Blog Expenses – The TRUE NUMBERS for running a successful blog!

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Interested to start a blog? Want to know how much it costs to start a successful blog? In this posts, I will share with you all the blog expenses that will show you how much it really costs to have a successful blog! Click here to read more!If you would like to know the REAL numbers of running a blog every month, and if you would like to know about cheaper or free alternatives, this post is jam-packed with everything you need to know about!

BTW, If you are just looking around and didn’t start a blog yet, this will give you the real picture of blog expenses.

When we are just starting our blogging journey, one of the most important things we want to do is save as much money as possible! Right?! (I know that because I was like that as well! 😉 )

Interested to start a blog? Want to know how much it costs to start a successful blog? In this posts, I will share with you all the blog expenses that will show you how much it really costs to have a successful blog! Click here to read more!

In this post, you will find paid services and tools (which I personally use and highly recommend them. Because they will save you a lot of time and hard work!) And you will also find cheaper alternatives (some are even FREE) so that you can start a blog with minimal expenses on it!

The REAL NUMBERS of blog expenses for a successful blog:

 

Domain $10.69 (per year)

If you decided to start a blog, and you want to have a unique domain, i.e., the “www.YOURDOMAIN.com” – I recommend using NameCheap for checking if your domain is available. NameCheap is great!

I use them since 2009. The domain is your “personal residence address.” You will need to have a “house” for it! 😉

Hosting Account – SiteGround $35-$240 (year)

After you purchased your unique domain, you will need to connect it to a hosting account – that’s the “home” of your blog.
I use SiteGround for my hosting services.

Why? Because they have AMAZING customer Service! I used to host my sites on HostGator, But their customer service wasn’t great at all!

Themes – $49 – $89

There are endless themes you can find online! And because of that, it took me a week or two to find something that I like! I mean, I got so overwhelmed that I just didn’t know what to go with!

To be honest with you, you probably will change your theme a few times! Why? Because as you grow your blog, you will want to change your design a few times (Yep, this really happened to me too!)

A great theme builder you can use, that will allow you to really create a theme that you love, is Elementor!

But if you don’t want to design your own theme, I recommend these lovely feminine themes:

Restored316 

Bluchic.com

StodioMommy.com

ConvertKit Email service provider (Starts at $29/Month)

This is what I personally use, and I think that they are GREAT! Why? Because ConvertKit was specially created with bloggers in mind! As you can see, MOST of the successful bloggers (I am talking about the ones that earn 6 figures a month) use ConvetKit. Their forms look nice and clean! Highly recommend them! 😉 BTW their customer service is excellent as well!

Tailwind – ($15/month or $119/year)

WOW! Now Tailwind is absolutely A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! If you want to save yourself a whole lot of time, I highly recommend you try and use Tailwind for your pinning strategy! The options are endless! I must admit that I started using them only recently (oops!)! And I can’t recommend this fantastic tool enough! Click here to try Tailwind for free

*If you choose to make a monthly payment with Tailwind, you should know that you are allowed to pin ONLY 400 pins per month!

In my upcoming post, I will share create an easy guide on how to use Tailwind. Stay tuned! 😉

PicMonkey  ($7.99/Mo or $47.88/year)

I LOVE LOVE LOVE, PicMonkey! This tool allows me to create STUNNING pinnable pins! It’s so easy to use! They offer a variety of templates you can choose from to make your life a whole lot easier! 😉 But, I personally design mine! 😉 I highly recommend using this tool!

Stock Photos

–  Bosslatina.com ($12/mo) / Color U Bold ($20/month or $95/year)

For my pins, I use professional Stock Photos. Why?! Because it makes your images pop out more! And when you create pins for your blog, your main goal should be to create “Pinteresting” pins! What I mean by that is that you want to make your pins interesting enough so that people will click on them!

When people see a pin that has a “non-professional” photo, most likely it won’t get “Saved,” and you will barely get any traffic from it.

Therefore I highly recommend using professional Styled stock photos. The ones that I personally use are “BossLatina” and Color U Bold. Which offer reasonable prices for their members! And their photos are STUNNING! 😉

The total amount paid annually: $273.57

Includes domain name ($10.69), hosting account ($47), Elementor pro ($49), Tailwind ($119), and PicMonkey ($47.88).

* you have the option to pay Tailwind and Picmonkey with a monthly payment. If you do so, your annual price will be $106.69

But, let’s not forget to calculate the monthly expenses as well! 😉

Monthly payments amount: $63.99 (*12)

includes ConvertKit ($29) *Tailwind ($15), *PicMonkey ($7.99), BossLatina ($12)

  • you have the option to pay it annually and not monthly! If you pay it annually, the monthly expenses go down to be $46 (*12)

So, it all adds up to:

$273.57 + 46*12 = $825.57 per year! (Which includes the Year + Monthly expenses in total!)

Or

$106.69 + 63.99*12 = $874.57 per year!

 

WOW!!!

Now, this is AMAZING!

You can have a successful business that costs you less than $1,000 per year!!! Now, which other successful business can you have for years, and it will only cost you less than $1,000 per year?!

This just amazes me! 😉 Doesn’t it?

FREE Alternatives

 

Free Blog Platforms

WordPress.comWixBlogger

With these FREE platforms, you have limitations! For example, you can’t place any ads on them! The ads that come with them are default ads, and the earnings belong to those platforms.

So, if you plan to monetize your blog with ads in the future, it’s recommended to use a self-hosting account.

Also, when you use these free platforms, you don’t own the content! The content belongs to those companies! Yep! Yikes!

And…you don’t have a personal domain! Your domain will contain “www.yourdesiredname.WORDPRESS.com” or “www.yourdesiredname.BLOGGER.com”. If you do want to attach your own domain name, you can, but you still will need to pay for a domain!

If you are using one of these free platforms and want to transfer to a self-hosted account, you can! I recommend moving to SiteGround! 😉

Free themes

When you use a free platform, or if you do use wordpress.org, you have a variety of free themes you can choose from. The downside of these themes is that you can’t really customize them to be the way that you want it to be. (Some come with customizable options, but they are limited!)

But, if you are just starting a blog, you can definitely do fine using a free theme!

Why?

Because you are just starting your blogging journey and if you aren’t sure if blogging is for you, you are good to go with a free theme! And only after you see that you are consistent with your blog, and you are growing, you can change your theme to a pro theme.

FREE Email Service Providers

MailerLite / MailChimp

At the beginning of my blogging journey, I used MailerLite. Why? Because I didn’t want to invest money in my blog if I had no income from it. So it’s totally fine to start with a FREE email service provider! MailerLite is GREAT! I loved how easy it was to create web forms with it and also send emails! Great Tool!

MailerLite allows you to have a free account with up to 1000 subscribers. After that, you will need to pay. But the prices are lower than ConvertKit.

Free tools and techniques

Manual Pinning

If you don’t want to invest in the automation pinning tools recommended above, I highly recommend you start manually pinning your own pins.

If you would like to learn a great strategy for manual pinning, I recommend Carly’s “Pinteresting Strategies” ebook, where she teaches you EVERYTHING you need to know to start a fantastic pinning strategy that will grow your blog traffic!

Canva.com

This tool is GREAT! I personally use them! Yep, I use the free option.

With Canva you can create amazing BEAUTIFUL PDFs for your readers!

This is great for freebies!

Yes, you can also create Pins using Canva! 😉

Canva offers many templates, icons, elements, etc. you can choose from! It’s GREAT! 🙂

Pixabay

If you don’t want to purchase professional stock photos, you have a vast variety of free images on the Pixabay website.

It is highly recommended that when you find a free image you want to download, then you should (probably “must” is the right word here) take a screenshot of the download image page.

Why? Because there are stories that bloggers downloaded free images from free websites (like Pixabay) and after a few months/years the got a lawsuit because they used a picture that wasn’t for free (well that’s what the photographer claimed!).

So, please, do yourself a big favor, ALWAYS take a screenshot downloading the free image from the free images websites! (this will help you with proof if you need it!)

PHEW….

This turned out to be one of the LONGEST post on my blog! Haha.

I hope that after you read this post, you know the REAL NUMBERS of the blog expenses.

You should know that if you decide to go with the “free option,” it still will “cost” you money in the long run!

What I mean is, you will have to spend a lot of your time on the things that you can actually automate with a paid tool (for example Tailwind).

TIME EQUALS MONEY! Yep, even though you think you are “saving money,” in the long wrong, you might be losing money.

Why, because instead of working on tasks that will help you grow faster (like creating your own course for example). You are putting a lot of time and hard work into manual pinning (which is VERY time consuming! Been there…done that!) and in the long run, this will cause you to “lose” money.

BUT!!!

If you can’t afford anything at the moment, PLEASE don’t feel bad about it!!! You can ALWAYS add the tools and services as you grow!

Really, don’t feel bad if you can’t afford to invest in your blog at the moment. I know the real struggle when it comes to not having money to spend on your blog!

But, when you do have the money to invest in your blog, I highly recommend you add the tools and services I suggested above! 😉

Please let me know in the comment’s below what you are using, and if there is any other awesome tool that I didn’t mention, please let me know so I can add it to the list! 😉

Hope you enjoyed this and found it to be helpful!

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32 thoughts on “Blog Expenses – The TRUE NUMBERS for running a successful blog!”

  1. I’ve seen on some FB groups sometimes you can find free premium themes, just you need to be patient. 🙂 Have you ever tried hootsuite?

    1. You are right! 🙂 Thanks for the reminder!
      Sometimes we aren’t patient! hahaha…at least I know that I am not! 😉
      Nope, I never tried hootsuite. 🙂

    1. I know, for some it might be a LOT! But hey, this is a business right?! Which other business can you start that is lower than 1K per year!!! I don’t know about any other business like that! 😉

  2. You are so right – but I think having your own domain etc makes your site look more professional so it’s worth spending the money !

    Everyone should read this post before starting a blog!

  3. This was an awesome outline of what to expect on my blogging journey! I’m about six months in now. I hope that as I continue I can start thinking about becoming self hosted. I’m glad I have a preview of where my money will go!

    1. Awww…thank Courtney! 😉 Awesome! Your blog is 6 month?! Way to go girl! 😉

  4. Wow! That really adds up eventually! Although I’ve had my blog for about a year and some months, I still consider myself a fairly new blogger. I currently use Canva and Pixaby. I do have my own domain name and hosting though. I’m in the process of setting up my MailChimp, and I’ve heard of Tailwind, but I never really knew what is was. So now I have a general idea 🙂

  5. This is a great reference tool for someone wanting dos tarting a blog – I like that you shared both the free and the premium options. A lot of people start with the latter and upgrade as their blog takes shape.

  6. This expenses list is so accurate, nothing extra!
    I know I started off as the smart one thinking I won’t spend so much, it’ll only be $3/mo…but I’ve ended up having to buy almost all of these. And this is just the bare minumim. (Leaving education aside) Thank you for the real picture, Eva.

    1. Hahaha…I know! Me too! 🙂
      Yah, I left the education out because for each individual it’s different.

  7. Thank you for all the great information. I am one of the ones who doesn’t have money to spend right now. I’m one week in and going to do most of it manually until I can afford to get the other things to help.

  8. Hi Eva,

    You know, I never really thought about all the expenses adding up to that much. But, I use all the “things” you use, except for Convert Kit. I use Mailer Lite instead. So, my expenses are the same. Things can really add up. Thanks for sharing!

  9. I’m a new blogger and found this super helpful! I especially appreciate what you have to say about Convert Kit. I’ve been debating because of the cost but I think it would be a worthwhile investment. Thanks!

  10. This is such a thorough guide on all the tools that are needed for running a blog. Thanks for the great advice!
    XOXO
    Annie

  11. One free site I use for all my sites and love is weebly! You can also purchase your domain through them. I love all the information you provided!

  12. Love that we are talking about cost! It seems there are a lot of people who want to make money blogging but have no idea that you need to invest in yourself and your business and spend some money to make some money! I pay for my domain (Google Domains), SiteGround, ConvertKit, and BoardBooster, and I am only four months in! I wanted to start off on the right foot and treat my blog as a business from the start.

    Of course, there are tons of free resources that could help you cut costs as well! I do use a free theme, free stock photos, GIMP2 for photo editing, and the free version of Canva to create images for social media!

  13. Amazing post! Super informative about all the costs. I have my domain and hosting down. Currently using the free version of tailwind, will upgrade and need to get Lightroom as well. But you are right running a blog business for less than a 1000 a year is so great!!

  14. You nailed it! And the more your blog grows the more expensive it becomes to maintain it. This is the first blog post I have ever seen that lays it out as it really is – expensive! That why we bloggers need to learn to monetize very early in our blogging journey, otherwise it becomes a very expensive hobby.

    Well done, Eva!! Brilliant as usual. 😀

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