Can you really make money with blogging in South Africa?
Blogging has been around for a long time, it’s as old as the internet itself. Reasons for blogging have changed a lot, especially during the last decade. People used to blog for blogging’s sake when the internet started.
However, they discovered that blogging can be an extremely powerful tool when used correctly. Businesses can do a lot of inbound marketing through blogging. Ordinary people discovered that they can make a living through blogging. The question that most people ask is whether or not you can realistically make money with blogging in South Africa.
The short answer is yes, you can make a lot of money from blogging, even if you live in South Africa. The amount of money that you make from your blog will be influenced by a lot of variables.
How much money can you make from blogging?
The short answer is; it depends. You can make anywhere between R0 and R100 000 per month if you are a South African blogger. Factors that influence your earnings are your niche, blog age and amount of traffic you receive.
Your niche
Your niche should be monetizable to some extent. Not all niches are created equal, some niches pay more than others. A website receiving 10 000 monthly visitors in a good niche can earn more money than a website that gets 30 000 visitors in a bad niche.
What is a niche in the blogging world? A niche is basically what your blog focuses on, which blog do you think would make more money between a blog that focuses on Home and Garden and a blog that focuses on sharing viral Tiktok videos?
The one that focuses on home and garden would make more money because there are a lot of things that you can sell to the type of audience that normally visits such a blog. We can assume that people who read Home and Garden blogs are people that are generally older and they have disposable income. People that would go crazy over a tiktok site would normally be teenagers with not much disposable income.
Almost all niches have an audience, try your best to be unconventional and select a niche that no one else seems to care about. You can focus on camping, bird feeding, pet care. Almost everything that you can think about has enough audience to earn you money.
Blog age
The age of the blog is very important when it comes to the amount of money you make. This is because the blog age directly correlates with the amount of traffic a blog gets. At the time of writing this post, this blog, Daily Income is 0 days old. By the time you get to see this post; it will be a lot older and matured.
How old must a blog be before you start making money? The answer to this question will depend on your niche, if you are in a very competitive niche then you might have to wait 15 months, if you are in a very underserved niche then you might wait 4 months. I have created 2 blogs thus far, this is my third one, they both reached certain milestones at different points in time.
As a general rule, you should make at least R100 or Pizza money in your third month. Your blog should start seeing serious traffic at 6 months and you should be making at least R1 000 per month by month number 10. There are bloggers that make R20 000 per month by month number 10. The amount of money you make will depend on your niche and site traffic.
Amount of traffic
Most blogs get the bulk of their traffic from Google. Google is a search engine and is always looking to provide fresh and relevant content to its users. However, it takes a long time before Google trusts you as a reliable source of information, it usually takes 6 to 12 months.
You need to be getting at least 50 000 pageviews per month to make full-time income with blogging in South Africa. A lot of people will find your blog by searching for information on Google, you should always aim to appear in the top 10 of the search results. A blog with 50 000 pageviews can make anywhere between R7 000 and R20 000 per month.
The amount of money you make will be highly influenced by the ad network you go with. A lot of South Africans use Google AdSense due to its very low barrier to entry. However, there are multiple ad platforms like Ezoic and Mediavine.
Other sources of traffic are Pinterest and Facebook. I would not advise you to invest on Facebook marketing. Don’t go around spamming the link to your blog on Facebook comments. Pinterest often works for highly visual blogs like fashion blogs and food. Pinterest is a search engine in itself and can even bring you more traffic than Google.
Monetization strategy
Some blogs don’t run ads at all and they still make a lot of money. You can make a lot of money just by promoting affiliate products, you might do a blog that is focused on Fashion, you can make money by recommending fashion items to your audience.
Another strategy that bloggers use is promoting their own products, I personally use this one. The main purpose of a blog is to draw in an audience and once you have that audience you can market anything to them.
You can also use your blog to sell courses, something that has become very popular off late. Courses are a very profitable business, best believe that out of 50 000 or 100 000 people that visit your site every month, you are going to sell a lot. You can also sell books.
Conclusion
The purpose of this post was to answer the question; can you make money with blogging in South Africa. Do you have any thoughts or questions? Comment below.
