MBA2035 Q&A Wednesday: How much money do I need to start an affiliate travel blog?

Hey Fidelity, how can I remember to invest every month? With the Fidelity app you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs. Huh, that sounds easier than I thought. You got this? Yeah, I do. Now where did I put my keys? You will find them where you left them.

Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC Member NYSE SIPC Ready to Save on New Tech it's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals.

Hey oh welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show Business Lessons. You can't afford to miss every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On Q and A Wednesdays, I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you got a question you want to ask, just go ahead and email me over@omar00mba.net Today's question is from Alex and Alex writes in and says, I love travel. I've been traveling the world on and off for the last five years and been journaling about it throughout my travels. I want to start a travel blog that is monetized through affiliate commission. I know there's a lot of opportunities there and I also know there's a lot of travel blogs out there. But I still want to do it. My question is how much money do I need to start one? What are the major expenses and ongoing costs? I'm happy and willing to learn a few things if it means saving some money. Appreciate the advice Alex. Blogging is one of the first successful business models on the Internet and a lot of people overlook it. A lot of the businesses that I admired and followed when I first started in business were blogging. Essentially they're media companies, they provide entertainment, they provide information in exchange, they make money through ads, through affiliate commission like Alex mentioned, or even their own products and services. And the good news is, starting and running one is not that expensive. It's actually one of the most practical online businesses to start and I'll explain in today's episode. I'LL walk you through. What are the major expenses? What are the ongoing expenses, what are the things that you should not go cheap on and really invest some money in? And what are some of the things that you really don't need to spend too much on money on, especially at the start. Can't wait to get into this one. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

Introducing Fidelity Trader plus, the next generation of advanced trading from Fidelity. Customize your tools and charts and access them seamlessly across desktop, web and mobile for faster trades anywhere you go. Try the all new Fidelity Trader Plus. Learn more about our most powerful trading platform yet@fidelity.com TraderPlus investing involves risk, including risk of loss Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC Member NYSE SIPC.

Starting a blog and monetizing it is actually a really fun type of business to run because really you just need to focus on your audience. But you really do need to focus on the content, because without the content, you have no audience. Audience is not going to find you. And if you don't have an audience, you really can't monetize. Whether it's running ads or making affiliate commission or even selling your own products, your actual website is really important because it's where everything happens. So let's talk about how much it costs to start your website, have it built and have it running for the next foreseeable future. You can see your website, which also includes a blog, as three parts. Hosting, which are the servers in the cloud that allow your website to be available for the world any time of day. Cms, which is your content management system, this is kind of like the program, the software that you use to organize your content and put it on the web. And then thirdly, your actual website design the theme or the thing that actually is shown to your customers. Now there are providers that actually bundle all three of these bundles. The hosting, the cms, the content management system, as well as the design. These are things like Ghost or Squarespace where they give you everything in one place. You might have heard of WordPress. Now WordPress is the CMS, but you still need to host it somewhere like a hosting provider like WP Engine, and you still need to buy a theme or use a theme and we'll talk about it in a second. To design your website. There's a lot of options out there. There's a lot of different providers and options and different combinations between hosting and CMS and design, all that kind of stuff. But I'm just going to give it to you Straight. If I was starting a blog today, I would host it or I would create it on ghost.ghost.org Traditionally I would have said WordPress. I use WordPress till this day. And it has its advantages, but it also has a lot of maintenance problems, things to look out for, vulnerabilities. And again, you gotta piecemeal your design and hosting. Ghost provides everything for you. Your site, your blog, everything. You can choose one of their beautiful themes and you can go with it. No, this is not a sponsored episode or anything like that. I'm just a fan of theirs and they created a absolutely rock solid product. Now, surprisingly, they're not expensive. They start at $9 a month. That's the annual discount. But if you want to go month to month, I believe it's like $11 a month. And of course you can upgrade and grow with them. Now, the reason why I'm saying you should go with them is because you have your hosting, you have your cms, it's easy for you to edit and wr blog posts and make it all happen. But I do think when it comes to the design of your blog, that you do invest some money. Ghost will provide some, you know, themes that you can use, but they're free themes and everybody's using them and you're just going to look like everybody else. I would actually invest in somebody customizing a theme or creating a custom theme for you. And there's a lot of people that do this that are really good designers and developers that can build something for you on something like Ghost. And this is where you're going to invest some money. It's going to cost you a bit to get a really good designer to work on this ballpark. I would say for a full theme, depending on all the different kind of pages you want, It'll be between 3 to 5,000 just to get started. You know, this is kind of the going rate for somebody who is actually good at what they do. Now, if that is a little bit too much for you, I would recommend you can just get started with one of the themes that you like. You can customize the colors and all the fonts and things like that with the system in Ghost. But it won't be, you know, super original. And that's okay because you're just getting started and that's fine. Start building your content. It's all about the content. Start getting your SEO juice going. Just start blogging. And then as you start moving and you have a bit more cash, you can start improving your website. I've redesigned our Websites for several different types of businesses over and over and paid over and over. And that's okay because businesses evolve, they change. But you don't need to do it at the start. This is why I love blogging. It's so inexpensive to get started. You could literally get started for a few bucks a month. Your biggest investment is going to be time, which means writing, which is creating great content, which is editing your photos from your travels and adding it to your blog posts, getting creative, doing collabs and really just falling in love with the work and not really worrying about the results. Right now in the beginning, you just need to just put in the work, put in the reps and get your work out there. The practice is more important than the product. You might be asking, what about a logo? What about my branding? Listen, you don't really need to invest too much in this, especially at the start. Later on you can customize this, make it better, get a graphic designer to help you out. I recommend to create your own and there are great ways you can do this. Canva has a logo creator. I do recommend, if you're going to create a logo, create one with a royalty free font. Don't use fonts that cost money. Do a bit of search on the font you're using. Use a classic font like Arial, Times New Roman or Helvetica. Some people create logos with fonts that they don't have a license for and it's a bit of a messy situation from there on. So you have the option to use a font that doesn't require a license or literally buying the license for your font. It can get really confusing about which license you need and all that kind of stuff. This is why I'm saying when you're getting started, just use a free font. There's plenty of them. And if you're wondering how can I create a logo, I'm not creative. Just use a typeface logo, which means the name of your blog in font. That's it. You don't need an icon, you don't need an image. Just use the name of the blog. And if you're wondering what should my name be? And I don't have a name for my blog, I always say, if you're in doubt, just use your own name. Okay? You can never go wrong with your own name. It's gonna be unique in some way and no matter what you write about, it's always gonna be on brand. It's gonna be applicable.

The official Game of Thrones podcast is back to break down the brand new HBO Original Series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Set one century before the events of Game of Thrones, this series tells the tale of a lowly hedge knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his squire, Egg. I'm Greta Johnson. And I'm Jason Concepcion. Together we are your guides to Westeros, unpacking every episode of this brand new series immediately after it airs on HBO Max. You can watch us on HBO Max or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

To wrap up today's Q and A Wednesday's Question from Alex Creating a blog. Whether you're monetizing it with affiliate commission or ads or your own products, it's super simple to get started. There is really low, low expenses here. Now as you grow, you might buy other things or hire new people, but I found that all that is a distraction from getting started. Just get started. Now you're going to need one more thing to get started that I did not mention. Which is your domain name? This is your website address. Like Omar zenum.com I recommend you check out Google Domains. It's where I register all my domains. They're also a past sponsor of the show and they might have a great 10% discount still available. Just go to domains Google 100 MBA. Again, choose a domain that matches or as close as possible to your blog name or your personal name. If you're using your personal name, don't worry so much about getting the.com if you can get it. Great net co whatever is just as good. Most people search anyway and they'll find you via Google Search. But you're going to need that domain name to hook up to your website. Over at Ghost, domains are about 10 bucks a month. It could be a little bit more if it's a shorter domain or in demand domain domains are about 10 to 15 to $20 a year. Very inexpensive. But obviously if the domain's in demand or it's a short domain, it's going to get a little bit pricey. So be a little flexible if you want to keep things within budget. Well, there you have it guys. Super simple. Alex, My advice? Get started over at ghost.org, get yourself a domain and just start writing your blogs. I'm excited to hear about your travels. I'm a travel lover myself. Please email me and let me know once you're launched. Would love to give you a shout out to you on the show once it's done. If you got a question you want to ask, just go ahead and email me over at omar00mba net and I'll make sure to answer right here on Q and A Wednesday. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you're going to start a blog, if you're going to start a podcast, you're going to start a YouTube channel. Any content based type of business or activity. Understand this is a long term game. Okay? This is something that's going to take some time to see results. So commit to at least a year of consistent publishing, weekly at minimum. So weekly blog posts, weekly video, weekly podcasts, at least so that you can get enough reps, enough chances to find success and find your voice. This is the one thing about content that you need to be aware of. You just can't experiment with it with a few weeks. You got to give it your all for at least a year. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

Hi, I'm Michael from the War and Treaty. You know the jingle now Discover the facts about Ozempic, a GLP1. Only Novo Nordisk makes FDA approved Ozempic. Learn about the real thing.

Talk to your healthcare professional today. Call 1833 ozempic or visit ozempic.com to view the medication guide and to learn more about Ozempic. Semaglutide injection 0.5 milligrams, 1 milligram and 2 milligrams.