Blogging is a really cheap hobby, it also kills a lot of time.

Domain $18, includes privacy guard
Hosting $25 a year with A Small Orange

I made $2 of that back from AdSense in my first month, so we’ll call it $68. =)

—
Brass Poker – blog written by a Las Vegas Poker Professional

Bloggers are self-employed business people — I call them indies — and bloggers may deduct all the same expenses as any other indie. Consider expenses such as: a portion of ISP cost; a portion of hardware; trips to BestBuy; publications or subscriptions related to your blog subject; your desk chair.

Read more at my blog post Bloggers, designers, inventors: 3 Ways to Expand Business Deductions .

I have been a tax consultant to indies for more than 25 years and I know that most indies cheat themselves by not taking every deduction possible. If you want to get an idea of the deductions available to bloggers there’s a complimentary list of business expenses for the indie available at my blog and my website.

June Walker
http://junewalkeronline.blogspot.com

For example, when I started writing the blog pretty seriously I invested about $70 in a nice digital voice recorder for press conferences and interviews and that sort of thing.

Another somewhat unusual blogging expense has come from traveling to see the games. This weekend I drove a total of 200 miles to and from a road game and also had some other miscellaneous expense (food/parking etc.). Although I didn’t have to pay for a ticket to the game (thanks to a press pass) Travel and related expenses cost me close to $50.

Clearly these expenses aren’t the norm for most bloggers, but they are part of this particular niche.

A computer devaluates about 30% per year.. When you’ve got a $2000 box, this could make a nice difference.

It is the valuable time that costs for running a good blog.

It is the content and preparing it makes a difference.

Regards.

BTW, I keep getting this error message intermittently:
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You don’t have permission to access /wp-content/cache/supercache/www.problogger.net/archives/2008/02/04/how-to-herd-organic-search-traffic-to-your-blog/index.html on this server.

I know that I can deduct blogging-related things – like you said – computer equipement and the like. I haven’t taken any deductions yet but I still have some time before I have to file my taxes -

See: http://www.howbloggersmakemoney.com if interested in blogging stuff and for general blasts I’m also doing a combined PR/SEO burst and that’s starting to be a real resource for my clients.

Thanks,
Scott

Apart from that, there is only income :)

I also spend about 9 dollars a month on good stats reporting and misc site fees.

I bring in about 900 a month right now from my 2 blogs (only one monetized at the moment) and have been blogging for a little over 2 years.

Domains names and webspace I pay for, because it’s hard to DIY that. ;) I averaged between $5-$10/month for webspace, which was more than covered by some advertising on just one blog.

Templates I’ve hardly ever paid for any, preferring to design my own or tweak an exisiting one. For the casual blogger, paying for a custom template can be quite an uneccesary cost. Sure, it look pretty, but it mostly supports someone else.

I’m willing to go pretty far before I pay for things like design. :) Recently I have, although it will be for a professional blog network, not my own personal site.

Are other outside “tech” expenses still counted as expenses? For examples, I post short cooking videos on my blog. If I purchase specific items for that video is that a business expense??