Yes, South Africans can make money blogging in South Africa. At one time I was earning between R2 000 and R3 000 per month from blogging, in just my spare time.

If you would also like to try make money blogging in South Africa, you’re likely going to have some questions. I’ll try predict those questions in this blog post, and answer them.

11 Questions you may have about How South Africans Make Money Blogging in South Africa

1 )
QUESTION:
You said “At one time I was earning between R2 000 and R3 000 per month from blogging,…” Why are you not earning that amount anymore?

ANSWER:
I’m earning much less now because I did not maintain the 5 to 20 hours work a month that I mention in point 10) below. Another reason is that I neglected to update all my sites frequently enough (with new content) due to the fact that I had too many sites and not enough time to work hard at all of them.

I couldn’t spend enough time on any one site. Hopefully that will change soon, and my blogging earnings will increase again, now that Tony and I have cancelled many of our other sites, and are moving pages ( or have moved some pages already – 26 June 2013) to this one site, tant.co.za – it will be easier to manage just one site, and keep an eye out for broken links too – another reason why my earnings dropped – I had too many broken links popping up on my sites all over (which seemed to cause my natural search results positions to drop on Google), and I didn’t have the time to fix all those broken links inbetween doing my other work.

A broken link happens when a site you’re linking out to no longer exists, and I was linking out to other sites quite a bit. At least I now know to limit how much I link out to other sites. UPDATE! I am back to earning between R2000 and R3000 per month from blogging and I am working at increasing it too! (working at getting more traffic to tant.co.za) 🙂

2 )
QUESTION:
Do I need my own site to make money blogging in South Africa?

ANSWER:
You do not necessarily need your own site to make money blogging or writing online, as you can join free online writing sites – and can do your blogging there.

One of the advantages of being a member at an online writing site: being very active within the community of an online writing site may easily draw lots of traffic to your pages of writing on that site.

One of the disadvantages of being a member at an online writing site: you have to share your earnings with the site owners.

You could also get a totally free Blogger blog. Just go to blogger.com and set one up. Choose a name for your Blogger blog that relates to the topic or topics you are going to be writing about.

Note: most if not all of the more professional and higher earning bloggers all have their own sites (register a domain and get hosting and then add their own site)

3 )
QUESTION:
If I want my own .co.za site how do I register a domain for my blog?

ANSWER:
If you do want your own domain, then just go to Google and type “domain registration services” into the search bar, and look through the results to see which service provider you would like to use to register the domain for your blog.

Or you could register your .co.za domain through us, for R120

4 )
QUESTION:
How much will it cost me to get to the point where I have my own domain, and a blog on that domain so that I can just log in and start writing and adding my blog posts (articles) to my blog?

ANSWER:
Well, you can search on Google, or Bing, or Yahoo, for domain registration and site hosting services, and for blog set-up services, and you can visit a few sites and compare prices. Or, through us it could cost you as little as R120 for .co.za domain registration (renewable yearly), and R400 for hosting (renewable yearly) and R300 for the cheapest of our website packages (once-off price.) This may also be an interesting Christmas gift or birthday gift for a South African matriculant who is struggling to find work, but enjoys using the Internet.

5 )
QUESTION:
What on earth will I write about for my blog posts?

ANSWER:
Because one does not make money blogging overnight, to help speed up the process one should mostly write about what one already knows a little bit about. This is better than having to spend lots of time on researching your topics first. Writing about something one is passionate about, or something that one has a bit of knowledge about, makes it easier to write a lot, frequently.

Topics do not have to be too involved:
Write about your favourite hobby or sport.
Write about the places that you visit outside of where you live.
Write about the places that you visit in your own home town.
Write about parenting.
Write about gadgets and technology.
Write about computer games.
Write about cooking or baking.
Write about movies or television shows.
Write about health or skin care or hair care.

6 )
QUESTION:
How does writing and adding blog posts to my blog make me money?

ANSWER:
Well, it doesn’t actually. Not on its own, anyway. You need to have advertisements on your blog too.

You should not join any advertising programs until you have a few pages of content on your site – perhaps at least 10 to 20 pages, and until your site is receiving at least 50 visitors a day, or else your advertising program applications may be rejected.

You can join The Google Adsense program, as well as affiliate programs like Amazon or Offer Forge or ClickBank or SFI. You will display the ads of these programs on your site. You are now an affiliate for other people’s sites or products (you are advertising other people’s sites, businesses, products or services, and the better you advertise for these places or people, the more you can earn.) You should add a privacy policy page to your site too. Look at the privacy policy pages of other sites to get an idea of what should be mentioned in your own site’s privacy policy.

7 )
QUESTION:
I still don’t understand how the adverts on my blog will make me money.

ANSWER:
To make money blogging you need to have lots of people visiting your site (or visiting your pages on an online writing site)

When people click the ads on your pages, and visit the site an ad links to, depending on which affiliate programs you joined, you earn commissions for sending a visitor to somebody else’s site, or, when somebody buys something on that site after having clicked the ad or link on your site (that contains your referral code in it), or when they perform certain actions on that site like fill in a form, or join, or be active on that site.

The affiliate programs that you joined pay you. Different affiliate programs have different payment options available. You may get a cheque in the post, or you may receive a payment directly into your bank account, or you may receive money into your PayPal account. Ask your bank to help you link your PayPal account with your bank account.

You may also have some people or companies approaching your directly (or maybe you approach them) and they pay you directly (perhaps on a monthly basis) for putting their ads on your site. This isn’t quite the same as joining an affiliate program or ad program – it’s making money from selling or renting direct advertising space on your site. If your site is getting a lot of traffic (visitors) you can charge higher prices for putting other people’s ads on your site.

8 )
QUESTION:
Making money blogging in South Africa doesn’t sound all that hard to do. How hard is it?

ANSWER:
The most important thing to remember when it comes to blogging for money, is that you need to get as many people as possible to visit your site (or your pages on an online writing site.)

Although it may take quite some time, one of the easiest and cheapest ways to get lots of people to visit your site is by writing and adding lots of new articles to your site, whenever you get the chance to. The more pages you have, the more people are likely to visit your site, and the more often your ads will be clicked.

Once you have many people regularly visiting your site, you may not have to add new articles all that often, perhaps only once a week would be enough to maintain a certain monthly income.

There are many free ways in which you can increase the amount of people that visit your site.

9 )
QUESTION:
Can I make a lot of money blogging in South Africa?

ANSWER:
Yes you can make a lot of money blogging in South Africa, BUT do not be fooled into thinking it will be easy! To make a lot of money blogging all on your own will take you a long time, and a lot of determination, patience, learning, and hard work. You will not make much money at all at first, and you may want to give up trying.

10 )
QUESTION:
Now it’s sounding hard to make money blogging in South Africa. Why do people even bother to try?

ANSWER:
The fantastic thing about blogging is that you can earn passive income from blogging. Passive income is money you earn even when you are not working, simply because you have already done the work to make that passive income possible. At first you work hard to increase your monthly income from blogging, but once you get your monthly income up to an amount that you are happy with, you may need to put in only 5 to 20 hours work a month to maintain that monthly income! That is why people bother to try – the rewards after a lot of hard work, are worth it.

11 )
QUESTION:
Is there a way to speed up the process from when I start blogging to when I start making a decent income from blogging?

ANSWER:
Of course. If you have the money and don’t mind spending the money, then hire people or companies to manage and run the entire blogging process for you instead of doing everything yourself. Many people or companies are experts at blogging and all that it entails, but they don’t want their own blog or are not interested in owning and running their own blog because their own personal passions and interests lie elsewhere.

If you don’t want to deal with all the different people who may be helping you with your blogging, you could even consider hiring just one company or person to run the entire project for you. They could be the ones dealing with the different people and different aspects that your blogging project needs.

You will need a good-looking blog, ideally a Content Management System site, a lot of content written, good SEO, and good marketing of your blog. If you don’t want to learn all about that or manage everything on your own, then hire a person, persons, or company to do it all for you (if you don’t mind spending the money to speed up the process) but be sure to hire a reputable company or person, who knows what they are doing, and can prove it.

© Copyright Teresa Schultz 2012 and 2013