How much does blogging or having a website cost?

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If you are starting off as a blogger or website owner, you might first want to know how much it will cost. So how much does blogging or having a website cost? I will give you the breakdown for this site. There are three aspects to consider: platform, hosting, and domain. All three potentially cost money.

blogging or having a website cost
Photo by Anete Lūsiņa on Unsplash

Platform

I use WordPress now, but that is not how I started…

In my young days of blogging, I was on Blogger, hosted by Google! Google owns it and it is the simplest to set up. It was just a place for me to start, and so I did. In those days, my domain used to be with Google Domains for $12. Blogger, of course, was free.

However, as I grew a little older and wanted my site to not look like ass, excuse my French, I moved on to WordPress.

WordPress has a huge community

I considered Squarespace but may have found that it was not free. Currently, I only pay for the hosting & domain, not the platform. I also did a transfer from Blogger to WP, and the WP community helped me to do that for free.

That was huge.

Whoever helps me with painful things, I go with them, yo.

Hosting

My site when on Blogger was, of course, hosted by big mother, Google. But now, it is hosted by Bluehost. So, this costs money now. But, I get to be a WordPress site, so that is the benefit. All in all, I am happy with them so far and I also got a deal when I transferred over, so not too bad of a situation with the cost. It costs me around $35 per year for the hosting of this site. The cost breakdown for website hosting is shown below.

blogging or having a website cost
Hosting a website cost breakdown

Domain

The domain, that is, the howtophd.org name of this website used to cost $12 when I got it with Google Domains, but then I moved it out of there and into Bluehost when they offered me it for free for a year. So, in the first couple of years, expect to pay between $0-12 for the domain, from my experience. You might be able to get a deal where the domain is free, but you pay for hosting, that is. That is what I did when I transferred to Bluehost.

Now, it is going to cost me some more, see the breakdown below. I have run out of the deals that used to make it free. I also added in domain privacy protection. This helps me to receive less spam mail and calls, hopefully. Domains are public and to make your personal contact information private, you have to pay for this. The cost breakdown for having a domain is shown below. It is costing me around $35 for the domain as well.

blogging or having a website cost
Having a domain cost breakdown (after couple years)

Total blogging or having a website cost

I am paying around 35 + 35 = 70 dollars total for this website including hosting and domain with domain privacy as a third-year blogger. Bluehost gave me the domain for free for a year when I switched from Google Domains. When you are starting off expect domain cost to be between $0 – 12, from my experience.

So when I started blogging and did not pay for hosting or platform, I paid $12 for my site total, for the domain only. Then my domain was free in my second year but I paid for hosting to get away from Blogger/Google and into WordPress, although the platform itself did not cost money. Now, I pay for both hosting and the domain as I have run out of my sweet deal making the domain free, but that is alright. The platform is still free for me.

Any questions or problems let me know below in the comments. Did you find this helpful? Give me a shout below.

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