Running A Blog Costs Hundreds Of Dollars

From lifehack.org

We received this comment from Kate regarding Kyle’s Beginner’s Guide to starting a blog and making $100 in the first month.

I have found this article very misleading. The online quick setup blogs do not allow you to insert ads or google analytics. The wordpress standalone is not easy to set up. MySQL? I don’t have MySQL… I continue to be baffled by this whole process, it seems to me you need several hundred dollars to set up a semi-professional looking blog that allows ads.

This isn’t true.

Firstly, there are free blogging options that allow you to paste advertising code. Wordpress.com doesn’t, but Google’s Blogger.com does. Blogger.com even includes it as standard procedure meaning you don’t even have to paste any code, just sign up to Adsense.

There are other options and I would like to open up the comments section for suggestions similar to Blogger.com.

One thing that you will want to do, however, is register a domain name. Luckily this only costs a few dollars a year. This makes your site, where ever it is hosted, look professional. Kyle explains this in his post.

At this rate, you only need to make around 50c per month to cover your costs. After that it’s all profit.

Hosting & MySQL

Since Kate also mentions having to understand MySQL databases to run a blog, I will clear this up briefly as well.

Hosting, depending on how much drive space, bandwidth and extra features you want, can cost from a few dollars a month to $30-40. However, for your average blog, who’s main bandwidth culprit is images, the few dollars a month to set up a host should be sufficient.

If you want to use a blogging platform such as Wordpress, you are required to upload a bunch of files [using FTP] and set up a MySQL database. This can be daunting, but I’m going to flesh out a three step process to keep the database section simple - because it is!

• 1. Go to your host’s Database section and Create A New Database.
• 2. Name it and add a user that has all access privileges.
• 3. Open Wordpress’s config.php file and enter the database details.

Upload the file back to your server and you’re done. Now you have a powerful blogging platform on a site that will maybe cost you a few dollars per month. Get around 5,000 impressions [not individual visitors] each month and you’re covering your costs with Google Adsense alone.

NOTES: When choosing a host, make sure they offer MySQL databases; some plans don’t. Don’t go crazy with bandwidth requirements, you can always upgrade if you get that popular.

Post decent content daily and you’ll be making money in no time.