How To Start a Blog
In South Africa (2024)
Create a Blog For Free
Start a Blog Free To Make Money Online
The best thing about starting a free blog in South Africa is that you have absolutely nothing to lose.
And by learning how to start a blog free, is that blogging in South Africa gives you access to a multi-billion dollar worldwide market which you can tap into.
It’s so much more than just knowing how to create a blog for free…
Your free blog opens up many exciting opportunities from selling online, creating a personal portfolio, to promoting your online business
Another bonus with this method is that you can experiment with a various free blogging platforms in South Africa, and free blogsites, to see which suits you best without it costing you anything.
So, without further ado, let me show you how to create your blog for free and make money from it.
8 Easy Steps To Create a Blog For Free
1. Choose your free bogging platform
You can choose from the 2 most popular free blogging platforms in South Africa below;
a) WordPress – powered by WordPress
click here and then hit the “Start your blog” button to create a blog for free on the official WordPress blogging platform.
b) Blogger (Blogspot) – powered by Google
click here and then hit the “CREATE YOUR BLOG” button which will prompt you to login with an existing Google account or you can create a new one (for free).
Furthermore, there’s nothing to stop you from setting up blogs on both platforms which I suggest you do.
It’ll be more work but, especially as they’re both 100% free, you will be able to try out different strategies on each one and see what works & what doesn’t work without it costing you anything extra.
However, I’ve based this free blog startup guide on Google’s blogger platform but other free blogging platforms will follow a similar set up.
2.Click the Down arrow In the top left corner & click “New blog”
3.Then click “Create new” in the bottom right corner
4.Enter a name for your blog
Make sure the name you choose is a memorable one that you can also use for your domain name. It should also be appropriate for your blog’s theme or niche. So if you’re going to be publishing the latest fashion trends you would rather have jacksfashions.blogspot.com than jacksblog.blogspot.com (or blogspot.co.za) 5.Choose your blog’s URL
Your blog’s URL will be your blog’s domain or web address. Although the URL will end in blogspot.com (the price you pay for a free domain name) you should try to use your blog’s URL in your title tag (name) as this will be a SEO benefit. Remember to make it memorable which means it should be short, sharp and catchy. Whilst it’s not easy to come up with something straight away, it may be worthwhile spending some time thinking of a name you’ll be proud of and that’s appropriate for your blog. Check out other blog names in your niche to get some good ideas. 6.Choose a template
The template you choose should be appropriate for your blog’s theme. So if you blog is to do with fashion, a techie design may not be the one you’d want to choose. 7.Click create blog
The time has come to publish your blog and create some awesome content that will have visitors flooding in. Don’t forget that you can always go back and edit things that you think should be changed. 8.Get your blog out there
To get some interest and visitors to your blog you should start a social media campaign by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. 5 Desirable Benefits Of Creating a Free Blog
- Your blog can be live on the net in less than 1 hour.
- There’s no time wasting or cost involved with getting a domain name and hosting account set up.
- Publishing your blog on the net can be done with a click of a button with most free blogging platforms.
- Everything is 100% free – even the domain name you choose and the cost of hosting your blog is all totally free.
- The only cost you’ll have to consider when you create your free blog, is that of your internet connection.
However, if you do all of your blogging from a coffee shop or other area with free WiFi, you won’t even need to pay for that.
Don’t lose sight of your blog’s main objective which is to make money, so more on that below.
5 Proven Ways To Make Money From Your Blog
Just to get you inspired to turn your free blog into a money making machine, take a look at how much these ordinary bloggers (like you & me) make online.
- Pat Flynn (Smart Passive Income) earned over $2 million last year from his blog.
- Matthew (founder of True Valhalla) is a 20-year old game developer who will make $500,000 this year from his blog site.
- Timothy Sykes (an online trader & blogger) is reported to earn at least $5 million from his blog.
- Jon Morrow (Smart Blogger) is estimated to earn more than $1 million from his blog
Remember that the above list excludes the insanely high earners like Ariana Huffington who earns around $250 million per year from the Huffingtonpost.
The list of bloggers above are mostly ordinary guys who saw the massive potential in starting their own blogs and worked at them to eventually generate the type of money that they do.
1. Advertising
Personally I have achieved great success form making money with Google’s Adsense program just from having their ads displayed on my sites.
I constantly earn R15,000 to R25,000 from just one of my blogs every month, however I must declare that it’s not on a free blogging platform.
It’s hosted with Hostgator which I like not only for its reliability & useful features, but I have the freedom & tools to do what I like on my blog without the risk of the blogging platform changing its TOS unexpectedly.
Furthermore, Google’s Adsense program, which you can sign up for here, isn’t the only way to earn advertising revenue from your blog though.
Here are some other notable ones;
- Media.net is run by Yahoo and Bing and therefore a direct competitor to AdSense
- Monumetric which is great for mid-sized blogs
- Mediavine which is best for lifestyle blogs
I should add that I do not have any personal experience with any ad publishing platform other than Adsense which has served me well over the years.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an easy and popular way of monetising a blog.
The great thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t need to have a product of your own to sell.
All you need to do is to sign up with one of the popular affiliate networks and then search for products that are a good fit for your blog and then promote them.
For every sale you make you will usually earn a commission of between 50% to 75% of the product’s selling price.
Pros & Cons of Affiliate Marketing
Cons
The biggest downside to affiliate marketing is that is that it can take so darned long to make a sale.
In fact waiting for your first sale is so demoralising that you just feel like packing it in and trying something else.
But for those who persevere, the rewards are mouthwatering.
Pros
The upside however, is that you can make so much money that you’ll think everyday is Christmas.
Affiliate marketing can be extremely rewarding when you finally hit the sweet spot.
So much so, that anyone can make money from it.
For some it’ll just be nice side hustle, but for others it will be their ticket out of their 9 to 5 jobs and into the wealthy online marketers’ club.
All it takes is a bit of motivation & effort to get started – if you don’t try it you’ll never know if it could’ve been your golden goose.
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3. Create and Sell eBooks
If you create your own eBook, course or digital product, you can use your blog to advertise and sell it.
Your eBook could be on anything from woodworking to photography, in fact anything that there’s an interest in.
4. Start a Web Hosting Service
You don’t need any technical skills or invest in massive servers to provide a web hosting service.
All you need to do is sign up with a reputable web host who offers a web hosting reseller package which you can use to set your own hosting packages to market as your own from your blog.
Read this 5 step guide to setting up your own reseller hosting business.
5. Build An Online Store On Your Blog
People are becoming more and more comfortable with buying goods online which presents a great opportunity in the online store space.
For instance, global eCommerce sales are predicted to exceed $4.9 trillion by 2022, so it’s a good time to grab your slice of this pie.
For an eCommerce business, your blog will be the interface of how people will find and interact with your brand so ensure your host provider is reliable and secure.
A reputable host will provide a store builder combined with features that don’t come with a typical blog, such as;
a) A shopping cart
b) A check-out process
c) Secure payment processor
Bottom Line On Creating a Free Blog To Make Money
I wouldn’t be at all surprised of most people who have learnt how to create a blog for free will never make any money from it despite there being these legitimate free ways to make money online.
This could be due to their perception that by merely going live with their free blog would alone be enough to get the money rolling in.
This however, is clearly not the case.
There are many factors to become a successful money making blogger.
For instance, not only do you need to start off by being in one of the most profitable niches, but you need to read & research and apply everything that you learn to your blogging efforts.
It’s not easy, but when you find the sweet spot, it’s so rewarding.
Here’s to your success.
Take the first step by investing in your brand and a piece of your online real estate by getting your own domain name registered asap.
Starting a Blog Could Get You Out Of Society's Debt Trap
Society has conditioned us to believe that we should live our life like this;
Society teaches us to:
- Have a job
- Get into debt
- Struggle most of your life to pay it of
- Retire after 40 years if you have enough saved to do so
Instead, you should start building wealth now by creating media content such as;
- Blogs
- Podcasts
- Newsletters
The message is clear.
Don’t defer your dreams until you’re getting near to retirement.
Break free of society’s uninspiring plan for your future and become one of the new rich.
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