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How Much Does It Cost To Start A Blog In 2018?

January 30, 2018 By whm

How Much Does It Cost To Start A Blog In 2018?

I have been blogging up and on for the last fifteen years and I have been going really steady with it for the past couple of years to the point that I have actually turned it into a source of income for myself.

I am actually making a pretty significant amount of my income from my blogs and I know that there are lots of people out there who are interested in starting blogs but they might be a little bit unsure about exactly how the process works especially in regards to how much starting a blog costs in 2018.

So because I have done this multiple times and I had multiple different blogs in the past, I just wanted to make this article for you and share with you exactly how much it costs to start a website.

I will be giving you kind of a range, both the low end, how you can start really for very cheaply but also how you can spend a little bit more and maybe the better results that you could get from that so that you can see both ends of the spectrum and decide exactly where you want to invest your money as you are starting your site.

So let’s hop into it and see exactly how much it costs.

You can make really any kind of website that you want for a very similar cost, the higher cost would come in if you were having someone design a fancier looking website for you or a website with fancier features.

All of these startup costs would be the same aside from that design cost.

1) Domain Cost ($10 – $15/year)

The first thing that you need if you are going to start a blog is you need a domain name and that is just your website address so in my case it is webhostman dot com but it could be yoursite dot com or google dot com, whatever it is that it would be your site.

You can get a domain from a lot of different places but a popular one is called NameCheap or NameSilo.

I will be putting links down below to where you can find each of these different websites for the things you need to start your blog.

Do not worry about that part.

Go to NameCheap and you will be able to just type in whatever domain name you want.

If you want wilddoglover then you can search for the domains and it will show you exactly what kind of domains are available.

So if you want to a bigcarlover as your site, you can have it for $10.99.

Most domains will be $10.99 for the first year with them and then after that they will be $12.99 and that is for the dot com domains.

Other extensions might be a lot cheaper but it is recommended to buy dot com domains.

Sometimes you will see that they are a lot more expensive and that is just if someone does own the domain but is not using it.

They might have put a price on it which might be hundreds or thousands of dollars but if you manage to find one that is not taken, then you will be able to get it for $11.99 or even cheaper if you want to use one of these less popular extensions like dot org.

Although, I would recommend to get the dot com unless you already have a business name that you really want to use and you can have it at dot co or something like that.

2) Hosting Cost ($3 – $20/month)

Once you have your domain name then the next thing that you need is hosting.

Hosting is just the service that hosts all the files for your website so instead of having them all stored on your computer and having people accessing those files on your computer every single time they visit your website, you have someone externally hosting them so that your computer is not being bogged down by all the traffic.

There are lots of different options for hosting as well.

I personally recommend 247-Host for a number of reasons.

I find that it is a lot faster, more secure and the customer service is really great.

So once you are on the 247-Host’s website, you can scroll down and you can click on web hosting.

The prices start from $3.95 a month and you can see three different plans.

If you are just starting your blog out and it is just a simple blog, you can definitely get away with a $3.95 a month offer.

You can have that price for up to three years I believe, it depends however how long your first term is.

So if you sign up for just a one year, then you only get that price for one year and then after that I think you will pay about twelve dollars a month.

If you sign up for three years, then you will have this low price for three years and then after that you will pay a little bit more.

The higher tiers work similarly.

I think that the highest one, you pay this price for the first term and then after that it is $25 per month.

That is the one I am on, because I do have multiple websites with more complex features.

So pick whichever one works best for you.

If you are just starting out then just start with the start up one.

3) WordPress – Free

Once you have your hosting then you will need some sort of service that is doing your file management for your site.

Your files are being stored with your hosting but then you will need a software that will organize the files so that you are not coding everything completely from scratch and just having a pile of files that are stored on your host.

There is a number of different services that you can use to do this, like Wix, Weebly or Shopify or anything like that.

A lot of those do have built in hosting with them but the most common one is WordPress.

WordPress is actually completely free so you can use it with a separate host that you are paying for, instead of paying Shopify, for example, $25 a month and having them do the hosting and the file management, instead of paying a host a $12 a month and you are separately installing WordPress and having it be completely free.

So this is a lower cost option but it is also the most popular option in the world.

There is a good reason for it.

It is pretty easy to use and is very flexible and that is my favorite part about it.

You can really make any kind of site that you want and even a lot of big sites like eBay for example, use it and almost every blog, probably like 80 to 90% of all blogs do use WordPress.

Once you sign up for hosting with whichever host you choose, most of them have what is called a one click WordPress install.

Well, it is not really a one click, but you click a few buttons and then WordPress is in fact installed so that you do not have to manually install it.

It is quite simple.

4) Theme Cost ($0 – $50)

The next thing that you need is a theme.

There are lots of free themes that you can choose from on the WordPress platform.

Some of them are really good but some of them are not so good.

The simplest ones are the default ones called Twenty Seventeen or Twenty Sixteen but I do not use them on any of my sites.

These are very basic themes but they can still be customized in a fair amount.

If you need just a simple site, they can get the job done.

There are also much fancier themes, although a lot of the free fancier themes in my experience do not work very well unless you upgrade to the premium version.

WordPress offers thousands of free themes to choose from so I am sure that you can find one that will suit your purposes.

However, if you are willing to spend a little bit more money, I would recommend buying a premium theme which just means a theme that you have to pay for.

There is a wide range of premium themes, ranging from anywhere about $25 all the way up to several hundred dollars.

The reason I would recommend using them, is because for literally years I tried to build websites on my own using free themes but I thought something like there are so many of them, so why no use them.

It was such a struggle because I was not a brilliant web designer, I was just a person who did not have a lot of experience but it was so difficult.

It was not until just a couple years ago that I tried using a premium theme and I discovered that they do not just look prettier, but they actually have options in the backend of them that make it much easier to get them looking exactly how you want them to look.

They are just much easier to design if you are not actually a coder yourself.

If you are designing your website yourself, I would definitely recommend to use premium themes.

If you are going the route of hiring a designer that does cost a few hundred or even up to a few thousand dollars.

In that case, you do not need a premium theme, because that is why you are paying the designer so that they can design your website from scratch.

One of my favourite kinds of premium themes or brands of premium themes is MyThemeShop.

They have a number of different ones and I know that they are currently redesigning their themes entirely and coming out with some great new ones.

This is what I use on most of my sites.

Obviously, you can customize them to have them look however you want.

If you want another option, I would suggest you a website called ElegantThemes.

They have a theme called Divi which is very user friendly with a drag and drop builder so you can build a very unique web design.

They are charging per year or for a lifetime and if you are planning to do this for a long time then the lifetime offer would end up being cheaper because you would pay less in a year than you would pay in a year with the basic plan.

Their most popular theme is Divi but I am sure that they are working on coming out with additional themes.

Their plugins are actually really great and they have some different plugins for opt-ins so like pop-ups that you can create and other different things.

Either of these options is great and they are both pretty affordable if you consider them over the long term.

5) Email Marketing Cost ($0 – $30)

Finally, you will probably need some kind of email marketing.

It is not required. You can start a blog with just your posts but if you want to be able to communicate with your readers at all then you will need some form of email marketing.

My choice is ConvertKit and their plans start at $30 per month up to 2000 subscribers.

When you are just starting out you will need only be paying $30 a month.

The reason I like them is because they have these automated sequences where you can put a whole bunch of emails together and have them go out in an automated fashion.

So for example, I use one for my free eCourse about how to grow your email list and on the left side, I have a series of emails that go out each day and then every two days that walk people through this course that I have.

If you are interested in doing any kind of email marketing then they have an amazing software for this.

They also allow you to tag your subscribers and kind of segment them into different categories so that I can send emails to just one part of my list.

If you are looking for a free version, you can use MailChimp.

The downsides of MailChimp compared to ConvertKit is that they do have a slightly lower open rate for the emails just because they are more widely used.

There are a lot more people using them for slightly more spammy things and that means that they are kind of flagged as someone who has more spam emails coming from them.

You might not get as many emails to your subscriber’s inboxes.

The other differences are if you go over, it is like 2,500 subscribers then you do have to start paying.

The last thing is that they do not allow you to do any automated sequences on the free plan.

So if you want to be doing email marketing where you have any sort of evergreen campaign or a welcome sequence where you are introducing new subscribers when they join, then you will not be able to do that with MailChimp unless you do indeed start paying.

That is pretty much a rundown of all the different things.

I know that it was kind of a lot of things but at the same time some of them are free and most of them are not very expensive.

So let’s go over this one more time.

1) You will have to own a domain name that will be around $10 a year.

2) Then you will have to have a hosting account which will be around $4 a month when you are just starting out.

3) You will use WordPress, which is free.

4) You will possibly have a premium theme. You can kind of spend as much as you want to, but you can get some good themes for less than $50.

5) You can have your MailChimp Or ConvertKit which is either $0 or $30 per month.

You are looking at a one time start up fee of about $10 for the domain and then after that a monthly cost of either $4 for just hosting and MailChimp or $34 for the hosting plus the paid email marketing platform.

I hope that you found this article helpful and I hope that you learned exactly what you need to know to start your blog and you understand now exactly how much it costs so that you can decide if starting a blog is the right choice for you right now.

If you have any questions, be sure to just leave them in the comments down below.

I will be sure to give you an answer as soon as possible so do not hesitate to leave me a comment down there.

Also, if you are interested in learning more about blogging, hosting or about online marketing in the future, then be sure to revisit this website again.

I put up a new article every single week and I would love to have you join me for the next one.

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