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Are you new to the blogging world? Are you planning to start blogging this year? Here what blogging investments worth making in the beginning!
Blogging investments? Why? Can’t I start blogging without making any investments or buying something? Can’t I just start with a FREE website? Of course, you can start blogging for FREE.
For starters, we need to look at the purpose of your blog. You need to decide if your blog is going to be a way of expressing yourself and writing for fun, or if your intention is to turn your blog into a money-making business.
If you blog for a hobby and do not want or plan to make money from it, that’s totally fine to start with a FREE website (no hosting or domain).
If you’ve selected the business route, let’s move on to some of the expenses and blogging investments you’ll need to make.
Blogging is EXPENSIVE!
So what are the necessary blogging investments? What do you actually need to spend money on in the beginning? Let’s dig in.
Website
What you need first to start blogging? WEBSITE. One of the first blogging investments you’ll need to make is on your actual website.
You’ll need to purchase a domain and website hosting. You’ll also want to look at some of the other features and add-ons available including adding an SSL certificate if you intend to accept payments.
There are free options where your site is not self-hosted, but I truly believe that in order to turn your blog into a business and be taken as a professional blogger, you absolutely need to self-host.
If you are a blogging newbie and don’t know where to go or how exactly to set up your website, don’t be afraid to take a blogging course! There are tons of fantastic courses out there.
Click here to get web hosting, a free domain, a free SSL certificate, automatic daily website backups, 5 stock photos/month + mystery goodies, and easy WordPress install for around $11.99 a month. (use code MONODREAME10 to get 10% off)
Your domain and hosting will be your very first blog investment. Depending on your goals and expertise, you might also want to invest in a premium theme and a blogging course.
Theme
After you get your domain and site set up, you can also purchase a theme if you are looking for a unique website look.
Here 40 WordPress themes that you can pick depends on your budget and if you prefer a more professional-looking blog, check these 10 feminine WordPress blogs to make your blog fabulous.
This is completely optional and WordPress also has many free options. You can always start with a free theme and upgrade to a paid one later.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a tool you need to use if you want to make it to the blogging big leagues. Having and using an email list allows you to communicate with your audience more effectively – in a private way – than using social media or other means.
With email marketing, there’s no need to worry about social media algorithm changes or your message disappearing in hundreds of other posts.
There are some free mailing services that can be a great place to start, but eventually, you’ll need a paid service for some additional features and functionality. A good email provider usually offers landing pages, forms, email sequences, automations, and broadcasts.
Something else to consider is compliance with the CAN-SPAM act. A portion of the CAN-SPAM act requires you to have an address on every email you send to your subscribers. If you don’t have a business location it can be hard to come up with an address to send to hundreds of people you don’t necessarily know.
One of the best options for this is to rent a PO box, Convertkit (my current email marketing platform) offers a physical address to its customers that can be used to be compliant with this act. This email service then scans me any mail sent to this address with my name on it. How awesome is that?!
Email marketing is a fantastic tool to use to build your trusted audience. Make sure to invest in a high-quality email provider that meets all your current and future needs.
Legal Requirements
Before start creating valuable content, you need to make sure you have some basic legal requirements taken care of. To be thoroughly protected, you need a privacy policy, disclaimer, and terms and conditions page.
Here’s why:
As a blogger or website owner, you are required by law to have a privacy policy. This tells visitors how you collect and use their personal information. There are no if’s, and’s, or but’s on this one.
You also need a disclaimer that limits your legal liability regarding the content you publish. It essentially says your published content is for educational purposes only. A disclaimer can also include affiliate and other necessary disclosures.
Lastly, a terms and conditions page is needed to lay out the rules of your website, protect your property rights, review refund policies, explain your dispute resolution process, and more. This last piece ties your privacy policy and disclaimers together and limits your legal liability for errors, omissions, and inaccuracies in your content.
The moral of the story, these 3 legal documents are a must for bloggers and online business owners!
I know there are some free templates online you can find, but many of these are deficient, not created by a lawyer and won’t hold up in court. Personally, using free templates wasn’t a risk I wanted to take.
So what’s the best option for you who just started?
After conducting some research, I found some easy-to-use templates that are drafted by a lawyer turned blogger. How perfect is that?!
I ended up purchasing a legal bundle that includes a privacy policy, disclaimer, and terms and conditions template. It took me about 15 minutes to customize these templates and add them to my website. This was much better than spending hours researching, creating my own templates, using free ones, or consulting with a lawyer.
While there are many ways to invest in your blog, this may be one of the most important blogging investments you make. This small investment allows you to protect your blog and your content from expensive lawsuits and legal liabilities.
Additional Blogging Investments
While websites, themes, legal requirements, and email marketing are some of the most important blogging investments, there are many other paid tools and resources that can be extremely helpful.
Some of my secondary investments have been:
- Grammarly
- Some e-book to help me growing my blog (The Viral Pin Guide, Blog Traffic, Affiliate Programs Masterlist)
- Stock Photos
There are so many blogging investments you can make!
To make sure your spending doesn’t get out of control, I recommend creating a blog budget to keep tracking all your expenses.
Are there other wise investments you think should be included in the post?
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PIN FOR LATER
I started out as free as possible and that’s fine, but if you want to grow you’ll need to invest indeed and these are great steps!
You’re right! Thank you, Lisa 😀
Honestly amazing points – especially owning your own domain! I posted on a free blog for around 2 years before switching over, and it has been one of the best investments I have made! Thank you for sharing, lovely x
Thank you so much, Karen! Right, self-hosted is a must investment blogger should have made in the beginning – if they want to bring their blog to the next level 🙂
Great starter info! And good tip about ConvertKit and their address option!
Thank you 😀
A big YES on the legal requirements! I find this is one investment bloggers tend to ignore. But it’s so so important! And a way smaller investment to make upfront than having to pay fines!
Ikr! Some just tend to ignore it or use the free templates, but I just don’t want to have any issue in the future especially when it comes to my blog biz! Thank you so much for reading, Karen 😀
These are really important blogging investments. Personally, I’d also add a camera and editing software to the list. I realize that with stock photos, you can avoid that entirely, but there’s something really spectacular about showcasing your own photography to the world on your site. It makes it feel really personal. But of course, that’s a personal preference 🙂
Oh, editing software also a great investment. Like canva or adobe lightroom, I use them for creating graphics or make editing for my Instagram feed 😀 Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with me, Steph! Really appreciated 😀
Cool and interesting post.
Thanks for sharing
https://uncuaderno4cero.wordpress.com/
Thank you 🙂
All really helpful suggestions for someone just starting a blog who wants to take it seriously!
So agree with you, Jen! Thank you x
Love this one, Merry! I’m pinning for later. Canva is the best investment I’ve ever made and I started premium back in college. I love it for blogging and life in general! I use Flodesk for my email marketing but Convertkit sounds great! I’ll check this out. Thank you for sharing, Merry! xx
http://www.lynnmumbingmejia.com
Canva is the best! I might need to check flodesk as well, some people said it’s also a great choice. Thank you, Lynn x
Email marketing is something that I’m really looking to get to grips with! I feel as though building a list of email subscribers is so difficult in comparison to building a social media following but it sounds as though email subscribers are much more engaged. I’ll have to do some more research! Great post 🙂 x
https://www.femaleoriginal.com
Yeah, building email marketing is much harder than building social media following, but it’s really worth the effort to your blogging biz to have a trusted audience 😀 Thank you for reading, Faye x
Great list! There is definitely more to blogging than I thought when I first started. Thankfully there are posts like this to help me learn. Thanks for sharing!
I thought the same as well haha google defo help me to find anything I don’t know about blogging. Thank you for reading 😀
This is a great post full of useful tips for beginner bloggers!!
Thank you soooo much 😀
I am considering buying a premium theme. Thanks for sharing this. It helped.
Thank you for stopping by 😀
Great tips and suggestions. I never used the stock photos but would like to give it a try. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you so much for reading 😀 Stock photos are great essentials to create good graphics for your blog if you don’t want to use the same free photos with others 😀
You talk about all the things necessary to start up a blog which is helpful for a beginning blogger like me but I have read that blogging is not actually that expensive. This low threshold was what allowed me to start. I think trying to keep up with creative and original content is the hardest part!
Hi Nicole, thank you for sharing your experience with me. Some people might find it different 🙂 It can be expensive if you bought like 3 years of hosting and a good theme plus some paid tools&resources. But for some people who started with a one-year hosting plan and free time, it won’t be so expensive 😀 So it depends on the choice that you’re making! And yes, being consistent and keep up with valuable content is also one of the hard aspects of blogging, I really can relate with you 😀
I have just started investing in courses and ebooks to help me grow my blog and income. The next thing I need to get is a nice theme instead of the free WordPress one I have.
Perfect! That’s nice to hear 😀 A nice and no busy theme would be perfect for you, feel free to check my post about it x
These are some fantastic ideas, thanks for sharing!
Thank you for reading 😀
I’m yet to create a newsletter but I’m hoping to start one when I eventually have free time. Though, that doesn’t look like it’s happening until July
I’m still struggling with a newsletter as well but I take it slowly every month 😀 Take your time dear x
Love this handy list, as well as the even more handy links! I only just purchased a domain last year and am looking into starting an email list, so I will be sure to check out Convertkit. The P.O box sounds like a big bonus I was not aware of.
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much, Jaya! I’m trying to share my blogging experience and what I use to build and grow my blog so I hope this post helpful 🙂