Start a Blog for less than $20 in the first year

When it comes to creating a website, there are two important things you need to consider: web hosting and a domain name. While these can often be quite expensive, there are ways to purchase both for less than $20 / £20 / 20€

This guide uses affiliate links and helps support the site by using them, these services have been tested and are recommended because they don't spike for second year costs. It will cost more in the second year, the domain will cost it standard renewal price and the hosting may increase slightly for licensing costs.

A great budget web hosting provider is Hobo Host, their basic Floor package is enough to start a WordPress site, it uses Litespeed to speed up the website and has cPanel's WordPress Toolkit to make installing an managing WordPress easy. They currently charge $16 dollars for a years hosting and when combined with a $1 domain (in the first year) a blog can be built for less that $20.

Next, let's talk about domain names. A domain name is the address that people will use to find your website. There are many different places where you can register a domain name, but Namecheap is one of the most popular options. They offer domain names for as low as $0.99 for the first year with reasonable renewals in the second year.

When you combine the cost of web hosting with the cost of a domain name, you can easily get both for less than $20 in the first year and less than $30 in the follow years. Always check the renewal price for a domain!

Once you have purchased a domain and hosting there are a couple of steps to get the website online:

1. Login to Namecheap and in the manage domain section update the nameservers to those provided by Hobohost

2. Access the cPanel account via Hobohost client area

3. Install WordPress using cPanel's WordPress Toolkit

How To Install WordPress Using cPanel - Blogging Help

Here is a guide to easily install WordPress Using cPanel’s WordPress Toolkit

Blogging Helpblogginghelp

4. Login to WordPress using WordPress Toolkit

Access WordPress dashboard from cPanel’s WordPress Toolkit - Blogging Help

How to access the WordPress Dashboard from cPanel using WordPress Toolkit - Expert cPanel Guides from blogginghelp.com

Blogging Helpblogginghelp

It is also important to take regular backups of your website and here is a guide for how to take a full site backup using cPanel's wordPress Toolkit

Create a Full Site Backup using WordPress Toolkit - Blogging Help

Here is a guide showing how to create a full site backup including the database using cPanels WordPress Toolkit

Blogging Helpblogginghelp

Here's a summary of the steps you can take to purchase web hosting and a domain for less than $20:

1. Sign up for a basic shared hosting plan from Hobohost for $16 per year
2. Register a domain name from Namecheap for $1 for the first year
3. Set up your website using cPanel's WordPress Toolkit
4. Start creating content and promoting your WordPress website