Let’s be honest with ourselves. Running a blog business during a recession has us all looking for clever ways to save more money. When you are blogging on a tight budget, you will want to conserve money everywhere you can. You are tightening your belt and keeping a close eye on your wallet, and these four smart tips will have you squeezing more out of your blogging budget than ever before.
Take Advantage of Free Stuff
The internet has a wealth of free resources to help penny-pinching business owners like you reduce spending. If you are just starting out, take advantage of a free sample course to help confirm that blogging is the right career path for you before you invest your life savings in the project. A free course will teach you how to blog for cheap by building a master plan for your site and how to keep track of your business’s goals.
Many new bloggers are concerned about the inflated cost of information technology. It’s not hard to fall into a software spending trap when there are so many great products out there designed specifically for bloggers. Why spend money when there are free platforms like MailChimp for collecting new subscribers. Dropbox is a simple free tool for delivering your customer incentives that are simple to use. Just upload your file and send the link in your email confirmation.
Free graphics software like Canva and royalty free stock photos from Pixabay save time and money with their user-friendly platforms. Ditch your stock photo subscriptions and instead, search the Creative Commons area for copyright free images you can use with a link back to the artist. You might have to dig around and be creative with your search to find the perfect image, but it is worth the monetary savings in the long run.
Start With a Template Site
When starting up or expanding your blog, it is not necessary to start programming from scratch. Save money by using a pre-made, blog-themed design. Effortlessly transform a basic site with your own personal flare by customizing it with your brand’s colors, pictures, and fonts. Do not get hung up on perfection. The most important consideration is to get your content out to your subscribers and not to post an award-winning website design. Blogger.com is an excellent platform for hosting your blog. It is free, and more importantly, it is reliable.
Shop for a New Wireless Carrier
If you have not looked at your cell-phone plan in a while, you are probably paying a premium price for that devotion to your current carrier. Rather than dumping half your monthly budget into a new phone, consider taking your current handheld device to a new wireless carrier, such as T-Mobile for their 4G LTE network. Save money and time by sticking with the device you already know and love simply by adding a new SIM card.
There is no need to download your blogging apps or transfer subscriber contacts to a new phone. Just slip that new SIM card into your device and automatically activate your new budget-friendly plan.
Remember That Time Is Money
One of the leading blunders blog owners make is forgetting to incorporate their time into a budget plan. Make sure this does not happen to you. Managing your time will really impact productivity, and by working smarter and not harder, trimming your blogging budget will seem less extreme. Do you need to make a phone call, or will an email from your handheld device work just fine? Think about every activity that you are spending time on, and determine its relative importance so you can find ways to complete them as quickly as possible.
Your blogging budget will always change and dynamically evolve along with your business. You will need to keep a close eye on your profits to continue to find ways to save money and better control your financial decisions. By knowing exactly how much you can afford to spend on your blog, you will be in a better position to manage new, unexpected costs as they pop up, and they always will.