Photo by Jodie Cook on Unsplash
There are so many blogging investments that feature online and one of the biggest blogging mistakes is to invest in everything that you are told is great to start building a successful blog.
If you want to develop a business from your blog, it is important like any business that is just starting to invest money. This will enable you to grow and succeed. Not investing in your blog is just going to hinder your success.
There is also no rush if you are not in a position to be able to make investments right now because you can focus on building connections with your audience a as well as promoting on social media.
Disclaimer: affiliate links are used in this post. If you make a purchase via my link, I receive commission, but it doesn’t cost you a thing!
These are 6 blog investments that are definitely worth the hype and the moment:
1. Domain Name
If paying to go self-hosted is not an investment you can afford straight away buying a domain name is the next best thing. A domain name gives your blog instant credibility. Domain names build your blogging brand. If your domain name matched the name of your blog, it reinforces the brand as well as making it easier for your readers to remember and return your blog. There are so many other benefits t using a domain name for your blog including:
- Adds professional credibility
- Increases your search engine ranking
- Provides visibility of your brand
As a new blogger, it can be a challenge to create the best domain name that reflects your blog and that you love.
2. Go Self-Hosted
Self-hosting is the practice of running and maintaining a website using a private server instead of using an internally-hosted website. Many successful blogs are self-hosted because of the huge benefits it comes with.
If you want to take your blog seriously, going self-hosted can be a great way to customise your website and have it look exactly as you envisaged. Investing in going self-hosted ca mean:
- You can customise your domain name
- You have full control of your website
- The best plugins
- You receive better technical support
- More storage and much more
Of course, self-hosting isn’t free, but it can be affordable especially with other content creators sharing their discount codes for money off. I haven’t gone self-hosted at the moment; I have the business plan with WordPress which works for me right now. But going self-hosted is on my master to-do list for my blog.
3. A Blog Theme
Investing in a good theme is a must as visuals are always important. You want a blog that is well put together and easy to navigate if it is too confusing readers will click off. There are plenty of free themes that are suitable, but if you want to invest, there are some beautiful themes that are super affordable. The great thing about purchasing a theme is you have it forever, so if you re-design your blog a couple of times you can always go back to your purchased themes. My current theme is ‘Rosalie’ a premium theme and I paid £44 and it was one of the best investments I have made, it made my blog much more professional.
Photo by Uby Yanes on Unsplash
4. Canva Pro
Canva is a great app for you to create appealing visuals for your blog and social media. By purchasing Canva Pro, it gives you access to millions of stock images as well as a range of fonts that will give you the chance to make effective Pinterest pins. It is £10.99 per month or £107.99 for the year (£8.99 a month – saving over £23). It is not the most expensive investment, but it does give you an edge with professional visuals.
5. Stock Photos
If you are not a good photographer, or not great at staging photos, using stock photos can be the easier choice. If it is not a blog post for a product you may want to use stock images. There are plenty of free stock images, but you can often find lots of other creators are using the same images. Stock images are high quality images that are beautiful and will help you to create eye-catching pins that have a better chance of them going viral as well as blog post visuals. There are lots of places to purchase stock images:
- Istock
- Shutterstock
- Pexels
- Canva Pro
There are some great free stock images website:
6. E-Books And E-Courses
There are certain e-books and e-courses that are worth the investment and will help to take your blog to the next level. It is important that you do your research about the blogger who is offering the resources as there are some who do not have the knowledge they claim to have.
The huge benefit of purchasing e-books and e-courses is that the credible bloggers who have created them have done all the work and effort for you. They have tried the different methods, strategies and all the researching for you – you just reap all the benefits. I have only purchased e-books and e-courses from bloggers I trust.
A beginner’s guide to growing your blog – Jenny has been a successful blogger for years and offers everything you need to know to grow your audience including utilising social media, how to attract new bloggers and much more. All for just £2.50!
The Ultimate Guide To Blog Monetisation – Kayleigh has been a long standing, successful blogger and has a great selection of e-books to help you be the most effective blogger. This e-book is to teach you how to start earning from your blog. It covers a range of topics such as: affiliate marketing, how to start making money with email marketing. Seasonal sales, running ads, sponsored posts and much more. All for £10!
A beginner’s guide to affiliate sales – Another e-book from Kayleigh sharing the basics and tips for how you can start making money with affiliate sales. All for £5.
A beginner’s guide to blogging – Jenny shares all her years of experience, with the basics to blogging and how you can start to make your blog a success. All for just £5.99.
These e-books have been really useful; I would definitely recommend these resources especially if you are a blogging beginner.
These are my top blog investments that I would recommend, but there are so many other investments that you should look into:
- Pinterest strategies v- Tailwind
- Scheduling apps – Buffer or Hootsuite
- Email subscription service
- Blog coaching
- A virtual assistant
My domain was probably the best thing I did, although sometimes I wish I hadn’t so it was easier to rebrand!
Stock photos can be so helpful. I love that Canva has a lot free for members, but the premium is absolutely worth it.
You’ve shared some excellent resources 🙂
Cora | https://www.teapartyprincess.co.uk/
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Great article. I agree that a blog must have a theme. It helps to keep your audience engaged. I delayed investing in Canva Pro, but ever since I did my graphics are 10 times better.
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This is packed with brilliant advice.
Awh thank you for featuring me in this post, I really appreciate it! Canva Pro is SO worth the money. For stock images, I use Styled Stock Society and I absolutely love it. Their images are beautiful and fit in so well with my blog, so that is a definite worthy investment for me!
You are very welcome? I haven’t heard of this stock brand, thank you for sharing. X
I’ve always been self hosted so I don’t know what it’s like any other way, but my advice about going self hosted is to research hosting providers so you don’t get stuck with a bad one
That is some great piece of advice. Thank you for reading and commenting.
My domain name and blog theme were the best investments I’ve made for my blogging. When it comes to stock photos, I typically use Unsplash or Pixabay. This year I have been considering looking into blogging conferences and webinars to expand my knowledge in blogging. Thank you for sharing great information!
I definitely recommend the knowledge ebooks in this post. Thank you for reading and commenting.
This is a great post thanks for sharing these really helpful suggestions. The additional stock photo links are really helpful as well I have been looking for some other ones!
I am glad you found it helpful. Thank you for reading and commenting.
This is very good advice. I’m not self-hosted but I’m planning on changing something, whether it’s upgrading to the WP Pro package or switching to self-hosted. They are retiring their premium package and their options are so limited. I can’t add plugins or anything so it might be worth it (for me, anyways) just to upgrade so I can access things like SEO, plug-ins, and customized WP themes. If anything, I want to stay with WP so I don’t lose followers and have to start over again.
I can only justify the price of things because I’m currently working. I tell myself that if I need money, it can be had. I leaned the hard way not to be cheap when it comes to blogging because it shows. Right now, I’m stuck with a free, retired theme and need to change it. It’s a work in progress!
Thanks for sharing your suggestions! This is a fresh and innovative blog post which caught my attention 🙂
I’ve been blogging on and off for just under two years now but I’m getting to the point where I want to start putting more time in and growing my blog.
Getting my domain name sorted was absoloutely one of the best things I did starting out and this post has given me some really good ideas on what to focus on next and what I shouldn’t worry too much about.
Thank you for writing it.
HS
Good luck with growing your blog! Thank you for reading and commenting.
Thanks for the great info. I’m new to blogging and it can be overwhelming. This is a great help.
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I recently invested in a new blog theme. It is one of the best decisions I have made. I wish I have done it sooner. Thank you for sharing.
It looks great! Thank you for reading and commenting.
Over the years I’ve spent way too much on courses I’ve either not ever started, not finished, even ones that were eye wateringly expensive, and frustrating that I just couldn’t then make the time. I’ve also paid for some really good ones, and ones I’ve done that I’ve not learnt anything more than I knew already – but that they gave me the time set aside to work along with it which I might not have done before. I think the domain is the big thing, and for me self hosted as you can get it fairly cheap. The biggest free investment you need though is time.
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Amazing suggestions! I think buying my domain name was the best thing I’ve done for my blog. I use both free stock photos and the free version of canva but I’m considering taking the plunge and spending a little more now – I think having fresh stock photos in particular is so important! Thank you so much for sharing x
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I have checked off all of the items you listed. My favorite is Canva Pro. We have become very close friends. I love it!
That’s great! Thank you for reading and commenting.
I agree with you, my own domain & going self-hosted were absolute musts! I love my blog theme too so very glad I paid for it. I did Canva Pro for a few months but it was something I wasn’t able to keep paying for x
Thank you for reading and commenting. X
I’ve slowly invested in a lot of these. First with the domain and self-hosting. Then I purchased my first theme after playing around with some free ones for a while. Then I got Canva Pro (which is a complete lifesaver!). Most recently, I paid for some security to monitor my site, since I got hacked a few times. I’m so glad I’ve invested in my blog, because it’s something I hold so dear to my heart. Great post xxx
Melina | http://www.melinaelisa.com
Thank you for reading and commenting. X
Great stuff! Self-hosting has a real drawback when it comes to traffic though, and that’s being on the Reader. I believe you can still appear on the Reader to your followers, but not to a new audience, which is the thing that’s stopping me from making the shift, even through this WordPress pricing snafu that’s happening. Anyway, thanks for this post!
That is a good point. Thank you for reading and commenting.
I agree — the key difference i noticed when I went self-hosted is that I was more separated from the wordpress community. You definitely have to rely on promoting & using SEO to get traffic to your site.
Anyway what’s going on with the wordpress pricing? Are they increasing their prices?
You know, I’ve just received an email telling me that my payment is due next month, and the price is still the same (mine is the Personal plan). So I think they’re really honouring their old customers.
These are really good pieces of advice for a beginner blogger like myself! I especially agree with using Canva to make post banners and feature images, as it absolutely has some fantastic resources
Thank you for reading and commenting.
I love how much easy to understand information is in this blog post! The idea of being able to have plugins when you go self-hosted is a huge plus, as I’ve seen so many that would help with blogging. I didn’t realise that blog themes were so affordable.
I can’t wait to be in a position to invest in some of these key investments for my blog.
Thank you for sharing. 😊
Thank you for reading and commenting. Good luck with investing in your blog ☺️
Some great suggestions! Canva pro has been essential for me too!
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Fantastic tips! It’s a good roadmap for new bloggers and old ones too! Thanks for sharing!
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Absolutely agree with all of this. My domain name, theme and canva pro are one of my best blogging investment and I don’t regret it. Thanks for sharing
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Blog domain name is something I have checked. I used free images from Unsplash , dreamstime, pexels and Pixabay. Selfhosting is something I will think about in future. Nice informative article.
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I have done all of these except (6) which I’m keen to do when I have more spare time. All highly recommended and less challenging than people might think.
Yes… this investment are worth it if you wanna do well in blogging. Thank you for sharing.
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Hi Lauren. Some great blogging investment ideas there. Out of curiousity, how long did you make use of free picture resources, or even your own photos, before going for a paid-for option?
Where I can I choose my own images. I will often still used free pictures. It just depends on what post I am sharing x
Yes! These investments are all definitely worth the while for your blog! Thanks for sharing this helpful list!
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I like Canva & Pixabay. The domain is a must and that reminds me to renew it asap. Lol
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I’m really loving this post lovely, thank you so much for sharing with us. I’m defiantly going to take these into consideration as I’d love my blog to be high quality and ‘professional’ looking. I have heard many things about being self-hosted and it’s something I’m defiantly going to look into! Xo
Elle – ellegracedeveson.com
Great post – I often wonder what to do with my blog. I host a radio show and put playlists etc up there along with some opinions pieces.. the blog theme template always gets me – I find, for me personally some are too girly.
Would love your opinion?
Im at https://nessymon.com
Thank you for reading and commenting. Have you tried the purchasing one? You can also change any of the images to make it less girly.
Great post! I’ve been using the free version of Canva for a few months now and recently upgraded to Pro and love that I can find more photos of diverse families. I haven’t purchased an e-books on blogging but it does seem tempting. I will take another look at your list!
Crystal | http://www.amazingbaby.app
Thank you for reading and commenting. I hope this post can help you!
Great. I agree with many of the investments you mentioned, such as blog hosting and canva. Canva is fantastic for creating pins and other graphics that you need for your site. Blog hosting is great as it definitely gives you that edge over other blogs. Choosing the right theme as well, though I am not sure about paying for one however as there are many that are available for free. I have also used the Rosalie theme on my blog — I loved it for the longest time — but it has one little drawback in that you can’t really customize it & it kind of defeats the purpose of looking professional when there are others with the same theme as well.
I am also not sure about blog hosting offering the best support. While they do try to help you, it seems to me that they are rather limited in how they can help you. In fact, I have received the best support from the Happiness Engineers on wordpress.com — especially since they can go ahead and modify anything that needs fixing. Host providers really can’t do that as they simply guide you — you definitely have more independence from going selfhosted/wordpress.org.
Anyway great post & thanks for posting..
This is an excellent post filled with useful advice. I hope new bloggers will take note. I haven’t started self-hosting as yet but my domain name is one of the best blogging investments I’ve made. It surely paid off. Thanks for sharing 🤗
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I agree with all of these – and while we do not use stock photos as much, having access to a library is definitely worth it!
Definitely! Thank you for reading and commenting.
I definitely agree that it’s so worth going self-hosted and buying your own blog theme! I’ve been thinking of buying Canva Pro so I may make the investment now you’ve recommended it 🙂 xx
It is definitely worth the money xx
I’m relatively new to blogging so this was very helpful, thank you!
I am glad it was helpful. Thank you for reading and commenting.
I am thankful for all the information shared in this post Lauren! I use several of the items you’ve recommended but need to read more about growing my blog. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for reading and commenting. X
These are all good blogging investments and all are definitely worth the investment, especially a domain name x
Lucy | http://www.lucymary.co.uk
You made some great suggestions. I am self hosted and really like it. What I love about blogging is there is always something to learn. Thank you for sharing this important post. ☺️
Pastor Natalie (ExamineThisMoment)
Letstakeamoment.com
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Also it is very important to invest in quality content. If the content is of high quality, traffic will eventually flock to your website with less marketing efforts. My two cents!!
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