Earning money from your blog is good. But the other thing to be aware of is to try and minimize your costs. I recently made a change which will save me hundreds of dollars in blog hosting fees.
Don’t be shortsighted when investing in your blog
I recommend that bloggers focus on niche blogs. One topic per blog and one blog at a time. And I was doing this personally as well. HowToMakeMyBlog then Twitter book and so on.
As the number of my blog projects started to increase, my need for new domains and hosting accounts increased as well. I just used to buy the cheapest “economy” hosting plan option at GoDaddy. After all you do get 10 GB space, 10 MySQL databases and so on. More than enough for a blog. Why would I need any bigger hosting plan? Well, I was very wrong.
Buying premium blog hosting and saving money
I ended up with 5 hosting accounts. The price of economy hosting is $4.74 per month if you pay for one year at a time. This gives a total cost of $56.88 for one year of hosting for one blog project. My 5 blogs ended up costing me $284.4 per year for hosting alone.
$284.4 is not a large amount considering that larger blog revenue can be earned in one month. But to optimize the earnings you need to earn as much as possible while cutting the costs as much as possible.
Somehow I stumbled upon the multiple websites hosting at GoDaddy. With a single hosting account you can host as many domain names and blogs as you want! Your blog looks all the same to your visitors, same as if it was hosted on its own.
Even better is that this “deluxe” hosting costs only $6.64 per month which is $79.68 for a year. And I can host all of my domain names / blogs on this one hosting. I no longer need the individual economy hosting.
$284.4 – $79.68 = $204.72
So I am now saving $204.72 per year on these 5 blogging projects. And this makes my blog revenue even larger and leaves me with more money to invest in other stuff. From now on I just need to buy a domain name for a new project, hosting I already have!
Always think long term when blogging
Many bloggers start their blogging careers without thinking long term. As did I. But now I see the bigger picture and can see how $1.9 more per month in GoDaddy hosting will save me hundreds of dollars in the long run.
The lesson is not only to think about earning more money from your blog, but also to consider how you can cut your spendings. So take a look at the way you host your blogs and see if there is a change you can make to optimize your earning potential.
Image by Jenn Jenn.
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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
I couldn't agree more Marko, it's really important to try to estimate your costs as far in advance as possible.
After using several hosts in the past, I decided to do a cost comparison on the three big ones, GoDaddy, BlueHost and HostGator.
It's surprising what the results were when you factor in extra domains, hosting multiple sites on the one hosting account, SSL certificates (if you need them) etc… Could be useful for your readers as a follow up from this…
I personally use Bluehost for my blog because of their nicer cPanel administration interface, but I have a GoDaddy account that I'm happy with as well.
Great Post!
I really love the technique about focusing on niche blogs.
Having too many blogs can become of pile of work.
Its nice that hosting and buying domain names is so cheap and easy these days. It would be weird if domain names were like $100 per year or more. Good post, I've had good experiences with GoDaddy, but these days my sites are hosted with DreamHost(I like their custom control panel, and their affiliate program is good).
I do hear from several bloggers that GoDaddy has several disadvantages. One in particular is moving away from it because of traffic restrictions and or down time. Another had to close a project, because the MySql server of GoDaddy protested agains some severe WP plugins…
Great to see a recommendation for cutting costs. The quickest way to boost your profits is to cut your costs. I've long used a reseller account for web hosting, as I often have 5 projects on the go in addition to my main sites.
Strange. Never had any problems personally. Anyway the whole point of this article can be used anywhere else. I believe most hosting companies have premium hostings. So the point is do not just go for the cheapest hosting option, think long term and it may just pay off like it did for me.
I remember back around 1997-1998 when I got my first domain name, I think it cost $70 per year back then. A lot of money for a teenager. There was only one provider. NetworkSolutions I think it was… never liked getting their snail-mail requesting me to pay $70 hehe… long time ago so I may be wrong with some of the details…
Sometimes I wonder how we can have a niche blog and infuse our personality into our post, because i don't like a blog that has no life.
Any idea Marko?
You are writing your blog so you are making it unique by your own writing style, by the words you use, by the way you teach your readers about the subject of the blog and so on. You can also include your pictures or videos to make it even more your own. There should be no difference if the blog is niche blog or not.
Hey Marko,
No bad, cutting cost can be a good thing. At the same time, if I have to pay more for something, I'm gonna be sure it's worth every penny. I use Media Temple, great support and prices. I'm set.. and glad to report I've had little to no issues.
-Mig
Cost cutting is something it seems like everyone is doing these days! Great information, Marko!
I'm not sure about GoDaddy hosting, though. My sister and her friends once setup a niche web forum using GoDaddy as their host, it was just a big mess when I tried helping them out IMO.
I have been using Media Temple for every project I can remember starting since mid 2007. They have such great support, even though you hardly ever need to use it. The one time I had a problem, I think my website was unreachable for like 4 hours, they gave me 3 months of a free hosting credits for the inconvenience.
Thanks. I know what you mean. Sometime I just love to add some personal post to my blog that i thing might audience might find interesting.
Marko,
Over the year I have been through many different hosting companies. The one that wins the award for me is hand down hostgator. While they have many different place to choose from I particularly like the reseller hosting plan. The cool thing about this type of account is that you have one master account and it allows you to create unlimited hosting account. There is no limit for mysql databaes or domains. You are only limited by disk space and bandwidth. This is really cool for someone that has many different blog or niche sites to manage. It allows you to easily create and launch new blogs/sites on the fly.
I had to do the same thing with my hosting a few months ago. I have around ten sites on there and I now have them all on the same server. I moved away from Godaddy though and found a host that I have clocked as much faster. Thanks for all the information!
I never really had the problem of cutting down costs because I set out to do the thing that everybody says is “impossible.” Well, I am continuing to prove them wrong. I set up a free blog at blogger(not recommended, it's a lot of extra work if you don't pay anything), never paid for any hosting, advertisements, reviews, etc.
I admit, I would be doing a lot better if I had paid for some quality domain name, but, it's quite an achievement to be able to do it for free!
Thanks for pointing out the advantages.Actually I was wonder about the tips you have provided. I think it would be better for the people those who don't know about this post. Thanks for sharing this great post with us.