A blogger is someone who creates content in writing for an online journal or a website. Their role includes research, writing, editing, and publishing content. Bloggers are not the same as Instagram influencers as they have websites with a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, which is used to update the website whenever one wishes to.
Some personal bloggers have a website in which they include diary-like entries, photographs, and links to other sites. The content could be about anything that is of interest to the blogger and their target market, for example, fashion, travel, or celebrity gossip.
Blogging is one of the oldest and legit ways of making money online, all it requires is strategy, time, and dedication. As much as it is fun, running it is expensive and time-consuming. Your monthly costs will include hosting, blogging software, website plugins, and VPN while yearly costs include domain and website design.
In this article, we will highlight how bloggers make money and how much they make.
1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money through blogging. Depending on the quality of your blog traffic, you can get affiliate offers from various companies. You will have to link a product or service that is for sale on another website from your blog. You will be offered a unique code that the company will use to track people coming from you.
If your readers purchase through the link, you can earn a commission of about 1% – 50%. You can sign up for different affiliate programmes, some popular ones are Affiliate and AdMarula.
2. Advertising
Advertising is the best way to monetize your blog. Many bloggers in South Africa use AdSense to make money. The trick is to have a lot of traffic.
3. Sponsored Posts
With blogging, you can also make money through sponsored posts. Sponsored posts are blog posts that brands or people pay you to create and advertise on your platform – this can be you reviewing their latest product or just promoting their products. You will have to push for more traffic to your site and have people sign up. You will have to produce quality content that is interesting and easy for people to share, importantly, you will have to add links to other great internal and external content across the web.
You can apply for sponsored post gigs, here are some of the sites you can check out: Acorn Influence, IZEA, and Linqia. If your content is great some brands can even reach out to you without applying.
4. Sell Products
You can create e-books, courses, and other relevant merchandise to sell to your readers.
5. Service
You can use your blog to market your services to the right market, this can be writing, designing, or being a Social Media Manager. This way you will be killing two birds with one stone.
6. Promote a Business
You can promote what other businesses are offering on your blog, either through a banner or a blog post with a link that will direct your readers to the product or service being promoted. You can approach companies that align with your blog content and offer such services.
For example, if your blog is about cooking, you can approach any brand that has a new cooking product launching soon.
7. Recurring revenue
You will be charging your readers a monthly fee that grants them access to premium content or some form of coaching. It is simply creating a membership for your readers.
For this, you will have to make sure that your content is compelling enough and of good value for people to want to sign up and join the premium package.
How much do bloggers in South Africa make
As a blogger in South Africa, you can make over R100 000 in your first year of consistent blogging. To succeed in it you will have to find your niche, create quality content, and focus on getting better, you will see your traffic and revenue will grow.
On a monthly basis, a blogger can make R3000 – R15 000 depending on the traffic the blog gets. Earnings can be affected by trends, seasons, and a pandemic.
Google Adsense and AdPushUp can assist in giving you an idea of how much you can make with your blog. The calculator will guide you on a better strategy to boost your blog income.
If your writing skill is on point, then blogging is something you can look into to make money. The secret to being a successful blogger is knowing your niche and being an expert in it. This will help you to become a better content creator and enable you to create great content with a different perspective. Honestly, this is what potential readers need – your thoughts, life experiences, and other information that might be relevant to add to the content you will be producing.
Bonus Tips
- Build an email list: This will enable you to reach potential clients easily.
- Choose a niche: Know your audience and choose your topics easily
- Keep your audience in mind: When writing avoid getting carried away and forget to share information that will be informative and helpful to your audience.
- Avoid doing work for free: Don’t let brands take advantage, you need to be compensated for your time and effort.
- Don’t spend money you don’t have: When starting off, make use of what you have, you will get everything else that you need when you start making a profit.
- Keep on learning: Upskill yourself and learn new skills through short courses and most importantly, invest in SEO. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is what will make your blog post rank high on Google, making it searchable and easy to find. You will have to install an SEO plugin (if you’re using WordPress).