How Much Does it Cost to Start a Blog (in 2024)?

Wondering how much it costs to start a blog? 

The short answer is, it depends.

This article covers the essential and optional blogging expenses, why they matter, and tips to manage your blogging budget.

Let’s go.

Why Do You Need To Know?

So, you want to be a serious blogger?

Is it possible to turn blogging into a full-time business?

When my blogging journey started 13 years ago, I asked the same questions. I tinkered around the backend of my school’s website, taught myself how it worked, and ultimately dedicated my life to pursuing blogging success. 

Early on, I found out that in order to make money blogging, you need to spend money first. 

More importantly, you must find ways to ensure you’re pulling more money than you spend. 

Web hosting, WordPress themes, content writing tools, and premium plugins—these things quickly add up in terms of costs. 

By calculating your blogging expenses, you can manage and optimize your budget accordingly. This will help you achieve a positive cash flow and transform your blog into a profitable business. 

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What are the essential expenses of starting a blog?

Here’s the kicker: You can get a website up and running with just around $10 in your bank account. 

We’re talking about the bare minimum services and tools that you need: domain registration and web hosting. These two things, along with a free Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress, allow you to get a blog up and running. 

Domain registration ($0.99 to $10+)

Registering your own domain is the first step to building a functional blog. 

A domain or “domain name” is the unique identifier for a website. 

Think of it simply as your website address.

Next to a domain name is the Top-Level Domain (TLD), such as “.com,” “.org,” and “.net.” 

The price of your domain depends on the domain service provider you choose. Your TLD of choice also greatly affects your domain’s price tag. 

For example, on Hostinger, domains can cost as little as $0.99—but only for TLDs like “.online” and “.shop.” But for popular “.com” and “.net” domains, the price can climb up to around $10. 

Web hosting ($1.99 to $280+ per month)

After registering your domain, the next step is to get it hosted.

The cost of a web hosting plan depends on the features and hardware resources you need. 

For a basic website, look for an economic “shared hosting” plan that lets you share server resources with other websites. 

On Hostinger, a shared hosting solution costs as little as $1.99 per month (48 months). For a smaller overhead, you could go for the monthly plan at $9.99 per month. 

I know what you’re thinking—Hostinger prices are crazy affordable. 

It’s about to get even crazier. 

If you sign up for a “Premium Web Hosting” plan, you get a domain for free. This bonus is capped at $9.99 (in domain value), so choose wisely. 

You can sweeten the deal even more with a special 10% discount here—only for Master Blogging readers!

Other factors that affect the price of your web hosting service: 

• Number of websites: The more websites you want to host, the more expensive your hosting plan will be. 
• Additional tools: Add-ons like website builders and professional email tools may require separate fees. 
• Security features: You also need to spend extra cash if you want additional security features like SSL certificates and daily backups. 
• Dedicated IP address: Some web hosting companies offer dedicated IP addresses for a fee—providing an incremental performance boost and better stability. 

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Free platforms for starting a blog

What’s more affordable than budget-friendly hosting and domain registration services?

Easy answer: free blogging platforms. 

A popular example would be WordPress.com (not to be confused with WordPress.org, which is a full-fledged CMS). 

WordPress.com has everything you need to start a simple blog. You can use free themes, publish unlimited posts, protect your website from brute-force attacks, and more—without spending a single cent. 

Pros of a free blogging platform

• Spend your money elsewhere: With the money you save from starting your blog, consider picking up other tools for content marketing. Some examples are writing assistants like Grammarly, social media schedulers, and graphic design tools. 
• Just focus on writing: Since everything you need to start a blog is already provided, you can jump straight into writing posts within minutes. This is a huge advantage, especially if you have zero experience in website development. 
• Beginner-friendly: All-in-one blogging platforms are fine-tuned for a seamless user experience. In addition to the user-friendly interface, most blogging platforms also offer truckloads of learning resources—from “how-to” guides to informative video tutorials. 

Cons of a free blogging platform

• You only get a subdomain: A subdomain is simply a small piece of an existing domain. Blogging platforms let you purchase and use your own domain name, but that will defeat the purpose of starting a “free blog.” 
• Less flexibility: Self-hosted websites are vastly more customizable than free blogs. A self-hosted website (dedicated hosting plan with a custom domain) offers full autonomy over your backend, including the server-side control panel and CMS.

Other components of a self-hosted website are also more accessible and configurable. For example, once you install a theme on a self-hosted site, you have unrestricted access to all its files through the control panel. 

Other WordPress.com alternatives

• Weebly
• Blogger.com
• Tumblr (microblogging)

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Maintaining your blog: Recurring expenses you should know about

The cost of maintaining your blog is normally just the same as your startup overhead. But there are two things you need to know first. 

Number one, domain registrations are billed annually. If you want to continue using your domain name, you have to pay the annual renewal fee. 

Number two, most web hosting platforms offer introductory prices to hook new customers. 

For example, if you subscribed to Hostinger’s Single Web Hosting plan for 48 months, your plan renews at $3.99 per month after your initial subscription. 

If you signed up for monthly billing, expect to pay around $10 per month for your hosting service. That’s $120 a year in addition to the price you pay for domain renewal. 

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Optional blogging expenses

Let’s face it, you’ll need a budget for additional tools to improve your blog’s design and functionality. 

If you want the full blogging experience, you should seriously consider investing in the following:

Professional email (around $3 per month)

The coolest thing about a professional email plan is, you get to use your domain name in your email address. 

For example, if your domain name is “AwesomeSauce.com,” your professional email address can be “spicy@awesomesauce.com.” 

Professional email plans start at around $3 per month, which is a good price since it enhances your blog’s credibility. 

Writing assistants (free or around $10 per month)

Although word processing apps like Google Docs and Microsoft Word have built-in spell checkers, they’re notoriously known for missing some errors. In my experience, they also tend to generate false warnings if you use a conversational writing style. 

Grammarly is perhaps the best alternative to these built-in tools. It is an AI-based writing assistant that can accurately detect errors, provide correction suggestions, and tailor its algorithm to your unique writing goals. 

Although Grammarly offers a free plan, the Premium version costs a minimum initial fee of $30 per month ($12 per month if you choose annual billing). If you need a cheaper alternative with a built-in AI rewriter, check out QuillBot instead. 

Premium themes ($100+ per year)

Premium themes for CMS like WordPress do more than just give your website a new look. Most premium themes are also designed specifically for plugins, which often come bundled. 

Kadence Themes, for example, include starter templates, a WooCommerce add-on, premium fonts, and a homegrown page builder. All this comes with the Essential Bundle, which starts at $129 per year. 

Other, simpler themes only require a one-time payment for unlimited use. One-time purchase themes typically cost up to $60 on marketplaces like ThemeForest. 

Premium plugins

Lastly, you may want to use premium plugins to incorporate unique and useful features into your blog—without writing a single line of code. Here are some examples: 

• Booking systems
• Opt-in forms
• Social sharing buttons/analytics
• Calculators
• Message boards
• Online shops

The price of premium plugins widely varies. Some can be purchased with a one-time payment, while others require a monthly or yearly subscription. 

To give you an idea, Social Snap is a premium social sharing plugin that starts at $39 per year. For that, you get features like share counters, advanced statistics, link shortening, and Twitter cards. 

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Costs of promoting a blog

Creating a nice-looking blog with high-quality content is just part of the story. 

If you want to grow your blog audience, you’ll need the right assets. 

You have two options here: 

Going DIY 

Doing everything yourself gives you complete control over your blog promotion budget. For example, you can adopt a zero-cost approach and leverage free content distribution channels. 

Here are some free blog promotion tactics you can try right now: 

• Share your posts on social media.
• Join social media groups and share links to your content.
• Participate in Q&A websites and offer your posts as solutions. 
• Join online communities like Reddit and talk about your topics. 
• Submit guest posts to relevant websites. 
• Re-publish your posts on content syndication websites like Medium. 

Alternatively, you can allocate a budget to accelerate your blog promotion efforts. 

Semrush is a great, one-stop solution for digital marketing. It can help you with everything, including content research, social media scheduling, link building, and competitor analysis. 

Semrush is a paid, subscription-based tool that starts at $119.95 per month. 

It’s definitely not cheap. But since it eliminates the need to purchase multiple tools, it can actually save you a lot of money down the line. 

Another blog promotion strategy you can explore is advertising. 

Again, the amount you’ll spend on ads depends on the level and type of exposure you want to achieve.

For example, on Meta Ads (formerly Facebook Ads), you may choose from different campaign objectives like sales, awareness, traffic, engagement, or leads. You can also set a daily recurring budget for ads—or, you can specify a set budget for the lifetime of your campaign. 

As for the actual expenses of an ad campaign, it can be anything from $5 per day to thousands of dollars—it’s entirely up to you.

Hiring an external team to manage your blog promotions

If you don’t have the time to manage your blog promotions yourself, consider outsourcing someone else to do it. 

A sensible choice is to hire a freelancer who can help plan, execute, and manage your marketing strategy. 

On websites like Fiverr, digital marketing freelancers charge anywhere between $50 to upwards of $2,000. 

Another option is to hire a full-service digital marketing agency. 

These are companies with teams who can address several areas of your blog marketing at once—letting you achieve marketing objectives faster. 

The drawback is, hiring marketing agencies may cost thousands of dollars. As such, working with agencies doesn’t make sense for new bloggers on a small budget. 

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Tips to reduce your blogging costs

To sum it up, starting a blog doesn’t have to be expensive. 

$10 per month can go a long way. But if you want fast, measurable results, you need a decent monthly budget for tools and services. 

Before you know it, you could be spending thousands of dollars per month to grow your blog. 

Relax—there are several things you can do to keep your blogging costs down. 

Check them out:

• Take advantage of free trials and free versions: A large number of essential blogging tools, including premium marketing platforms like Semrush, come with free versions. Use them to grow your small blog and simply upgrade to a paid version once you start making money. 
• Look for discounts: If you can buy it online, there’s a good chance someone has a coupon code you can use. Click here to check out my list of special offers for a variety of blogging tools.
• Focus on the essentials first: You don’t need to go all-in on your marketing during your first month. Build your blog from the feet up—start with the essentials, focus on creating quality content, and scale your business from there. 
• Consider annual plans: Subscribing to annual plans may require higher upfront costs, but it can lead to huge savings in the long run. If you have the capital, consider using annual billing when purchasing blogging tools. 

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Offsetting blog expenses: 5 monetization strategies you should try right away

Want to know the best way to manage your blogging expenses?

Make money and let your blog pay for itself. 

Here’s a tip: check out my ultimate list of 89 blog monetization strategies. But if you only want the best blog income streams, refer to the list below. 

1. Affiliate marketing: Promote another company’s products in exchange for a commission whenever you make a sale. 
2. Sell your own information products: Develop online courses, eBooks, and premium content your readers will be happy to pay for.
3. Offer professional services: Promote your professional skills for a price. 
4. Become a consultant for hire: Offer your deep knowledge, expertise, and experience to help clients on a strategic level. 
5. Leverage your authority to grow on other channels: Once you gain some visibility and authority on your blog, promote other channels with straightforward monetization programs like YouTube, Twitch, or Patreon. 

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Does your niche affect your blogging expenses?

Yes, your niche can affect your blogging expenses—but not always. 

It depends on the costs of resources you need for content creation, as well as the features your website needs. In certain niches, you’re looking at a variation of anywhere between $50 and over $2,500 per month. 

Travel bloggers, for instance, may spend more money than most bloggers to produce content. A survey revealed that travel bloggers spend around $2,415 per trip.

The same can be said for bloggers—but to a lesser degree—in the following niches: 

• Food 
• Tech reviews
• Photography
• Construction/DIY home renovation
• Cars

It’s true that you can still create blogs around these niches without investing a lot of money in content creation. However, you’ll be at a serious disadvantage against other bloggers who commit their time and money to producing original, meaningful content. 

Certain blog niches may also depend on the additional software you need. 

Food bloggers, for instance, may buy recipe plugins when writing about cooking. That alone adds an extra $50 to $150 to a blogger’s expenses column. 

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Final words

There you have it—the expenses you should expect when starting a blog. 

If you want to keep your blogging costs down, focus on essentials like domain registration, web hosting, and a reliable content marketing tool. Once your blog gains traction, consider scaling up with additional solutions like writing assistants, premium themes, professional email services, and manpower for your marketing.

Feeling overwhelmed? 

Don’t worry—we’ve all been there.

Just take baby steps and be mindful of your spending. Explore investments one at a time and your blogging dream might be closer than you think!