Calculate The Minimum Investment Needed To Start A Self-Hosted Blog On WordPress
With WordPress, anyone can start blogging with very little investment. The WordPress software is available for free but you need spending money on other elements like domain name and hosting. But you can keep a tab over these spending by determining your needs.
In addition, you can also invest on customization and search engine optimization. These factors will help improve the blog in the long run but it will increase the cost of setting the blog. But if your objective is to start a simple blog then you need not worrying about additional expenses. You won’t need spending more than $60 for starting a simple blog. A domain name will be free and the investment is needed for unlimited hosting.
Domain Name
It is the most important consideration in blogging as reliability and success of a blog depends largely on its name. Buying domain is like buying property on the web. It will become your address on WWW. Keep two things in mind when booking a domain. First is brand and second keywords. The domain should be brandable or it should be keyword rich or both.
Choose a domain with .com, .org or .net. There are many domain companies that provide free domain with every purchase. Also you can book additional domains with cheap registrars.
This is the first major investment in blog. Web hosting is a service and it costs a price. The service could be cheap but it’s better to pay a high price to get quality service. Compromising on quality could give the impression that you’re an amateur blogger. Your objective should be to get quality service at affordable price. Shared hosting service is the best for new blogs.
Setup Cost
Setting a blog needs some technical skills that you can get from many tutorials available on the web. Or you can do a short course in digital marketing to become a professional blogger. First try DIY methods as it is easy to setup blogs. Expert bloggers share their experience and knowledge of setting blogs in their posts.
Choosing right theme is most important and also most difficult for bloggers. The theme determines speed, functionality and overall cost of the blog. If you want to keep the setup budget low, you can choose one of the free themes. These themes save money but they lack important aspects found in premium WordPress themes. You can also consider low-cost solutions from other websites. It will be a better option than paying a high price for a premium theme.
WordPress Premium Plugins
What makes WordPress the best for blogging are its plugins and it has a long list of useful plugins that are available for free. Many of the free plugins are available on the WordPress plugin repo. It has also many premium plugins and these plugins are available at varying costs.
Technically, a new blog doesn’t need premium plugins as these plugins will only increase setup cost of the blog. But having premium plugins is an advantage as they can help boos functionality and performance of the blog. For instance you can buy a plugin for on-page-optimization and in this way get real help in promoting your blog on search engines.
Whether you buy premium plugins or make use of free plugins depends on your needs and budget. But if you don’t have any budget related constraints then I will suggest that you go for premium plugins.
Conclusion
Blogging is a hobby and also it is a great way to promote businesses. It can also become an additional source of revenue. And it doesn’t cost much to start a blog on WordPress.
