The cost of running a website is always an important factor to consider when you are setting up an online business or personal website. Costs vary greatly depending on what type of website you are running and the extent you plan to maintain it. These differences can be substantial to the profit margin of your operation. A good rule of thumb for deciding on your budget is to only have as many out-of-pocket expenses as you expect to make in a year.

Reducing Your Overall Running Costs
Costs also depend upon the type and size of your website. If you are running a fairly small-scale operation, like a personal website, your operational costs will be fairly minimal or even zero. Running a larger website maintenance plan involves more people and more specialized equipment. In addition, the hosting service that you use will add to the operational costs of running your website.
The number of pages that you have running on your website will also have a major impact on your hosting costs. For example, if you have around five pages then you should be looking at a minimum of ten monthly hosting fees. If your website has twenty pages, then you will have to calculate how much you would need to pay for each individual page and then figure out how many people would have to view your website to make that possible. You can also add up how many people would need to access your WordPress blog or any other plugins and themes.
Another way to cut down on hosting costs is by not over-doing it when it comes to updating content on your websites. It is easy to add content to blogs or create new content for social networks. However, when it comes to adding videos or pictures, updating them all at once will cause a huge bandwidth hit on your server. You could end up with a very high bandwidth usage, as well as too many pop ups. So, make sure that you do not push out updates more often than is necessary. As far as updating your content, stick to one particular theme and keep everything consistent.

Website Security
Lastly, and probably most importantly, is security. When it comes to adding new content, keeping track of who is viewing which pages, and monitoring your security is extremely important. As with content updates, make sure everything on your website is encrypted. If you are using a free blogging platform then this is a must.
Overall, choosing your hosting services will depend on what you need the most at the end of the day. Are you just starting out and simply looking to learn as you go or are you a more established business that needs to stay on top of everything? If you are a beginner and simply want to learn the ropes then consider getting shared hosting and don’t worry about spending a lot of money. However, if you are trying to take your website to the next level then go for a dedicated hosting plan. Dedicated hosting is the best when it comes to monetizing your website.