Learn about how much does a blog cost. With known blog costs, you can create a good blog budget plan. So, keep reading to see the listed blog cost tables below. As well as this, see our other related planning articles in our Blog Planning category. Also, it’s an important section in our overview article “How Do You Start A Blog?”.
Overview of How Much Does A Blog Cost
This article will empower you to create a budget plan in response to learning about how much does a blog cost. It will cover how to build your own chart, table, or list of expenses of your blog. With this expenses plan, you can see the comparisons between your initial blog startup costs versus the recurring operating costs. So, let’s see more about how much does it cost to start a blog.
How Much Money Does It Cost To Start A Blog?
Deciding on a budget is important to ensure efforts towards a financial discipline are underway. Let’s review the initial year, followed by the 2nd and subsequent years.
How much does a blog cost the 1st year?
The good news is that your budget will change a lot during the first year because of a learning curve. It’s very difficult to define a budget in the beginning because you won’t be familiar with some requirements. Make discoveries along the way in the first year. As a minimum, plan on a 50% to 75% higher budget than originally set. This is only true for the first year.
1st YEAR TIP: Plan on a 50% to 75% higher startup budget due to learning curve and unseen additional costs.
Also, plan on extra spending during the first year due to accumulating some lifetime apps, plugins, pro themes, tools, and services. And, the other high expenditures for the initial year is to update your home office or work area. That will include office furniture and equipment, if needed.
How much does a blog cost the 2nd and following years?
For every year, newer service and app options become available periodically. They might help you save steps. Or, they might help you get through some technical roadblocks beyond your skill level. And those will occur every year.
Just build a basic budget with what you know initially. You’ll discover more when going through this article for items listed. And, everyone’s budget will differ because of so many people have lots of differences regarding ideas, knowledge, and skill sets.
In creating your budget, you’ll learn more details of each budgeted record. Eventually, you’ll be making more discoveries and the routine changing of your drafted budget. This is quite normal in the first year, even if you’re technically savvy.
Example Blog Budget Plan Startup Costs
Below is an example of blog budget plan startup costs. So, it gives a rough estimate of various technical skill levels of the individual as it related to expected costs spent. It’s a common business practice to offer more funding to those who can do more in the same time.
As people gain more technical skill sets, they use more services and items. This is because of a much shorter learning curve. However, also it’s noted that different people have different needs. For example, an individual who is a beginner might be fully ready to fill an empty room with office furniture, anyway. So, that’s where the general nature of a table’s record item should be ignored.
There are also business registration or licensing costs not mentioned here. They vary across states, counties, and cities. And don’t forget the potentially required BOIR filing; however, it’s free if you file your own for your company, including LLCs.
So, with all that said, this table is a guideline for those who are unsure. Therefore, it’s better than having nothing at all to start with.
| 1st Year Service or Item (Includes Notes) | Beginner $ | Intermediate $$ | Expert $$$ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Office/Work Area: Desk, Chair, Floor Mat, Credenza | $750 | $1,800 | $2,500 |
| Home Work Area: Extra monitor | $200 | $350 | $350 |
| Home Work Area: Extra Hard Drive Storage (for Backups) | $0 | $89 | $89 |
| Website Hosting: HostArmada – Cloud VPS – 2 CPU, 4Gb RAM, mail, security, DNS, cPanel, root access, multi-domains on same plan, LiteSpeed Site Owner (Enterprise) license | $857 | $857 | $857 |
| Website domain name registration: Registrar is HostArmada | $13 | $13 | $13 |
| AppSumo: Software discount license for site related lifetime or alternative apps | $99 | $99 | $99 |
| If Food Recipe Blog niche: WP Recipe Maker Elite Bundle (all features) | $189 | $189 | $189 |
| All In One SEO (PRO Plan): SEO plugin is required minimally. Often discounted 1st yr. | $200 | $200 | $200 |
| FlyingPress (primary caching alternate if LiteSpeed Server isn’t available) | |||
| Quic.Cloud on-the-fly initial credited services + global CDN (estimated) | $80 | $80 | $80 |
| Miscellaneous lifetime plugins, services, and desktop apps (over estimated) | $500 | $1,000 | $1,500 |
| Total Costs Range for 1st Year (without and with Office Furniture updates) | $2,138-$2,888 | $2,877-$4,677 | $3,377-$5,877 |
How Much To Build A WordPress Website?
Now, let’s review costs of how much to build a WordPress website for our blog. The hosting expenses are all shown. They included WordPress in the hosting so there is no added cost for WordPress. So, the only added costs involved would be plugins for WordPress as you discover them to be needed. And, we have several articles to cover some highly recommended ones.
Kinsta.com has prepared an excellent article illustrating “WordPress Website Cost – The Real Truth Behind Building a Site“. Reading it will confirm much of the material and expenses laid out in this article.
How Much Does It Cost To Run A Blog?
Different from startup costs, how much does it cost to run a blog? This will cover subscriptions and recurring fees. These are often either monthly or yearly. Here is an example blog budget plan for annual expenses.
| Service or Item (Includes Notes) | Year 2 Costs | Year 3 Costs | Year 4 Costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website Hosting: HostArmada – Cloud VPS – 2 CPU, 4Gb RAM, mail, security, DNS, cPanel, root access, multi-domains on same plan, LiteSpeed Site Owner (Enterprise) license | $857 | $857 | $857 |
| Website domain name renewal: Registrar is HostArmada | $13 | $13 | $13 |
| AppSumo: Software discount license for site related lifetime or alternative apps | $99 | $99 | $99 |
| If Food Recipe Blog niche: WP Recipe Maker Elite Bundle (all features) | $189 | $189 | $189 |
| All In One SEO (PRO Plan): SEO plugin is required minimally. | $500 | $500 | $500 |
| Quic.Cloud on-the-fly adding credited services + global CDN (estimated low) | $30 | $30 | $30 |
| Miscellaneous lifetime plugins, services, and desktop apps (estimated low) for improvements | $100-$300 | $150 | $150 |
| Consideration of Office area furniture and technical equipment not done in 1st year | $250-$1,500 | 0 | 0 |
| Total Costs Range per Year (after 1st year) | $2,038-$3,488 | $1,838 | $1,838 |
| Total Costs Range per Month | $170-$291 | $153 | $153 |
How Much Does A Blog Cost Per Month?
While we will do annually some things, the budget plan should answer how much does a blog cost per month. And you can accomplish this easily on your spreadsheet budget plan. Just below your annual total amount, add a cell formula that divides your total annual cost columns by 12. You’ll then have the total costs per year and per month. And this is shown above in the budget plan table. In my home budget, I set aside that monthly amount so that when the various annual amounts are due; the monies are easily available.
On a final note, you don’t need a monthly cost for the first year, as those are higher startup costs. It’s the recurring costs on the 2nd and subsequent years where the average monthly expenses rate is beneficial to have for routine planning.
How To Cut Blog Costs
There are many ways on how to cut blog costs. Here are some of those cost cutting ideas for blogs.
CONSOLIDATE To SAVE MONEY: Over time, sometimes you can find an item, app, plugin, or service that does does similar to a combination of your other things.
- Some monthly plans or subscriptions are cheaper overall if you pay a year or more in advance. However, only do this with things you intend to stay with.
- Sometimes, you can pay a higher fee to get a “Lifetime” deal. Some plugins and services offer these. However, again it’s only good for items or services you’re going to stick with for a long time. TIP: Some vendors don’t advertise their lifetime deals. Send them an email and ask. I get an positive response of a lifetime pricing about 1/3 of the time.
- Subscribe to AppSumo.com. It’s an annual fee for 10% off of most items. And, there are a ton of lifetime deals that you can’t get on the vendor’s site. It’s worth it at least for your first year of blogging.
- As you learn more your first year or two, you’ll discover that technology services change periodically. Some will improve and add new functionality. Sometimes, you can get a new item or service that does similar things that 2 of your current budget items do. So, you can consider the costing of the 1 vs the 2. I’ve saved a lot by always checking new services and items to stay current and cost-effective.
- Sometimes, your current items or services will gradually become so enhanced that you can just drop one of your expenses.
Some Related Planning Posts
Here are some other related blog planning articles.
Conclusion of How Much Does A Blog Cost
So, you now have a lot of details that answers how much does a blog cost. Follow my illustrated examples of a simple expense budget and use a basic spreadsheet. I have given you some costs of some popular items and services for blogging.
Also, now you’ve seen some difference between startup costs compared to recurring expenses. So, what are you waiting for? Make your budget plan now. And, be sure you comment to let me know how it worked for you and what changes you made. Also, for an advanced budget, read our “Your SEO Business Model – How To Consider A Data Analysis” article. It’s about how to consider a data analysis expense for further growth.