While everyone else is out there pimping blogging as a great way to make money or quit your job or be a millionaire or whatever the cool fancy bloggers are doing these days, I thought I would share the other side of things: specifically, how much it cost me to run a blog for a year.
Step One: Tracking My Spending
The ironic part of all of this is that I started tracking my spending in an effort to have something to write about on this very blog. I started that monthly challenge in September, and kept up the habit after that because the data I got was so much more interesting than anything Mint had ever told me about my spending.
Now, here we are a year later, and I’ve got detailed information about how much I spent on my car, on my dog, and now, on my blog.
I thought I maybe spent a few hundred dollars on the blog this year, but as with literally every guess I’ve ever made about my spending, I was so wrong.
How Much Did It Cost To Run a Blog For a Year?
Instead of the few-hundred-dollars I assumed I had spent between hosting costs, new-theme purchases and my email marketing software, I spent a grand total of $1,207.52 on blog-related purchases this year.
Here’s where (most of) that money went.
Themes
I am the first to admit that I have a theme-shopping problem. This is a Known Issue from other sites that I have run in the past, but at the end of the day, there’s only so long I can last with a specific site design before I’m like “I hate it, burn it to the freaking ground.” When that happens, I head to Creative Market or Themeforest and start browsing themes like crazy.
To my (very limited) credit, I only purchased two themes this year: my first was Seashell, and my second and current theme is the X Theme. In other unprecedented good news, I only bought the X Theme when Seashell really wasn’t fitting what I needed for pages like the Zero to Investing Hero landing page. That kind of real, concrete reason for buying a new theme is something I’ve never experienced before.
Hosting
While everyone goes on and on about the virtues of self-hosting your website, mostly in order to sell Bluehost hosting packages, I actually switched away from Bluehost this year because they screwed up my email pretty epically, and just stopped delivering emails from my email address. This was Entirely Not Ok, so after some research I made the move to Siteground, and paid for a year of introductory-priced hosting with them.
The biggest benefit, for any of my blogger friends who are thinking of switching over, is that they offer free site migration, so you can move without any technical headaches. Here’s a blatant affiliate link for Siteground, if that’s something you’re looking for!
Visual Assets
Along the same lines as my theme problem, I have a I’m-Not-a-Designer problem. I like it when images look nice, and consistent, but I have very little knowledge on how to make that actually happen. I threw some money at the problem, and bought a blog header image template from Creative Market, and got my current site icons from IconFinder.com. Both of those are worth a look if you aren’t really the build-templates-yourself-in-Adobe-Illustrator type.
CFP Course
I waffled about putting this as a blog expense, but in the winter I signed up for and took the introductory-level Certified Financial Planner course at my local college. I ended up including it as a blog expense, because there’s no way I would have taken it had I not been running this blog, and I also got a ton of material out of it.
Plus, I’ll never forget that time I argu-discussed fee structures with my professor, who is a working CFP and vehemently supports the current fee structures (as opposed to the new, CRM2 mandated transparency). It went over really well when he was all “It means fewer people will get the advice they need!” and I was all “Sounds like a business model and marketing problem to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.”
I was, by far, his favourite student probably. Oh and the time he went on a rant about the financial media and I was like … it me.
Man we had fun in that class.
PO Box + Email Software
One of the things you learn really quickly when you follow everyone’s advice to “Have a mailing list!” is that to have a mailing list, you need to include your physical mailing address – or at least a real physical address where mail can reach you. Without one, you can’t send out emails without being in violation of about a zillion laws, and you could get fined a floppity-jillion dollars. (Numbers: they’re what I do. Ahahaha jokes, money is about feelings.)
So after leaving my real home address on the emails for a hot second, I got creeped out and purchased a PO box. That, plus the monthly fees I pay for Mailchimp, my email software, added up to a not-insignificant amount of money in the hundreds of dollars.
But hey, everyone on my email list? I love our Saturday hangouts, and never stop being the best humans, you are so worth it. If you want to get on the list (#shameless) just grab a copy of the One-Minute Budget here.
CPFC Ticket
Last but certainly not least, I bought a ticket to attend the Canadian Personal Finance Conference in November. By “a ticket,” I mean “the literal first ticket that became available before they even tweeted that the tickets were live because I’m such a keener.” I wish I was joking, or exaggerating, but I’m not.
It’s a good thing we’ve already covered my appalling lack of chill, isn’t it?
Anyways, I could not be more excited to attend this event in Toronto in November, and get to hang with my fave Canadian money bloggers in person (special shout out to Mixed Up Money, who is entirely stuck with me for the whole weekend. Hey girl heyyyyyy.)
Was It Worth It?
At first glance, yes, it might be a bit startling to find out that it cost $1,207.52 to run this blog for a year. But when I sit back and ask myself if it was worth it, the answer is unequivocally yes.
Not only does this blog provide me with hours of entertainment every week (I have very few hobbies outside of my luxury dog, ok) it has also been a small source of income thanks to a few partnerships with brands I use and love, like Wealthsimple. Trust me when I say I’m not about to quit my day job anytime soon, but I’d be lying if I said my savings accounts weren’t feeling extra-happy about the added boost. Plus, there’s nothing – literally nothing – better than hearing someone tell me that this blog has made the whole Money Thing a bit more fun and accessible.
Plus, if we’re being entirely honest, well over half of my blog spending was entirely discretionary, totally-not-required purchases that were made because I care altogether too much about things like blog post image templates, and have a theme-shopping problem. If you’re going to start a blog, you probably don’t need to spend anywhere near that amount.
Last, but certainly not least, I can’t help but mention that by day, I work in marketing. There are far worse things than basically getting to build yourself a marketing playground (aka a blog) and learning by doing. If I look at my $1,207.52 as a master’s degree in making interesting internet content people actually want to read, and an investment in keeping my marketing skills sharp? Sold, because that is one cheap-ass degree.
And hey, isn’t continuing education a tax deduction of some sort? (Omg hi CRA I am totally joking please don’t audit me I swear I won’t try to claim this. At least not on those grounds.)
I would love to hear from other bloggers on this one: how much have you spent on your blog this year? Was it worth it? What was the best money you spent on your blog? (Have you spent any money on your blog?)
Des….you saved me SO much money in my blog start up costs.
TJ: Should I hire some cheap dude in the Phillipines to set up my blog?
Des: No. You can probably figure it out.
So….I spent $1.00 on a domain, $47.40 on hosting, and $44 on a theme. I cannot believe how easy it all was. To “install a theme”, all I had to do was upload a damn zip file, or unzip a folder and upload the folder. Eitehr way, it took 30 seconds.
I should probably buy some images/icons at some point., the whole image making thing is WAY too much work and yours look super amazing.
I can’t be bothered with a mailing list and the main reason is I don’t want to pay for a PO box. There’s a “susbscribe to my posts” box that gets auto-emails of posts and that’s good enough for me.
Yesterday, I did however just pay $300 for a ticket to Camp Mustache SE, because an adult summer camp retreat for personal finance nerds sounds pretty awesome right? Now to figure out how to spend as little money/miles as possible on the flights to get to a college town in Florida…. 😀
The events add up so fast! Realistically, the CFP course and CPFC are probably about half of this amount. But man are they fun! (Well, the course was anyways, and I assume CPFC is going to be legendary too!) I’m sure you’ll have a blast at Camp Mustache!
Can’t wait to meet you at CPFC! It’s going to be a blast.
SO excited to meet you too, omg! I seriously don’t know if I will be able to handle the sheer awesome that will be that weekend.
I spend $28/year on Suzewannabe.com on WordPress.
Though, mine is a hobby, not a profession, so, no conferences or promotions etc.
I did purchase some sleek business cards for $75 about 2 years ago but I found them to be a hassle to carry around. Usually just texting or emailing someone the url is fine.
Haha and here I am, about to buy business cards for the conference for the first time! Add that to my growing list of expenses, lol. You’re right though, I’m much more lenient with my spending on the blog because it does have such real benefits for my professional life (and sometimes generates a bit of money to cover those expenses!) Otherwise I’d be much more reluctant.
Let’s see. I did the Bluehost bundle and spent about $300 for three years. And that’s it in terms of money. But time. ZOMG MY TIME. 😉
Spending less than $1,300 to create the incredible awesomeness that is Half Banked is remarkable.
Oh you are too kind, especially since this was literally almost all discretionary, and I have applied zero efforts to frugalizing it, haha. And let’s just never discuss the sheer volume of time involved, shall we? Or, if we are, let’s frame it as: we spent $XXX and got HOW MANY HOURS ON ENTERTAINMENT OUT OF IT? (Precisely.)
Plus the invaluable internet friendships, obviously!
So far, I think I have spent $0 on my blog… I still don’t have a domain… I am just using a free theme on the free wordpress.com site… I keep thinking that I should invest a bit… I even told myself last December that I would because I had actually made it a complete year without quitting… Still on the “To-Do” list…Thanks for sharing your blog related expenses. Might help me get moving… Or, maybe not…
Hahaha I love that you made yourself the same deal that I did, but actually went way longer with the proving-it-to-yourself thing! I started with the free WordPress set up too, because I was SURE I was going to bail after a few posts. And honestly, there’s SO no rush. I find whenever I try to pile on things I “should” be doing with the blog, it stresses me out, but if I let it happen naturally and wait until I’m excited to tackle something, it’s way more fun.
And regardless of how much professional development this semi-counts as, at the end of the day it’s still a hobby, so fun counts for a lot!
I just purchased a wordpress theme for my blog because I couldn’t find a free one that have the same look as the one I currently use. Best money I’ve spent IMO.
I’ll be going to CPFP as well, very much looking forward to meeting some bloggers.
I’m super excited to meet you at CPFC! And your new theme looks amazing – even though I’m clearly a theme fan girl, I’ve never regretted a theme update, especially when it fixes something that’s been bugging me for a while, haha.
I think that was all money well spent, even it is for the selfish reason that I’m happy your blog exists!
Your CFP story made me laugh, I work in the industry and it blows my mind how concerned some advisors are about CRM2! If you’re not being sketchy about fees then you really shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
Right?!?! It’s like, this is an opportunity to gain clients from sketchy people! Be excited! Create new opportunities for people to work with you! Ugh.
Also, SO cool that you work in the industry! If I were ever to leave my beloved high-tech, it would for sure be to move into something more directly related to financial services. (Obviously.)
Thank you for being so honest about this! I’m trying wade in slowly to this blogging thing but It’s nice to know what’s a reasonable amount to spend in a year. Also, love your writing. I’ll be following you for sure!
Jen you’re off to such a great start – I just creeped your blog and I love it! I don’t know if you’ve blogged before or not, but you seem like a natural, and your writing is great. I’m 100% stealing your PSL hacks!
And trust me, this is SO much more than a reasonable amount, lol. Honestly, you could so easily get away with hosting + a few images here and there and have a totally kick-ass blog. There was NOTHING frugal about this, mostly because in my mind it’s “professional development.” It’s like a get-out-of-being-frugal free pass :S
That’s more than I would have guessed. I can see why you would count the CFP course as an expense to offset any blog income, but it’s clearly not a necessary expense in order to blog. How much of the $1200 was tuition?
I have been happy with my *free* Smartline Lite theme, and I don’t spend a whole lot on the blog, but I do have some expenses that make the balance sheet. I just purchased a macro lens for my Olympus camera that I’ll use to take photos for the blog. Necessary? No. But for accounting purposes, it’s most definitely a blog expense.
Thanks for sharing!
-PoF
The CFP course was about $315, so not too bad in the grand scheme of things – if I had done the proper get-certified module, it would have been closer to $900, but I just wanted to sit in a room and learn from a human about finance stuff. And honestly, it’s actually a tax deduction on its own because it’s through an accredited post-secondary institution here! (Is tuition tax deductible in the States?)
And I think, as sad as this is, I’ll be deducting the $6 remote trigger for my Canon camera as a blog expense. Just fancy selfies, really, but that’s what I use it for!
I’m doing something similar for my beauty blog this year, and it’s amazing how much you can do for yourself if you really look, or find affordably!
The course could be nixed because that’s also personal investment IMHO 😉
I’m not going to CPFC but if there’s a drinks meetup I’ll try to pop by from my busy Netflix schedule 😉
Do ittttttt! You totally have to come out – I’ll keep you apprised of the goings-on! It would be so awesome to meet in person 🙂
More like you’re stuck with me! Muahaha. (I swear I’m not actually a creepo). Anyways, I’m impressed at your costs mostly because I can tell they were well worth it. I’m planning to revamp my whole site ASAP, just waiting on a few final details to be sorted. Otherwise, I hope to spend what you did and nothing more.
New site design?!?!?! Omg. I cannot wait to see the big reveal / the results! Celebratory site-redesign drinks are on me at the conference. Or on our mutual friend 😉 (Here’s hoping you get the joke otherwise I’m the big creep, lmao.)
HAHAHAHA omg I forgot to reply to this and am now cry-laughing by myself.
I’m probably going to be making the switch to Siteground soon. Bluehost has been kind of buggy lately and I’ve had issues with the site going down sometimes (the infamous #bluehostdown). Thanks so much for doing a post like this! I’ve been keeping a log of all my blog expenses as well.
That’s awesome Colin! Let me know if you do have questions about Siteground – I must admit I didn’t do toooo much comparison shopping, but I found the process of switching really smooth! (Especially having never migrated a site before, they took care of all the technical headaches! Which was downright dreamy.)
How do you do your post images? Do you hire someone or do it individually?
Hey Kelly! I actually got the template off of Creative Market, and I edit it using Photoshop (but if you don’t have a PS license, I think a lot of the options on Creative Market can be edited in Canva, which is a free tool! Just make sure to check the product descriptions and ask the creator before buying it to make sure, if that’s an option you need.)
I really need to track my costs for 2016, I just toss them into my MPMT folder and check them out when it comes to tax time! I JUST bought my CPFC ticket and would love to meet you!
Right back at you! I feel like I’m going to have zero voice by the time I get home, because I’m the MOST excited to meet everyone!