When you want to grow your blog it can be overwhelming to decide where to put your money. Do you spend a lot of money on a great design? What about a domain name? Do you use a hosting service? What about the upgrades for places like PicMonkey, Buffer, and Wisepops? I get A LOT of questions about what types of things bloggers should spend money on towards their blog and I wanted to share with you what I spend money on for my blog. This is not to say that you HAVE to spend money on the same thing or that you should. I am just personally sharing where my money goes.
Hosting and Domain: Once a year I pay a fee for my domain(s). I have my blog domain and actually six others! This is a small expense when it’s just blog related and runs me about $10 a year. I pay $19.95 per month for hosting five different sites with Liquid Web. I absolutely love Liquid Web. There are tons of other hosting sites, but this is my personal favorite.
Buffer and Board Booster: Two scheduling services I pay for are Buffer and Board Booster. I believe I only spend about $5 a month on Board Booster, which is up to 500 pins a month and about $10 a month on Buffer for unlimited scheduling.
Wisepops: This is the service I use for my email popup on my blog. This is pretty pricey at $29 a month, but honestly it has quadrupled the number of monthly sign ups I get and that is reason enough for me. This is a great program to use. My blog designer, Lindsey actually is the one who told me about it.
Facebook: I spend about $100 a month on Facebook ads and with this I usually only boost posts that are already doing really well or that I need a little boost on. I actually walk through the entire process of how I do this in my blog courses if you are interested. This specific tutorial is in all three classes.
Miscellaneous: I pay yearly for an HTTPS certificate on my blog because people pay for my classes through my blog. I also pay yearly for extra security on my blog that my husband set up for me. It helps having someone who works in the internet security field at my disposal. Then there are things like business cards, blog conferences, and other forms of continuing education. There are always random expenses that pop up too like needing a new router or computer. Yearly, I also pay to upgrade to premium for PicMonkey which is extremely inexpensive. I use this for a lot of photo collages and editing. Although I use photoshop for 90% of my posts.
Giveaways: I try to only spend about $60-$80 a month on giveaways. This includes blog giveaways and Instagram loop giveaways. I think these are great for networking and growing your social media so it’s something I for sure recommend to put some money towards.
Bloggers will all have a different answer to what they spend their money on. But this is the break down of what I spend money on for my blog. I hope you found this helpful. If you have any questions please feel free to reach out!
Great list – I need to check out buffer!
I manage to keep mine very cheap – I don’t really pay for anything except for my domain name! But then I’m not trying to run a business from it, so paying for things like advertising is a bit pointless for me at the moment 🙂
My blog is more of a hobby blog so my typical only expenses are the domain name and a new blog design every year or so. I love that blogging is a relatively accessible hobby–one that doesn’t have to cost a lot if you just want to have something fun and creative to do!
Gotta spend money to make money, right? Being a wedding blogger, I have A TON of media! So I spend money on an upgraded Dropbox account to house all of those pretty photos. I also spend money on random things, like postage to send blog related correspondence (thank you notes mostly), coffee dates with wedding vendors, and parking while I’m at various meetings. I need to check out Board Booster though!!
Interesting to see the cost and the benefit of it. Especially the email pop-up. I stop following the second a blog gets an email pop-up I have to click, so it’s interesting to see there’s benefit to something I find frustrating.
Thanks for posting! I’m definetly not at a place where I can justify spending that much on my blog, but hope to be there in the future at some point!!
This is excellent information! Thanks for sharing.
I’ve been hearing that Tailwind is a great program for scheduling Pins – what are your thoughts on it?
Super helpful as always! Thanks, girl!
Great advice! What are your favorite hosters for the instagram loop giveaways? I have found some are well run and others can be kind of a waste of money.
Such a great post! One of my 2016 goals is to start building my blog, and the money thing was a huge question.
What is your monetary input vs. output? I’m just curious because I just started blogging, and I couldn’t imagine spending this much per month but I also don’t make a dime yet.
I love that you’re sharing this! I feel like sometimes readers don’t get that this does take a bit of money to keep running.
It’s really interesting to hear about what other bloggers do, so thank you for sharing this! Right now I really only pay for my domain name and hosting, but I’m in the process of exploring other places I may want to invest.
Great list. It really gives me insight into what I need to start investing in for my blog. Especially the security aspect. Thanks for sharing! And I love the new design. 🙂
This was super helpful, thank you so much for sharing! As a still relatively new blogger, this kind of post is super helpful!
Thanks for sharing! I always love the insight of knowing what investments other bloggers are making into their blogs. I am still trying to limit my investments at this point, but I have found Buffer to be WELL worth the investment of $10/month!
This is a great list! I need to invest a little more financially into my blog. I only pay for my domain and hosting right now since I designed the site myself. Thanks for sharing this!
This is a GREAT post and something I’ve been thinking about for the past year, in terms of wanting growth in my blog. I’m going to bookmark this post (especially the one for Facebook boosting!) for future reference. And I was thinking of doing a giveaway but I honestly don’t think I’m at that point yet. Thanks so much for sharing these!
coffeeslag
COFFEESLAG For Love & Lemons
Very informative! I love knowing what’s going on behind the scenes. I spend very little on my blog so far, but this may be the year that I start really trying to build a business. We’ll see.
Very helpful info! I have to start getting into more giveaways – they introduce me to new readers every time I actually do participate in one!
I think reading what others spend on their blog is so helpful when trying to figure out what can be use for my own blog! It’s also cool to see what other bloggers find most important to spend their money on! Thanks for the peek behind the scenes (:
I love buffer. It would awesome if you could do a post on how you set up your giveaways and what all goes into running a giveaway. Thanks for the great resources! It’s nice to know what’s worth spending your money on.
– Amanda Shuman
http://www.carrylovedesigns.com/blog
Blog giveaways!
Thank you for sharing your expenses. It’s always great to find out what successful bloggers think is an important investment.
Thank you for this post! I just started a blog and am trying to figure out what is and isn’t worth spending $ on. Great info. 🙂
I’m going to look up board booster! I have never heard of it till now!
This is filled with some great information! Thanks for sharing your great list
We pretty much spend on the same things. I have found out if i put a little money in i get a lot out. Laci @ Sequinsinthesouth.com
Always good to have some perspective. I also pay for OPTINMONSTER, COSCHEDULE, off shore tech support, graphic design, coaching costs, and quite a bit more. I am not monitizing well yet so it gets overwhelming but I hope to get that sorted this year!
Great list!
I only pay for my domain and hosting + BoardBooster.
I may be adding CoSchedule in the near future as well.
xoxo, Jenny
Thank you for sharing these. I’m always curious to see what other bloggers actually spend their money on. I’m currently in that cycle of spending money on my blog but not yet earning that back.
Awesome list! I pay for Buffer as well and just use the looping feature on Boardbooster. I also pay monthly for Picmonkey and Co-Schedule, along with MailChimp!
This is a great help! Learned a lot of new things, thanks!
This is a great list for someone like me. I am so new to blogging and there is so much information all over the web, but I feel like yours is the best that I have found. Thank you so much for this! I love blogging, but being so new it’s giving me some anxiety with all of the options out there.
Blessings!
Alicia, xo