Well, here we are on the last day of September. Man, time flies. Only 3 more months left of 2014. Anyway, this will be my 31st post of the month. So even though I didn’t actually post every single day, this averages out to at least a post a day for the month. So mission accomplished again. Yay me.

This reminds me, recently a friend on Facebook commented on an interview he read about somebody, I don’t remember who, but the article referred to the person as a podcaster. And my friend thought that sounded like an odd description, asking “Is podcaster a real thing now?” I guess the idea is that since pretty much anyone can do it, it doesn’t seem that legitimate. But I said sure, it’s like me calling myself a blogger, because I write this blog. Despite the fact that it’s just something I do in my spare time for fun and don’t make any money off of it, in fact it costs me money to do it, I consider myself a blogger, so there you go.

That’s right. It costs me money to run this blog. How much?

$57.99 a year.

To break it down there’s the $14.99 a year that I pay to renew the domain name iblogalot.com. I always recommend that serious bloggers buy their own domain. That way, regardless of what web platform they use (WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Tumblr, etc.) they can keep the same url if they decide to switch to another platform. I use 1and1.com for my registration. There are some other cheaper domain registrars, but 1and1 includes automatic private registration. Meaning that if someone looks up the domain to see who owns it they won’t get my name and home address. So far, I haven’t had a problem with 1and1, and recommend it to others when buying domains, like my brother and my Godsister, when they set up their blogs. In full disclosure, I do recall a friend on Facebook (I don’t remember who) who was using 1and1 for full website hosting, and she was complaining about their service and said she planned to switch to another company. But I can’t comment on that, I only using them for domain registration.

Then on top of that I pay WordPress $13 a year for url mapping, that’s to remove “.wordpress.” from my url. And then I also pay WordPress another $30 a year to keep this blog ad-free. That’s what it costs to me to do this.

That’s on top of the $136 I spent for two premium themes (the design of the blog), instead of using one of the free themes that WordPress offers. Each one was $68. I bought one and tried it for awhile but then I bought the one I’m currently using and I like it better. But that’s a one-time purchase for each.

Why do I do this? I don’t know. I just feel compelled to write about stuff. It started about 9 years ago with Myspace. That’s where I first began writing a blog, and I guess I just got hooked on it. Even if nobody was reading (which was the case the first few years) I’d keep updating this, just for myself.

Next month will probably be less active, because I’m going to be busy with something else, but I’ll still be here. And, as always, to you (yes, YOU), I say THANKS FOR READING!