The Real Cost of Starting a Blog (Every Dollar I’ve Spent)
One of the most common questions I had before starting this blog was: how much does it actually cost?
The answers I found online were all over the place. Some said you could start for free. Some listed setups that cost hundreds of dollars a month. Neither felt like the honest answer for someone in my situation — a regular dad who wanted to try this without risking money his family needed for other things.
So here’s what I’ve actually spent. Every dollar, broken down clearly. No affiliate padding, no upselling tools I don’t use.
The Essential Costs
These are the things you genuinely need to start a blog. There’s no getting around them.
Domain name: ~$12-15/year
A domain is your address on the internet — lazydadlife.com in my case. I bought mine through Hostinger when I set up hosting. Domains typically cost $10-15 per year for a .com address. This is non-negotiable. You need a domain.
Hosting: ~$35-50/year (Hostinger basic plan)
Hosting is where your website actually lives. I went with Hostinger’s basic plan, which works out to roughly $3-4 per month when paid annually. I paid upfront for a year, which is usually cheaper than month-to-month.
Is Hostinger the best hosting available? No. Is it good enough to start a blog that gets low to moderate traffic? Yes, absolutely. The philosophy I’m following: spend the minimum that works, upgrade when you outgrow it.
Total essential costs: ~$50-65/year, or about $4-5/month
The Free Tools I’m Using
Everything else I’m using costs nothing. Here’s the full list:
WordPress.org — free, open-source blogging platform. Installed on my Hostinger hosting.
Kadence theme — free WordPress theme. Clean, fast, does everything I need at this stage.
Rank Math SEO — free SEO plugin. Handles sitemaps, meta descriptions, and on-page optimization guidance.
Google Search Console — free. Shows me how my site is performing in Google search results.
Google Analytics (via Site Kit) — free. Tracks visitor behavior on the site.
Google Docs — free. Where I write all my posts before uploading them.
Canva (free plan) — free. For any basic graphics I need.
Total for tools: $0.
What I Tried and Stopped Paying For
A few things I tested early on and decided weren’t worth the cost:
Premium keyword research tools — I signed up for a free trial of a popular SEO tool. It was genuinely impressive. It was also $100+ per month, which I can’t justify before the blog makes a single dollar. I cancelled before the trial ended and went back to using Google Search Console and free alternatives.
A premium WordPress theme — I briefly considered upgrading to a paid theme for more design options. I decided against it. The free Kadence theme does everything I need right now, and paying for design before having an audience to design for felt backwards.
Social media scheduling tools — Signed up for a free trial. Used it twice. Cancelled. I’m not doing enough social media volume to justify the overhead.
What I’m Planning to Spend Later
There are tools I’ll probably add as the blog grows — but only when the timing makes sense.
Better hosting (~$10-20/month) — When traffic grows to the point where basic hosting is causing performance issues, I’ll upgrade. Not before.
Email marketing tool (~$0-15/month) — Eventually I’d like to build an email list. Most platforms have free tiers that cover the early stages, so the cost starts at zero and scales with the list size.
A proper keyword research tool (~$30-100/month) — Once the blog is generating some revenue, investing in better SEO tools makes sense. Right now, the free options are sufficient for where I am.
The pattern: spend when you’ve outgrown the free option, not before.
What About All the Things People Say You Need?
There’s a whole ecosystem of tools, courses, and services marketed at bloggers. Let me address a few directly.
Do you need a professional logo? No. A clean text-based site name is fine to start. Design matters less than content at this stage.
Do you need a blogging course? Probably not. Everything you need to know about starting a blog is available for free. I’ve learned more from Google, YouTube, and actually doing it than I would have from a $200 course.
Do you need to be on every social media platform? No. Pick one or two that make sense for your content and focus there. Spreading yourself thin across six platforms while trying to write quality content is a recipe for burning out on everything.
Do you need expensive tools from day one? No. Start free, upgrade when you have a reason to.
The Real Investment
Here’s the thing about blogging costs that the money conversation misses: the real investment isn’t financial. It’s time.
I’ve spent roughly 5-7 hours a week on this blog since I started. Over a few months, that adds up to hundreds of hours. If I valued that time at even a modest hourly rate, the “cost” of this blog dwarfs the $50 I’ve spent on hosting and a domain.
That’s not a reason not to do it. It’s a reason to be honest about what you’re actually committing to when you start a blog. The financial barrier is low. The time barrier is real.
If you have the time and you’re willing to be patient, the financial cost of starting a blog is genuinely accessible. A few dollars a month is all it takes to have a real presence on the internet.
Whether you fill that presence with something worth reading — that’s the harder part. And that one’s free.
That’s the full cost breakdown. If you’re thinking about starting a blog and want to know what the real numbers look like, I hope this helps. The financial barrier is lower than most people think. Now go build something.