One of the biggest myths about blogging is that it takes serious money to start. It doesn’t. You can launch a real, self-hosted, money-capable blog for well under $100 in your first year — as long as you spend that money on the right two things and skip the rest until you’re actually earning.

What You Actually Have to Pay For

Only two things are genuinely non-negotiable:

  • A domain name — your web address, typically $10–$15 a year. This is your blog’s identity and you want to own it.
  • Web hosting — where your site lives. Entry-level shared hosting often runs a few dollars a month, sometimes with the first year discounted.

That’s the whole required budget. Everything else — the platform, the theme, the core tools — can be free to start.

What You Can Get Free (and It’s Genuinely Good)

  • WordPress — the software that runs a huge share of the web — is free.
  • Themes: GeneratePress, Kadence, and Astra all have excellent free versions. You do not need a paid theme to start.
  • Design: Canva’s free tier handles your graphics, featured images, and social posts.
  • SEO: free plugins like Rank Math or Yoast cover the essentials.
  • Keyword research: Google’s own autocomplete, “People also ask,” and Search Console give you real data for $0.

What to Skip Until You’re Earning

This is where beginners burn money they don’t need to. Hold off on premium themes, paid keyword tools, expensive courses, logo designers, and the dozen “essential” plugins the upsell emails insist you need. None of it makes your early content better. Reinvest in those things later, out of revenue the blog actually generates — not out of hope.

A Sample First-Year Budget

  • Domain: ~$12
  • Hosting (first year, entry-level): ~$35–$60
  • Everything else: $0
  • Total: well under $100

The real cost of blogging was never money — it’s time and consistency. Plenty of people spend hundreds on tools and quit in two months; others spend $50 and build something real because they kept showing up. Spend little, start now, and let the blog earn its own upgrades.

Ready to set it up? Follow the full step-by-step guide to starting a blog, then learn how to monetize it once your traffic grows.