You’re interested in starting a blog, but there’s one question you need to know the answer to. What are the costs of running a blog in 2021?
Initially, you may seem bamboozled by this question – aren’t blogs free to run? Well…no, not really. You will see content management systems advertised for free, and you can spot some free hosting options as well. However, there are normally caveats that mean the things you think are free will end up costing money.
So, how much will everything cost to set up and run? It depends on how seriously you’re taking the whole blogging thing. If you’re doing it as a hobby, you can afford to spend less than if you’re doing it as a side-hustle or full-time job. Regardless, here are the main costs you have to deal with:
Hosting
Web hosting is basically what takes your blog and puts it on the internet. It will be hosted on a server, which is connected to the online world and lets everyone see and visit your site. All blogs need a host, and this is a cost you really can’t avoid.
Initially, you can find a few free hosts that don’t charge a penny to host your site. However, they are typically only free for a certain period, and you also have the barebones features. Instead, you will need to find yourself a decent host for your blog, and the costs can vary from provider to provider. As shown on the 2MHost website, you can pay anywhere between just under $3 and $15 a month for a host. With all hosting platforms, the more money you spend, the more benefits you unlock. This can include more disk space on the server, the ability to host more than one website on the server, and extra bonuses like free domain registration.
Blog theme & design
How will your blog look? Effectively, you need to design a website that’s fit for blogging. Again, the cost of this can vary dramatically depending on which approach you take. If blogging is a hobby, there’s no need to spend a penny on this. You can find sites like WordPress or Wix that have loads of free templates for you to use and customize. They’re not the most unique around, and you are forced to choose from a rather small selection. Still, for absolutely no costs, it could be worth doing.
The more serious you are, the more money you may want to invest in your blog design. Again, on the sites and platforms mentioned above, you can pay for premium templates and plugins. If you look online, you can find these for anywhere between $20 and $200, depending on what you need. Looking at the higher end of the scale still, some bloggers will pay for custom web design from a web designer. This is usually only necessary if you want to blog full-time and earn a living from it. Here, paying a few hundred dollars for custom web design can make your site unique, which might help reel in more viewers.
Marketing
If you want people to read your blog posts, you need to get the posts out there and draw people in. This means you have to dedicate some time and effort to marketing. The amount of time and effort depends on how seriously you’re taking things. If this is something you do in your spare time, you can market the blog for free. It’s really not difficult to set up a social media account – or use your own personal ones – and share your blog posts now and then. Use hashtags to capture the right audience, and include links directly to the post.
Similarly, you can create an email list for free, which lets you send people emails when new blogs have been posted. This is a brilliant way of drawing in a loyal audience of regular readers, and you can also do it completely for free. A lot of SEO marketing can be done without paying a penny as well – you just need the knowledge of what to do to improve your search ranking.
Nevertheless, if you want to take your marketing game to the next level, some form of investment is needed. You might want to pay for some online or social media advertising, you could pay for marketing tools, and so on. For those of you that want to do this as a full-time job, you might have to invest in a marketing agency to help you out. They can help you generate more traffic, meaning you can make more money from your site.
All in all, the cost of marketing can range from absolutely nothing to a few hundred dollars per month.
Analytics
Next, bloggers will need some form of analytics software to keep track of their progress. Once more, there are free options available! You can use Google Analytics for free, but it only really lets you look at your web traffic. Depending on which website building platform you used, other free options might be available.
However, if you want to get down into the nitty-gritty stats about your blog, you will have to pay for some additional software. This can set you back between $100 and over a thousand dollars per year. The more serious you are, the more insights you should want. Therefore, the more money you will have to spend on a good enough tool. Analytics are so important as they help you learn more about your blog and where you can improve.
When you keep all of this in mind, you can see that running a blog can vary in its costs. For hobbyists, you could probably run a blog for under $100 a year with absolute ease. The more seriously you wish to take things, the more that figure will increase. Also, it’s worth factoring in the costs of any hardware you’ll have to buy; make sure you have a good enough PC to handle your workload!
