You’ve come up with an idea for your blog! Now what? It’s time to get started on creating your blog! But how much does it really cost to start a blog?
Well, it’s a bit like the ‘how long is a piece of string’ question.
It depends.
If you have the funds, you could quickly drop $10 000 to get someone to create the blog of your dreams.
But if you’re reading this article, you are probably looking for a cost-effective way to start your blog. Am I right?
The best thing about blogging is that you don’t need much to get started. You can start with the most basic website and as your blog grows and you start earning an income, you can invest in updating your site.
In this post, we’re going to go through the essential blogging items, the ‘good to have items and then some recommendations if you have a bit more money to invest in your business.
Let’s get started and discover how much it really costs to start a blog! (hint: you can start a blog for around $100)
Blogging Essentials
The essential blogging items are non-negotiable. They’re the items that you just cannot start your blog without.
A blog is just a website that focuses on content creation. It’s no more complicated than that. The three things you will need are a domain (your www.yourblog.com), hosting (a place to host your domain) and a theme (a template that forms the basis of your website).
Domain
Your domain is your web address, for example, www.yourblog.com. You purchase your domain, this can be done for about $23.99 through a site like Siteground. This is an expense that you will need to pay every year. This amount gives you ownership of the domain for 12 months.
Purchasing the domain gives you the address, not the website. For this, you’ll need to host it somewhere.
Hosting
Hosting is needed to turn your domain into a website. It can be hard to get your head around it but hosting is most certainly non-negotiable when it comes to starting a blog.
Again we recommend Siteground for hosting. It isn’t the cheapest but the cheapest is cheap for a reason. Having made that mistake when creating my first website, I don’t recommend you make that mistake.
We host all of our blogs through Siteground and have had a great experience.
Hosting plans start at $3.99/month paid annually. This works out to $47.88 for the year. Again, this is an expense that will need to be paid annually (you can select 3 or 5-year options as well).
WordPress
WordPress is the software that allows you to create and store content. WordPress has been around for a long time and it’s my preferred site builder. The best thing is WordPress is actually free.
When you start building your website, you can select ‘Build a WordPress Site’ in Siteground. It will be installed and you can start building your site!
WordPress Theme
You’ve got your domain and now the space to create your website, it’s time to build it out. If you’re starting from no tech or online experience then I think a theme is also non-negotiable.
We’ve used a range of themes over the years and now recommend starting with the Astra theme. It’s a fast theme and is super easy to get started due to its range of templates.
There is a free version of Astra but I strongly suggest you purchase the Pro version for $47, especially if you don’t have any online experience!
The Pro version gives you so many features and a good range of starter templates. You can have your blog up in a day when using their templates!
How much does it really cost to start a blog?
Around $100
If you’re going to use the free Astra theme, it will be just under $100 and if you use the Pro version, just over $100.
When you put that into perspective, you can see that starting a blog is a super inexpensive way to start earning money online. Of course, it will take time to create content and generate traffic (and therefore income) but your initial outlay is minimal!
Optional Blogging tools
Email Marketing
Whilst email marketing isn’t essential (I have a niche site that doesn’t have any email marketing), it is a good practice. If you can start collecting email addresses, then you have a network that you own and can communicate directly with.
For most blogs, email marketing will become a way to help your audience and be able to sell to them over time.
Our preferred email marketing platform is Flodesk. Whilst it is a paid platform, the amount you pay as your email list grows, won’t change. You can have unlimited email subscribers and still pay the same amount each month. This is unheard of in the email marketing community! Most will charge you more as your email list grows (some can get quite $$)
Flodesk is a simple platform, great for starting out. It’s super easy to create automated email sequences and embed forms into your website. Both are great features for new blog owners!
If you’re wanting a free option, then Mailchimp is your only option. You can build your list to 500 email subscribers before having to pay. Mailchimp has a sliding scale, depending on your number of subscribers.
Blogging Course
If you’re completely new to blogging and want to be able to build it into a profitable business, then I highly recommend that you invest in a blogging course. You will save yourself so much time and stress! The last thing you want to do is spend hours and hours on creating content to find out that you created the wrong content and struggle to generate an income.
There’s nothing more disheartening!
The best blogging courses I’ve found are the Create and Go courses (as a course addict that says a lot!). The best course when starting out is their Launch Your Blog Biz course. It will get you started and set you on the right path to start earning an income!
Other resources that will help you on your blogging journey
There are so many tools that will help you build a profitable business! It can be overwhelming, to be honest!
Here are a few extra tools that will help you on your journey!
Canva
Canva is a graphic design platform and has both a free and paid option. The free plan gives you more than enough to get started! There’s no need for the paid option unless you want to access the pro images and photos, load your own font or want to create templates to share with others.
This is where you can create a basic logo and graphics for your blog, social media or Pinterest. There are plenty of templates so even if you have no graphic designer knowledge, you can get started!
Tailwind
Tailwind is a scheduling program for Pinterest and Instagram. You will find that Pinterest will become a source of your traffic and creating pins and posting them is essential. You can post them manually (straight into Pinterest) but you will save time with Tailwind.
Having said that, when starting out you won’t have much content so it is quite easy to manually pin in the beginning. Once you have about 50 posts, then consider Tailwind.
So, how much does it REALLY cost to start a blog?
As we mentioned, the absolute essentials will cost you around $100 for your first year. Not bad right?
If you have a bit more to spend, then invest in a blogging course, this course is our top pick.
It really doesn’t have to cost you much to get started!
Your biggest expense will actually be your time. You will be spending plenty of time learning about blogging and then creating your content.
Good luck on your blogging journey!
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