of your blog in the coming months.
Step 1 – Choose the Best Blog Platform for Your Site
With over 300 million blogs on the internet today, they are many different blogging platforms to choose from. WordPress is definitely the most popular, as it will soon be the content management system of choice for nearly 50% of the blogs out there.
The only real decision you will have to make is how you want to setup your blog with the WordPress platform. WordPress is completely free to use and all you need to do is click a few buttons to have it instantly up and running on your site.
Here are the two different WordPress options to choose from:
- WordPress.com – A free blogging platform with a lot of limitations, and they pretty much own your site content.
- WordPress.org – The free software you can set up on your site and have complete ownership over your content.
To see a detailed comparison between the two different WordPress platforms, you can click here.
Having helped thousands of bloggers get setup with their own site, we highly recommend getting set up with your own domain name and premium hosting. This will allow you to have complete control over your blog, while also looking professional in the process. Another important thing to note is that celebrity gossip blogs usually get a lot of traffic and can make money by placing advertisements on their site. If you went with the free WordPress.com option, you wouldn’t be able to sell such advertising on your site.
So here’s what I recommend for you. Our preferred blog hosting service, Bluehost, is currently offering 60% off their hosting packages to anyone interested in starting a blog. This discount is an exclusive deal with our site and Bluehost, and we are simply passing the savings on to you. In addition to receiving a huge discount, new customers will also receive a free domain name. When setting up your blog hosting, you will also have WordPress instantly live on your site so you can start blogging right away!
If you aren’t ready to setup your domain and blog hosting right now, that’s fine. We just wanted to let you know from the beginning what your best option was for getting your site off in the right direction.
When you are ready to setup your domain name and web hosting, click here. In the meantime, let’s walk through the rest of the process to set up your own celebrity gossip blog.
Step 2 -Pick a Celebrity or Gossip Topic for Your Site
Starting a blog is easy, but creating a successful one that gets a lot of traffic and provides value is the tough part. That’s exactly why we are walking through all of these steps one-by-one instead of just telling you to set up a site and try to figure it out for yourself
One of the first things you will need to do is figure out what type of gossip blog you want to create. Sure, of course, it’s going to be a celebrity blog, but would you prefer to only focus on one celebrity instead?
The reason I ask is because there is a ton of competition out there, and it would be much easier for you to find your target audience and create all of your content on one celebrity versus trying to cover every single celebrity possible. This is something I touch on in my “How to be a Celebrity Gossip Blogger” post, where I break down all the pros and cons of a celebrity gossip site.
With all of that said… you can either start a celebrity gossip blog that covers all celebrities, or an individual celebrity. The choice is up to you.
Just to give you an example, you can see a “Zac Efron Fan Blog” below. Obviously, this blog covers everything there is to know about Zac Efron.
Then, of course, you also have blogs like HollywoodLife.com, which cover breaking news and gossip on every celebrity they can think of.
If you are planning on launching your blog yourself, it’s probably a better idea to go with a single celebrity blog, as it will allow you to focus more time on creating your content.
Choosing a Name for Your Celebrity Gossip Blog
Before launching your site, you will also need to come up with a name. The name of your blog should tie into the domain name of your site. The domain name is the address people type in to get to your site (blogging.org is the domain name of this site).
In most cases, you should try and stay away from using celebrity or brand names in your domain, as they could come after you legally and take the site away from you. The two site examples below had good domain names that wouldn’t be a problem — zefron.com and hollywoodlife.com.
Domain names usually cost around $14.95 per year, however, if you register your domain name and setup hosting through Bluehost, you will get a free domain name for LIFE!
Top Celebrity Gossip Blogs on the Internet Today
As mentioned, there are thousands of celebrity gossip blogs on the internet today. To give you some inspiration for site names, content ideas and just to see what is out there, I’ve listed some of the top sites on the internet for you below.
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CelebrityGossip.com – This site features exclusive celebrity biographies. It gossips about scandals in the entertainment industry. The site also allows readers to post their own gossips and news about celebrities.
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HolyMoly.co.uk – This is the most popular UK celebrity gossip media when it comes to providing breaking news about celebrity scandals.
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Celebitchy.com – This site is all about celebrity news and gossips. It’s true that the name of the site sounds quite bitchy, some of the celebrity news you will get here are still modest compared to some of their counterpart out there
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Celebrity-Babies.com – The site focus on celebrities right from the cradles. So, kids of famous people in the society never escape their lens as they go to and fro schools and other life’s engagements. They’re the baby celebrities. Thus, if you’re a famous personality, don’t be surprised if you found your kids’ story on the celebrity entertainment news.
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Celebslam.com – If you are looking for true celebrity news and gossips about them, Celebslam’s site is the place to go. They stylishly bring out facts amid jokes, and sometimes mild insults that bring celebrities to their toes.
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Unfame.com – Unfame provides a kind of insider gossips about celebrities and their crafts.
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Dlisted.com – Dlisted approaches celebrity and entertainment news and gossips from the humorous angle. They focus on making fun from all the happening around celebrities.
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Egotastic.com – Egotastic focuses most of their gossips on female celebrities. They make gossips around the everyday mistakes often made by celebrities especially the female ones. These may include female celebrities carrying a fake version of a popular bag brand to an event or one that mistakenly slips on a red carpet.
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GossipGirls.com – Aside entertaining you with regular celebrity gossips, Gossip Girls also features side attractions such as movie reviews, countdowns to events, and forums among other things.
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HelloMagazine.com – Hello Magazine has been on the ground in the UK for several years now, entertaining its audience with celebrity gossips and news. It also has branches in countries such as Canada, Spain, Greece, Mexico, and Russia.
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TheCelebrityPsychic.net – They focus their gossips on what celebrities are up to at the moment and what the future may hold for them.
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HollywoodTuna.com – If you are the holy type, don’t go visit this site. But if you like to see female celebrities that take delights in going almost unclad in public places, HollywoodTuna has a lot to offer you in that aspect.
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IDontLikeYouInThatWay.com – This site is well known for being ridiculously unsympathetic on celebrities. Their gossips are often laced with harsh criticism of any celebrity they cover.
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RadarOnline.com – This site is one of the leading entertainment media in America with a specific focus on celebrity fashion and red carpet reports. It conveys its messages through different celebrity photos and videos. Initially, it was being published as both print and online celebrity news source. Today, it operates exclusively online.
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JustJared.com – They focus on providing you pictures of celebrities as they go out on the streets, when attending events, or at movie locations when filming.
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OKMagazine.com – OK Magazine recently became trendy in the United States. However, this celebrity magazine has been on the global scene for a while now showcasing entertaining news and gossips about celebrities.
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OMG.Yahoo.com – They provide the usual gossips and news about celebrity and highly revered personalities. They also feature video interviews on their website.
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Variety.com – This is like the Hollywood’s bible. Whatever is happening in Hollywood is covered on this site.
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People.com – Although you will find some heart-warming stories on this site to entertain yourself, they also dig out gossip stories about lives of celebrities.
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PerezHilton.com – Perez Hilton, a blogger and TV personality, has carved a niche for himself in the entertainment industry as the king of celebrity. This reputation has earned the platform lots of likeness as well as hatred among a wide-range of online audiences. They are always abreast of the latest happenings in the entertainment industry.
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Socialitelife.com – This blog provides a daily dose of Socialite Life in your inbox. They cover celebrity news and gossips from every angle with a healthy dose of cattiness.
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ONTD.com – The acronym ONTD stands for Oh No They Didn’t. The website focuses on latest celebrity news. It shares breaking news and scandal reports about celebrities in movies and music.
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PopSugar.com – Popsugar focuses on providing hot stories alongside celebrities’ pictures and lifestyles.
When you have the time, be sure to check each of them out and see how they are creating content for their audiences.
Step 3 – Create and Customize Your Gossip Blog
Once you’ve gone through the process of choosing a niche, picking your domain name and setting up your hosting, it’s then time to install WordPress on your server and go live with your site. While this may seem like a big process, it usually only takes a few minutes at the most.
After all of this is setup and your blog is live, then it’s time to start customizing the look and feel of your site. Since we are using the WordPress platform, this is simply a matter of clicking buttons and searching around for the different type of themes and plugins you might want to use on your site.
To get an idea of what is possible in terms of customization, we can simply take a look at some of the top celebrity gossip blogs using WordPress to power their sites.
GossipGirl.com has a very clean looking site with a lot of white space. Should you click on any of their main stories, it would then load into a full page article.
TheSuperficial.com has a more generic WordPress theme, which is still custom to their needs, but is a look and feel that many premium WordPress themes could accomplish. In short, it would be quite easy for you to find a free or premium WordPress theme with the same concept and look and feel of their site.
I took the liberty of searching around for a high quality WordPress theme (shown below) that you could use for a celebrity gossip based site. This one in particular is available through Magazine3.com.
After looking at multiple celebrity gossip blogs in the industry, you can see they all have similar and different areas to them. Some also have unique names, while others are quite generic. A great way to spruce up the look and feel of your site, is to create a unique logo to show off the professionalism and uniqueness of your site. This isn’t necessary, but it’s a nice feature to add as you develop your site.
Step 4 – Start Creating Celebrity Content for Your Blog
With your domain and hosting all set up and WordPress now installed, it’s time for you to start adding content to your site as well. After all, if there isn’t any juicy celebrity gossip on your site, what’s the point in visiting it!
Creating content for your blog is easy and I’ve laid out all of the visuals you need below.
Log into your WordPress dashboard and click (or hover over) the POSTS tab on the left side menu. You will then see the option to ADD NEW (click it).
You should then see the option to “ADD NEW”. Click that button and then you will be sent to a form / page like the one below. From the screenshot you should tell how easy this is to setup. The “Title” area is on top, then the “Content” area is that big section below it. You can write anything you like in these areas and when you are ready to go live with your latest article, you can simply click on the “Publish” button.
Using WordPress is extremely easy and it will only take you a few minutes to get the hang of it. There are also hundreds of tutorials and guides throughout this blog to help you with any tasks you might have — such as how to create a link in WordPress.
Step 5 – Build a Social Following and Get Traffic to Your Blog
We all know that everyone loves to share the latest celebrity gossip, rumors and reviews through social media. Now it’s time to get these same social media users to share your blog content as well!
There’s a good chance you already have a Facebook or Twitter account for yourself, but did you know that you can also create accounts for your web sites and blogs as well? It’s true, and it works extremely well!
Take a look at TMZ on Facebook for example. They have over 5.7 million fans!
With a social profile on Twitter and a Fan Page on Facebook, you can update your followers on all of the latest celebrity news and gossip that is being added to your site. You can see even more celebrity gossip Fan Page stats through the screenshot below. Provided by FanPageList.
No matter what type of celebrity gossip blog you want to create, the good thing to know is that there is a massive audience out there just waiting to view your content. Whether it’s an individual celebrity site, or as much celebrity gossip you can possibly cover, be sure to check out the fan pages highlighted above to see how to best promote your own site.
It’s Time to Start Your Celebrity Blog Right Now!
Wow! We really did cover a lot of great information in this guide and I congratulate you for making it all the way to the end!
Now that you’re a master at what it takes to create a successful celebrity gossip site, it’s time for you to get started with one of your own.
Again, I wanted to remind you that the best way to get started is with your own domain name and premium hosting. This way you can setup WordPress on your site and have complete control over your content and how it looks. Take a moment to head over to Bluehost so you can register your free domain name and get 60% off your blog hosting.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me with any comments or concerns you might have. Once your blog is live, be sure to let me know so I can check it out!