There are many approaches to this, but it costs me roughly $25 a year to renew my .com domain and pay for my $1 a month vps. Im using an open source cms and pay nothing for fonts because I don't monetize my blog (thus can use any of the non-commercial liscensed fonts).

I could use a more robust platform or a vps host which claims better uptime, or even find a cheaper tld for my domaim, but this works fine for me.

Publii + Github pages works quite well for writing/CMS/hosting IME.

Pay for the domain, yes.

The rest is optional, with good free choices up and down the stack - we're blessed with almost infinite options, paid and free.

It's not easy to have your own little corner online - but it's not hard either. And it doesn't have to cost.

For discovery I really love Bubbles (https://bubbles.town) & they even have RSS feeds.