What is the cost of starting a blog in Kenya? This is a common question among Kenyans who want to start blogging.
The cost of starting a blog depends on several factors but more important is web hosting, web design and domain registration. When starting a blog, the first step is to register a domain name. A domain name starts with the www. Initials and is one that gives your website a unique identity. A website cannot be online without a domain name.
How do you register a domain name?
I know most of you are totally new in this blogging ecosystem but by the end of this article, you will be able to have a running website.
Registering a domain name is sometimes tricky but is a straight forward process. To begin the process, you must come up with several domain names you believe perfectly suits your business. Just write at least 10 domain suggestions so that when you will be searching for the names online, you will find at least one that is available, then you pick one. If you want to register e-commerce site, you will have to come up with several domain name suggestions,eg www.ecommercekenya.com,www.technairobi.com,www.masishatech.com etc. Once you have the suggestions, about 10, you will select a company you want to buy a domain name from. In Kenya, I suggest you buy a domain name from Kenya Web Experts but I will strongly encourage you to buy from Bluehost if it’s a .com domain name.
With a list of domain names, visit bluehost (you can visit through this link).Once you are at Bluehost website, click on hosting, then domains. A page will open where you will key in your domain name suggestions to determine one that’s available. The domain name that you will find available is the one you register. To register, you simply fill in the personal and bank details the company would request.
Domain name registration costs Ksh 1,200 to Ksh1,500.
The next step is web hosting.
You can decide to host your site at Kenya Web Experts, Bluehost or Liquidweb.Kenya Web Experts is suitable for small websites and is cheaper, but if a viral website, I suggest you host it at Bluehost. At Kenya Web Experts, you will pay Ksh2, 100 per year while at Bluehost you will pay Ksh250-Ksh350 per month.
I know when you make your calculations, you will most probably prefer Kenya Web Experts but eventually you will be forced to migrate your site to Bluehost or Kinsta after you realize that your blog needs SiteLock, better loading speed,100% uptime and many important things a successful website must have.
The total cost of web hosting is Ksh 2,100 to Ksh 10,000 per year for small websites. The cost increases significantly as your site grows.For instance , Venas News pays Kinsta Ksh 20,000 every month, but the site is protected from hacking, the loading speed is wonderful and the SEO is perfect—I am happy.The site was initially hosted by Kenya Web Experts,which were nice to us but it grew beyond the company.
After you are done with web hosting, you are required to create a website. This is the final step which requires an expert to help you come up with a website. If you find someone who desperately needs your cash, he will quote Ksh 30,000 but if you find a nice guy, he will charge you Ksh 10,000.At Venas News, we charge Ksh 15,000 where we design a perfect website which is based on international standards. It takes a maximum of 3 days to build a professional website. We also host websites for Ksh 5,000 per year. Our goal is to help other bloggers grow. Those who need website design services contact us through [email protected],[email protected] or call 0722927138.
Another alternative of building a website is to design a website using BlogSpot template, which is hosted by Google. If you go this route, you don’t need hosting services since your site will be hosted by Google, but there are several disadvantages of being hosted by Google.The major disadvantage is that Google can decide to pull down your entire site if you violate their policies. This is why we encourage you to have a WordPress site.
For WordPress sites, you can use a free WordPress template or a premium one. Our websites use a premium template, which costs Ksh6, 000 and is purchased from Theme forest (Click here to see the templates).The template is also used by all top blogs in Kenya, which includes Mpasho.co.ke .In the the link we have provided, you can download a free Worpress theme.
After the website has been designed and hosted, you will be able to start publishing content. At this stage, you have a website and the estimated cost is Ksh 15,000 to Ksh20, 000.So, the average cost of starting a blog in Kenya is Ksh 15,000.
This is the cost of starting a blog but when it grows and becomes a target of hackers.You will be required to have an SSL certificate.You will also need to boost the SEO rankings if you want to accelerate its growth.You will notice with time that it’s not easy to get organic traffic since there are established sites which attract most of the traffic.Most bloggers use Alexa or SEMrush tools to boost their traffic.You can see how much SEMrush charges in this link