How Much Does It Cost To Start A Blog In 2023?

First things first!

Kudos to you for finally having decided to start a blog.

For those of you who haven’t finalized it yet, maybe the reason is – you are wondering “how much does it cost to start a blog?”

How Much Does It Cost To Start A Blog?

If you wish to start a blog and pay for it (which is recommended), you would need to pay around $35.88 for the first year in 2023 (for beginners).

Well, then again, it depends. It depends on your motive behind starting a blog. There are some people who just write because it’s their hobby. They just want to share their passion with the world. For them, a free blog will work perfectly fine.

But, most of the time, the motive behind starting a blog is to monetize it or earn money from it. Such people should be willing to pay a few bucks.

And I am guessing more than 75% of the people reading this would fall in the second category.

It doesn’t mean you cannot earn from a blog that is free of cost. It simply means that a free blog isn’t recommended for those wanting to monetize it. You will see the reason why.

So in this article, I am going to tell you whether you can start a blog for free or not. And also, if you plan on spending a little amount of money, then I’ll break down what that amount could possibly be.

Disclosure: Some links in this article are my affiliate links. If you buy any product through any of these links, I’ll get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Such a commission helps me to stay motivated and produce more such content. Thanks in advance if you buy anything from my affiliate links.

Can you start a blog for free?

The simple answer to it is yes. As mentioned above, for people who just want to write because it’s their hobby, a free blog is recommended, and starting one is a piece of cake.

There are various platforms that allow you to start a blog for free like Blogger and Google Sites.

These platforms are super easy to get started with. All you have to do is sign up for a free account on these sites and the rest of the process is self-explanatory.

I have a detailed blog post about starting a blog for free. Go check it out.

But, if you want to be serious about your blog, then I do not recommend a free one. There’s a downside to starting a blog for free:

No custom domain name

You do not get a custom domain name. Your domain name will look like yourname.blogspot.com in the case of Blogger and sites.google.com/view/yourname in the case of Google Sites. These domain names simply look bad and are a sign of inexperience which is never taken seriously.

Although these platforms provide you with an option to buy a custom domain, it would cost more than the ways I’ll be showing later in this article.

Bad appearance

These platforms do not provide enough design options which makes your website look not so good.

Limited capabilities

A free blog doesn’t provide you with enough control over your website. A WordPress-managed paid hosting will give you all the control that you need on your website. You can easily download new plugins, update your site’s appearance and capabilities, and allow your blog to grow with you. WordPress is a tool you use to build and design your website.

So, if you are serious about blogging and want to be taken seriously, then I highly recommend investing a little amount in your blogging journey. It will really pay off.

How much does it cost to start a blog (not for free)

Now if you have decided to set aside a small (really small) budget for your blog, then you need to know what all costs you will incur in doing so. Here are the basic costs involved in starting a blog and these costs will be sufficient for a couple of years in your blogging journey.

• Web hosting

• Domain name (you can get this for free)

• SSL certificate (this can be obtained for free too)

• Additional costs (not at all necessary to start and run a blog)

Let’s take a look at these costs one by one and see how much you need to spend. Trust me, it is NOT a big amount.

Web Hosting

I won’t get into the technicalities. Just know that in order for your blog to be visible to the world, you need a web hosting service. The host makes sure that everyone who clicks on a link or types in your URL sees your blog.

They also keep all of your website data safe and secure. Consider web hosting to be similar to your home. Someone can view what’s inside by coming over (ringing the bell or typing in your blog’s URL).

What’s free about Blogger and Google Sites is that they provide free web hosting but you need to pay for a custom domain (which isn’t cheaper).

I use Hostinger WordPress Hosting for hosting my blog. It is a wonderful web host and has never let me down once. The best part about Hostinger is its super-quick, super-friendly customer support staff. I’ve had horrible problems (due to some dumb mistakes I made) and the Hostinger team was able to save my butt every time.

How much will it cost you?

Hostinger has four WordPress Hosting plans. But, as a beginner, only two of them would be fit for you.

1. Single WordPress Plan (No free domain)

• Monthly option: $9.99 per month.

• 12 months option: $2.99 per month

• 24 months option: $2.49 per month

• 48 months option: $1.99 per month

2. WordPress Starter Plan (Recommended and most popular)

• Monthly option: $11.99 per month

• 12 months option: $2.99 per month (Free domain for one year)

• 24 months option: $2.99 per month (Free domain for one year)

• 48 months option: $2.99 per month (Free domain for one year)

Now, if you ask me which one should you choose, I would say the WordPress Starter Plan for 12 months. Because:

• The monthly plan isn’t feasible. It is costlier.

• The WordPress Starter plan for 12 months gives you a free domain (next topic) for one year.

• A period of 12 months should be your least goal. If you are serious, then you won’t leave blogging within a year.

• The WordPress Starter plan is better because you can have up to 100 websites but with the Single WordPress plan, you are allowed just one.

• With Single WordPress plan, you are allowed only one professional email, but with the WordPress Starter plan, you can have 100 different professional emails.

So how much will web hosting cost you?

Plan	Hosting (12 months)	Cost per year
Single WordPress Plan	$35.88	$35.88 (extra for domain)
WordPress Starter Plan	$35.88	$35.88 (domain FREE)

So assuming that you go for the WordPress Starter Plan, your one-year expense on hosting will be $35.88 (including domain).

Domain name

When you are looking to start your own blog free of cost, you need to decide on a name for your blog.

Just like you have a name by which you are recognized by people around you, your blog also needs a unique name. My blog’s domain name is infoverses.online.

Thankfully, as you saw above, if you choose Hostinger’s WordPress Starter plan and purchase the 12, 24, or 48 months plan, then you get a free domain name worth $9.99 for one year. So for getting your blog started, your domain name cost will be $0 if you opt for Hostinger (at least 12-month plan).

Unfortunately, you don’t get this option with the Single WordPress plan. I would recommend going with the WordPress Starter plan as your savings are more with this option. In fact, this is the plan I chose for my blog when I started.

SSL Certificate

Have you ever visited a website and seen this error?

This is because of a missing SSL certificate on a website. An SSL certificate protects your website and gains visitor trust. It encrypts your website data, making sure it won’t be compromised, and protects sensitive user information on your site.

For these reasons, it is a must. Your visitors will bounce off from your site as soon as they see the above message from the browser.

Earlier, SSL was not offered for free. But, today almost all web hosting providers provide a free SSL certificate with their certain plans. Hostinger provides a lifetime free SSL certificate with all of its plans. It doesn’t matter if you choose the monthly or yearly plan.

So, to secure your website with an SSL certificate, your total yearly cost (lifetime cost) would be $0 if you choose Hostinger.

Additional costs

These are the costs that aren’t a necessity in starting a blog. And while calculating the total yearly cost of running a blog (later), I won’t be including these costs. What’s more, most of these costs have a free way to get away with. Let’s see what these costs are:

1. Premium Themes

I suggest you keep things simple when you are just starting out. WordPress has a lot of free SEO-friendly themes. I too use a free WordPress theme called Affiliate Marketingly.

Spending on a premium theme didn’t sound like a wise idea to me. So I opted for a free theme.

But, many bloggers suggest having a paid theme from the very beginning, as later on if you decide to change your theme, then it will take a lot of work reconstructing your website.

In my opinion, when you are at a stage where you are ready for a paid theme, then you might have already started making money from your blog. That means you could afford to hire a professional who can do the website reconstruction job for you.

Still, if you are looking for premium themes, you can check out GeneratePress. WordPress also offers premium themes.

2. Email Marketing

I regret something really bad!

I regret not building an email list sooner for my blog. Blogging gurus highly recommend starting an email list from day one even if you don’t have many visitors to your blog.

Email marketing is arguably the best way to generate more traffic to your website and in turn increase conversions. Although email marketing is not a necessity to start a blog, I highly recommend building an email list from day one.

Related: How to capture email addresses from blog visitors?

I use GetResponse for my email marketing campaigns. The free account lets you have up to 500 subscribers on your list which is a lot more than enough for a beginner. Also, the free version provides you with automated email services and a landing page builder.

So if you choose GetResponse for your email marketing, your yearly cost will be $0 with the free plan. The paid plans start from $15.58 per month.

3. Keyword Research Tools

For blogging, one of the most important things is keyword research. You need to be an ace at keyword research if you want to up your SEO game. There are various free keyword research tools but their results are doubtful.

For getting accurate data about keywords, there are several premium keyword research tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, Answer The Public, etc. Though all these tools are premium tools, they provide free limited searches per day.

SEMrush provides 10 searches per day, Ubersuggest provides 3 searches a day, and Answer The Public provides 10 searches a day.

SEMrush also provides a free trial for 14 days.

As a beginner, you might not be able to afford premium tools. So here is a little trick I used when I was just starting out. It is completely legal. Toolsmeen is a group-buy service. I used to gain access to SEMrush pro for as low as $1.15 a month with a few limitations.

Check out Toolsmeen here.

Again, keyword research tools are not a necessity at all to start a blog. You can easily find brilliant keyword research techniques on YouTube that don’t require premium tools. That’s what I used to do in the beginning.

So, your spending on keyword research tools is basically zero.

4. Paid Advertising

The cost of advertising is a topic of debate among bloggers who use digital marketing techniques to increase traffic.

Should you invest in free marketing tactics for expanding your blog, or should you pay for advertising? I’d really say that there is a place and a time for both paid and free marketing techniques depending on at what stage you are in your blogging journey.

For instance, it makes no sense to run paid ad campaigns for your content if you have a brand-new blog and no way to monetize your content just yet.

When you are ready to run paid ads for your content, I highly recommend going with Facebook Ads. Facebook ads are the most efficient when it comes to advertising your blog.

5. Content Writing

You might be wondering, “aren’t I the one who is going to do all the writing work?”

Perhaps yes, perhaps no!

In the beginning, it is advisable (and economical) to write content on your own. But if you find it difficult, you can outsource the writing work to professional freelance copywriters.

If you feel that your blog should be your own voice, then you can hire someone to creatively write down whatever you speak about a given topic and ready up a draft which you can later edit.

But remember, in the beginning, you may not be the best writer in the world, your writing might not sound very creative or “lovable”.

Let me tell you, It is OKAY!

You become a better writer with practice. Not every piece you put out there will be perfect. You will eventually find your style and learn to write better copy.

My older articles make me so embarrassed when I read them sometimes. I guess it’s time they get rewritten from scratch.

Use Grammarly for assisting you in writing better content.

6. Some other trivial costs

There are costs that aren’t directly related to your calculation of “how much does it cost to start a blog?”. These are trivial costs that most of you might not even think about in the first place because you already have these things.

A laptop or desktop and an internet connection are examples. We are living in 2023! You might not have a laptop but an internet connection is something we can’t live without. There’s no way that any of the people reading this don’t have an internet connection.

Well, I know I’m dumb. You wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t have an internet connection. (I realized it after writing the above paragraph ;p)

How Much Does It Cost To Start A Blog: Doing The Final Math

So how much does it cost to start a blog after considering all the above expenses (except for the additional costs that aren’t a necessity)?

Before doing the final math, it would be good to know that you will incur the to-be-calculated cost of starting a blog if you follow my above recommendations, i.e. purchase web hosting from Hostinger. Also, this is the cost you will incur in the first year of starting and growing your blog.

Okay, let’s talk numbers!

Assuming you go for the Hostinger WordPress Starter Plan for 12 months, your one-year cost for starting and running your blog will be as follows:

Duration	Web hosting	Domain name	SSL certificate	Additional costs	Total
Yearly	$35.88	$0	$0	$0	$35.88
Monthly	$2.99	$0	$0	$0	$2.99

So your total one-year cost of starting a blog and growing it will be $35.88 and when converted to monthly cost, it will be $2.99 per month. Doesn’t sound much, does it?

The “nice-to-have” expenses such as keyword research tools, modifications to your blog’s layout and style, hiring professionals, and similar costs are what really affect how much starting a blog costs. But you can easily start and run a blog for $35.88 for a year and continue the next year with a slightly little amount of money.

I believe after your first year of blogging, you are capable of spending a little more.

Which platform do I recommend for designing your blog?

I use WordPress as my content management system or you could say for building, designing, and managing my blog. There are a lot of options out there but in my books, WordPress is the uncrowned king. The level of flexibility that WordPress offers is just amazing.

You can have total control over your website. The best part is there are thousands of cool plugins that make your website the best version of itself.

Improve website speed, add email sign-up forms, manage affiliate links, track your site analytics, install a CDN service, install an image compression/optimization plugin. You name it, WordPress has it!

The cool thing is all of these are accessible from one dashboard. Moreover, WordPress has tie-ups with most hosting providers to provide a WordPress-managed hosting solution like Hostinger WordPress Hosting.

As soon as you purchase the Hostinger WordPress Hosting, Hostinger’s interface smoothly guides you through the process of setting up your WordPress account, and within no time, you are at your WordPress dashboard designing the home page of your blog. Isn’t it cool?

It saves you the task of downloading WordPress on your PC and then connecting it with your hosting account.

The method I showed you is the easiest one to get started with your WordPress website/blog.

Some tips for starting a blog

Now that you have the answer to the question “how much does it cost to start a blog?”, it won’t hurt to cling on to some blogging tips for beginners.

I know how excited you must be to start earning money from a blog. And if you have heard people saying that blogging is easy and fast, then let me tell you. Blogging isn’t fast and it definitely isn’t easy!

If it were that easy, then everyone around you would be blogging and making thousands.

These are some really helpful tips from my personal experience.

Traffic first, then monetization

My first tip for you is to focus on getting traffic first. Do not anticipate that you will start earning from your blog in the first few months. You might not earn a penny in the first year of blogging. Don’t worry, most people don’t (including me).

Focus on generating traffic first, then monetize. If there are no visitors to your blog, who’s gonna buy your affiliate products, or who’s gonna click your advertisements?

I have a detailed post on increasing traffic to your blog. You can grab some clever ideas to grow your blog traffic.

Outreach

Outreach simply means connecting with fellow bloggers in your niche. Make a list of people you like in your niche and try to connect with them on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Do not hesitate to DM them or email them telling them how you appreciate their work.

Do not sound like a spammer or someone trying to squeeze a backlink or two from them.

Comment on other bloggers’ posts. Leave helpful comments that add value to the topic of the post or share your views on the topic. This is a very underrated thing in blogging.

Ahref’s SEO, Tim Soulo stresses a lot on blog commenting. This way, you get into the eyes of other bloggers and there are chances they may reach out to you for a collab or something of the sort.

Keep things simple

I can’t stress more about this. Keep things simple in the beginning. Do not aim for the perfect-looking blog or the most aesthetic themes.

Your main focus should be your content when you are just starting out because Content is King!

As you work your way up to the league of money-making bloggers, you can have all the aesthetics and perfections you want for your blog.

Use Quora

Quora has helped me a lot in generating traffic to my site. Answer questions on Quora consistently. Join spaces related to your niche. Give more than you take from it.

Here’s a detailed guide on how to get traffic from Quora to your website.

Start building an email list from day one

This is the second time I’m stressing on this. I regret not building an email list sooner. It is better to have 100 email list subscribers than to have 1000 followers on Instagram.

Your email subscribers are your most loyal audience. They have put their trust in you and they like your content which is the reason they have subscribed to your email list.

Who signs up for emails that they don’t want to see in their inbox?

You can send emails to your subscribers about your new blog posts or any other important tips or experiences you would like to share with them.

Write lengthy posts

Posts that are 2000+ words tend to rank better than the ones that have less than 2000 words. Aim for at least 1500 words.

Neil Patel‘s blog has over 4000 posts and a majority of them are 4000+ words.

Also, people tend to like long-form content more than a mere 500-word blog post.

How much does it cost to start a blog: The Conclusion

In this article, I tried to ascertain all the expenses (there aren’t many) you will incur in starting a blog. The amount of money you could be spending really depends on what your requirements are.

As a beginner, you mustn’t go for any not-so-important expenses. All you need is a web hosting service, a domain name, and an SSL certificate. The aggregate one-year cost for each of these expenses is calculated to be around $35.88. Yes! $35.88 for the first year would do more than good for you.

Duration	Web hosting	Domain name	SSL certificate	Additional costs	Total
Yearly	$35.88	$0	$0	$0	$35.88
Monthly	$2.99	$0	$0	$0	$2.99

The following years (after the 1st year) might cost you a little bit extra (as you will have to renew your domain which will cost a bit). And as you enter the league of money-making bloggers, you can then go for the “nice-to-have” expenses like a premium theme.

Do not be intimidated by the fact that you will need to spend money to start a blog. Treat your blog like a business. The money you spend today will yield profits tomorrow.

I believe you got the answer to the question “how much does it cost to start a blog?”

---

How Much Does It Cost To Start A Blog: FAQs

Ready to start your own blog?

Check out my ultimate guide – start a blog and make money from it!

(The guide’s title is to start a blog for free, but it has all the information you will need to start with $35.88)

---

If you found this post helpful, consider sharing it with your friends or the people you think might benefit from it.

Don’t forget to subscribe to my email newsletter below. My newsletter subscribers are the first ones to get notified regarding new posts and clever tips from my personal experience as a blogger.

Wish you all the best blogging!

---