I just purchased a domain name and would like a very inexpensive hosting plan that at the very minimum has cpanel and easily installing blogging software. I am thinking of hostgator, but is there anything cheaper? I could sacrifice a little quality for price at this point...
Have you looked at Asmallorange's Tiny Plan? It is $25/year, and you can bring it down further by using a coupon. Do note that space (75MB) and bandwidth (3GB/mo) are pretty meagre- so if you're looking for a photo or video blog, you'll use up that in no time at all. I haven't personally tried Hawkhost, but they seem to be offering great service judging by their threads at WHT, and their plans ( with the discount) seem quite good.
I use hostmonster, its cheap, they have online chat support and I have had zero problems. For me, the support is by far the best part. 24-hr live chat support.
You could always go for Blogger, it's free and reliable. They allow you to attach your own domain, and while you're stuck with their blogging software, it's not half bad. There's no bandwidth limit, either.