My biggest hobby expenses are eating out, going to the movies, season ticket for Iowa Hawkeye football, and blogging.

I’m working on the eating out and going to the movies a little bit less. The season ticket prices cannot really be cut and I am not willing to give up the tickets. But, what about blogging.

There are plenty of free options for setting up blogs, but I prefer paying for my hosting and domains so that I have greater control over what happens. I also like to have the option to eventually develop a non-blog site or two.

So, how much does this cost me each year.

I do my hosting and domain registration through GoDaddy. I’ve read the warnings against that, but so far I have been very happy with GoDaddy and their customer service. I always find a coupon code when I make any purchases that save at least 10%, but I will run the prices as listed.

I have one hosting account. The plan that I use costs $6.29/month if you sign up for 1 year. That is $75.48.

I have 6 domains (that expire on 3 different months). I use the private registration, so that runs about $18 per domain or about $108 per year.

That puts me spending about $183.48 per year with the payments staggered throughout the year. The hosting account renews in a separate month from all of the domains so there are 4 months where I have to pay GoDaddy something. I am thinking about getting all of my domains to be due on the same month (but probably separate than the hosting month at some point this year).

That’s only about 50 cents a day which really isn’t that out of control.

But, I put AdSense on the sites. Only one earns consistent money, but all in all I am making between $30-70 per month. I’m probably most accurately averaging $50/month at this point with good indications that I should be able to get up around $100/month this summer.

At $50/month, it will take 4 months to completely pay off my entire years blogging habit and end up bringing in $400 profit. All for a hobby. I have no aspirations of starting a web business or anything fancy. I just like throwing some words on the internet.

That profit is just about enough money to buy my Iowa football season ticket every year.

 

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