What are Your blog Expenses?

Hey Darrin, This is an interesting question, because its tax season here is my recommendations for my fellow bloggers to spend some dough! The best money you will ever spend, believe it or not is the Yahoo Directory fee of $299…it jumped my PR from 1 to 4 almost overnight!
Not one Blogger recommends this, but I do!

So far my only expenses are hosting with HostGator. They offer unlimited hosting for blogs which helps when creating multiple niche blogs.

$10 for domain and hosting is provided by my brother’s web host company, so no much expenses till now. I am sure it will cost me few dollars for theme etc. but am sure it wont count a lot..

I have just launched my third blog and I plan on getting up at least two more. I have made just under forty dollars to date and I haven’t spent a dime. If you were to compare the value of my time to the monetary value and learning experience from blogging. I am sure I am still undercompensated. This all given my goal is to make money.

I say this considering to date. I feel that wholeheartedly I will end up making a log of money blogging. I have used blogger for all of my sites thus far.

By the way Darren I am an accountant and assure you that you accountant was only joking. Just make sure you report every legitimate expense you have. Don’t go looking for expenses your government can use those taxes. By making things up your stealing from your country. I consider that just as bad as stealing from your Mom or Dad.

Domain Name: $10/year
Wordpress Theme: $0
Hosting: $0 (set my blog up as an add-on domain on a hosting account I already had).
Logo: $25 at Gotlogos.com
Images: $0 (I use flickr pix, legally)

The biggest “expense” is the opportunity cost of my time when writing posts or tweaking the style sheets, but I don’t count that since I enjoy it.

One year of expenses is paid off in less than 1 month of Google AdSense revenue for me.

i have just started blogging via blogger ——– no expenses —- except some precious time ———- though i have not yet got 100’s of dollars , yet i feel this is the best method way of earning online —- instead of adbux and others —— this surely pays off ! hope to get a decent PR in the coming years .

Hosting $6.95 a month (had it anyway) $10 for a domain name. $79 for Michael Pollock’s magazine theme (‘cos it’s so cool and easy to use) $100 for Angsuman’s Translator – which is just amazing – and membership to Yaro Starak’s Blog mastermind.
Time – Lot’s of it.
Last year I spent $8000 on a Franchise that failed, so the costs of a blog are negligible in comparison. I don’t run adsense on my main site as I think it detracts from the experience, but do Affiliate – earnings are low at the moment, but that’s not really the point – I hope to still be blogging in 10 years time!

Okay, I have no business answering this query because my blogging is free for now. But here are some things you could deduct if you choose to:

– a new camera/video camera for posting purposes
– magazine subscriptions to trade mags/applicable subject matter are a legitimate business expense
– travel to cover a meeting/conference
– conference fees
– how about some jazzy software for editing pics/videos, or creating flash animations, provided you know or learn how and use them in your blog posts. Even photoshop to just watermark your pics would work.

I pay $80 a month for hosting.

No doubt all the $5 folks think that’s insane, but it isn’t and if you don’t already know why, my explaining it isn’t going to change your penny pinching mind :-)

I learnt something this month: that old adage, “spend money to make money” really works.

The start up and running costs for my fresh-faced blog have probably been more than most — I commission good illustration, pay for WordPress templates (and help!) and am not afraid to outsource other bits when needed.

The other start-up expense most bloggers seem to overlook is targeted advertising. A lot of bloggers soldier away trying to generate traffic and gain subscribers without paying for advertising. It can and does work, but I’ve found that taking out just a few 125px ads on up-and-coming sites in my niche has really boosted my subscriber count and traffic. It’s not too expensive, is a big confidence boost and it pays dividends!

What’s the real truth about blog expenses? Spending money carefully is worth it! While my start-up costs were more than my income this month, the scales look set to tip in February and March — income from affiliate sales and advertising is now coming in and the initial expenses have proved worth it.

I agree with what others have said — the biggest non-balance-sheet expense is certainly time! I’m religiously tracking my income, expenditure, and time spent on PTO and intend to share it all in July after 6 months of blogging.

Yes, blogging can be free and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be. But if you’re determined to do it for a living, don’t let anyone put you off dropping some cash on promotion and great design.

After two cases of outgrowing my hosting arrangement I don’t mind paying for reliability. The .tv domain I’ve suppemented with a couple of .com addresses. On top of domain name, hosting and occasional advertising on Adwords, I’ve been investing in trade magazines (paper and online), books, professional MyBlogLog, Sitemeter, Akismet.

I always compare the cost of whatever feature or add-on, to whether I can do it myself.

Domains names and webspace I pay for, because it’s hard to DIY that. ;) I averaged between $5-$10/month for webspace, which was more than covered by some advertising on just one blog.

Templates I’ve hardly ever paid for any, preferring to design my own or tweak an exisiting one. For the casual blogger, paying for a custom template can be quite an uneccesary cost. Sure, it look pretty, but it mostly supports someone else.

I’m willing to go pretty far before I pay for things like design. :) Recently I have, although it will be for a professional blog network, not my own personal site.

I spend about 7 on hosting, about 25 for my domain names. An average of 15 dollars a month on promotion experiments, about 20 on IStockPhoto every few months, about to spend about a hundred on new logos for my two blogs and lots and lots of time.

I also spend about 9 dollars a month on good stats reporting and misc site fees.

I bring in about 900 a month right now from my 2 blogs (only one monetized at the moment) and have been blogging for a little over 2 years.

I have a dedicated server which costs me 400 dollar a month, I share it with some 10 other buddies which makes it quite cheap.

Apart from that, there is only income :)

With my sites and blogs, they now pay for themselves and are continuing to grow in the black. The actual expenses can range from domain/hosting to design to promotion (SEO/Marketing). I’m now helping others with blasting traffic to their blog and getting more money.

See: http://www.howbloggersmakemoney.com if interested in blogging stuff and for general blasts I’m also doing a combined PR/SEO burst and that’s starting to be a real resource for my clients.

Thanks,
Scott

Domain names. Multiple hosting accounts: My big one is technically capable of handling everything, but I’ve been burned three times by excellent hosts suddenly turning to *!($. Having three accounts means I always have two alternatives for a midnight move. It also means three different IP address classes.

BTW, I keep getting this error message intermittently:
Forbidden

You don’t have permission to access /wp-content/cache/supercache/www.problogger.net/archives/2008/02/04/how-to-herd-organic-search-traffic-to-your-blog/index.html on this server.

Well I agree with many fellow bloggers.

It is the valuable time that costs for running a good blog.

It is the content and preparing it makes a difference.

Regards.

Because I write a blog about the sports at one particular school (Wake Forest) I actually have some pretty significant expenses, but they aren’t the usual ones associated with blogging.

For example, when I started writing the blog pretty seriously I invested about $70 in a nice digital voice recorder for press conferences and interviews and that sort of thing.

Another somewhat unusual blogging expense has come from traveling to see the games. This weekend I drove a total of 200 miles to and from a road game and also had some other miscellaneous expense (food/parking etc.). Although I didn’t have to pay for a ticket to the game (thanks to a press pass) Travel and related expenses cost me close to $50.

Clearly these expenses aren’t the norm for most bloggers, but they are part of this particular niche.

I started blogging last month. I used Blogger for two days but then I found a hosting company that gave me 3 domains and hosting for $70. I did it so I could use WordPress, Blogger left me wanting more.

I made $2 of that back from AdSense in my first month, so we’ll call it $68. =)

—
Brass Poker – blog written by a Las Vegas Poker Professional

Other than hosting ($10/month), I don’t really spend a whole lot, I have an occasional contest on my blog, the prize is usually between $30-$100 but that is only every 3 months or so. I have been looking around for someone to do a blog design for me, I’m not sure how much that is going to cost but I’ll probably be doing that in a few months.

Blogging is a really cheap hobby, it also kills a lot of time.