A working blog that earns money requires: somewhere to publish, somewhere to collect emails, and something to sell. The first two cost nothing.
The platform: WordPress (~$3–5/month, or free)
WordPress.com free plan: your blog lives at yourname.wordpress.com. No cost. Adequate for the first three months while you figure out if you’ll actually do this.
Self-hosted WordPress on shared hosting: about $3–5 per month (Hostinger tends to be cheapest for beginners). You install WordPress free, get a custom domain (~$12/year), and have full control. If you’ve already committed: start here. The migration from WordPress.com later is annoying. Do it once.
The theme: free
Three free themes most serious bloggers use: Astra, GeneratePress, Kadence. Any of the three, with default settings adjusted to match your colors and fonts, looks like a real blog. Pick one. Accept the defaults. Start writing.
SEO: Yoast or Rank Math (free)
One of these. Not both. Both do the same thing: tell you whether your post is optimized for search, flag missing meta descriptions, check keyword density, generate your sitemap automatically. Install one, follow its signals, and you’ve addressed 80% of on-page SEO without understanding a word of it.
Email list: MailerLite or Kit (free tiers)
MailerLite: free to 1,000 subscribers. Kit: free to 10,000 subscribers (as of 2024). Either one. Free. Good enough for the first 1,000 subscribers.
Analytics: Google Search Console + Google Analytics (free)
Search Console: shows what search terms bring people to your blog, which pages rank, how many clicks from Google. Set it up in week one. The most important SEO data available and it costs nothing.
Google Analytics: shows visitors, time on site, what they read, where they came from. Both tools need about a week to start generating useful data. Set them up and don’t check obsessively for the first month.
Images: Canva free tier
Featured images: 1200 x 630 pixels. Pinterest Pins: 1000 x 1500 pixels. Canva has templates for both. Use consistent colors and fonts. Not for branding reasons — for recognition.
The full stack: $0 to $5/month
The tools are not the business. The content is the business. The tools are the container. Get the container for free. Put the business in it.
Upgrade at month twelve or when you hit 1,000 subscribers, whichever comes first.
Anyway.
The stack costs $0 to $5 per month. Everything else is optional until you have a reason to upgrade.