Your search for “how to make money online in South Africa” stops here. You just found the best source of information in South Africa that will not only “tell’ you how you can make money online, but will actually help you build an entire online business from the ground up.
In case you are wondering what type of business I am referring too, it’s affiliate marketing and how you can start a blog to promote products to your audience.
Ok, hold on! What is affiliate marketing and why do I need to start a blog?
Great question.
In the most basic form, affiliate marketing is when you are handsomely rewarded if someone buys a product of your recommendation. That’s right, you promote a company’s products or services and if it ends up in a sale the company will reward you for your efforts.
Pretty awesome, right?
So, why do I need a blog them? If you own the platform where the promotions take place you can build a business on a sustainable platform for long-term wealth. In other words, you own the land!
If you build an affiliate business on Facebook or any other platform, you only rent the land and it can be stripped from you at any minute.
If you are still in the dark about affiliate marketing and how it works, you will find this article for beginners very helpful.
We are going to focus on 5 steps to make money online in South Africa.
- Start a blog
- Capturing email addresses.
- Focus on traffic generation
- Join an affiliate program
- Promoting your links for a maximum pay day.
A quick heads up – making any money from blogging or affiliate marketing takes time and commitment. It is a slow start and many will fail, but if you are tired of the same life and the boring 8 – 5 grind, read on!
Start a blog –
Now, many will cringe at the idea of starting a blog just because of the technical aspects around web design, but I can almost promise you. If you understand English and can follow step-by-step instructions, I will show you how you can start a blog in no time.
First, let’s talk about blogging and why and what you should use.
The platform – WordPress
WordPress is the industry standard for bloggers and massive publishers like Huffington Post. It is a free open-source anyone can use and should.
To be more specific than that, I am talking about self-hosted WordPress and not WordPress.com. I am not going in to detail here about the differences, you can read more on that here.
Let me throw some benefits of using WordPress at you.
- It is self hosted
It means you host your own blog and that is probably the biggest benefit. Like I mentioned before – you have the keys to your own castle and can do what you please without being blocked or suspended.
- 1000’s of plugins.
You have access to a library of 1000s of FREE and paid plugins that can help extend your blog’s potential and customization options.
- 1000’s of themes.
There is a WordPress theme made for anyone on this planet. From awesome premium themes to not so customizable free themes. You will be spoilt for choice.
- Your blog will rank higher.
Yip, Probably the biggest reason why I moved from Wix to WordPress back in the day. WordPress allows for awesome plugins Like Yoast and Rankmath that will help you to optimize your website for the ultimate search results.
Now, how do you start a blog?
Simple, you can follow my EASY STEP-BY-STEP FREE ONLINE COURSE.
Capturing email addresses
There is a saying that goes “the money is in the list” and that means if you have an email list you will make money. The power of email is truly amazing and you need to start capturing email addresses as soon as possible.
Another way to realize the power of an email list is to understand that you don’t own anyone or anything on social media. The 1000 to 10000’s of followers you might have can disappear along with your income.
But, not an email list. If you want to make money online in South Africa you will need an email list. It is by far the best way you can promote affiliate products.
So, what do I recommend?
I use and love Mailerlite. It is easy to use, super powerful and the best thing off all, It is FREE! Well, free up to 1000 subscribers, but it is more than enough to get you started.
Mailerlite will let you send bulk emails, create automations and build awesome landing pages like this one.
All fo FREE!
They supply training videos you can use to start your email campaign today. It integrates with your WordPress blog so you can create beautiful email capturing pop-ups.
Trust me, it does it all with style.
Once you created an email campaign, you need to remember not to bombard your subscribers with all kinds of promotional material. Your campaigns need to be informational and you have to give first before you can take.
Send emails every week with awesome and useful content. Win your subscribers trust first before your start selling. Affiliate marketing is all about trust and you can read more here for beginners.
Focus on traffic generation.
Your blog will be pretty useless without traffic. You will need to pull out all the stops here. As much as you spend time creating content for your site, you will need to focus on generating traffic.
There are multiple ways but the best way for short-term traffic is Facebook ads. You can start an awesome Facebook ads campaign for as little as R50 a day. This will get you a bunch of visitors to your site in a heart beat.
The idea here is to have a great offer or landing page visitors will land on. Remember to have an email sign-up ready.
2 Birds, 1 stone.
A word of caution – Please, if you don’t have the money to spend, don’t. Facebook ads needs some skill to master and fine tune. Rather focus on something else like starting a Pinterest business account.
You can have a look at this Pinterest e-book. It’s got all the best tips and tricks you can use today to send 1000s of visitors to your blog.
Whilst you are busy with the short term you also need to focus on creating a long-term traffic strategy.
This is called SEO. There is nothing better than getting free traffic from Google and without a great optimized blog you will never get the traffic to make money online in South Africa.
SEO, stand for “Search Engine Optimization. It is the practise and effort to optimize a blog in a way that search engines like Google will favour your blog more than another for the same search term.
Now, I can write a book about SEO, but I am sure it will bore you to death and you absolutely don’t need to worry about it too much right now. You can learn as you go and there are great resources like Moz.com to learn from.
Instead, focus on starting your blog and getting content ready. If your content is good, people will share it with their friends and family.
This will bring more traffic to your blog.
Join affiliate networks.
There are 1000 of affiliate networks and programs you can join to make money online, but we are a bit behind in South Africa. The scene here is growing but not nearly as big and well optimized as the States per se.
We do however have some networks like Offerforge. The reason I mention and work with them is that the payouts are good and I have a broad selection of programs I can work with.
What is an affiliate network? A network is a collaboration of companies who use the network as platform to promote their products and services to affiliate marketers. Networks issue the special affiliate links, creative banners and take care of payouts.
Promoting your links for a maximum pay day.
Ok, after joining Offerforge. You will be able to sign in and find a “offers” button on the left.
Once the page open you will see the following
- List of affiliate programs you can join
- Their payout
Now, this is where the trick comes in. You have to apply for programs relevant to your niche. This is crucial. If you write about personal finance it would be advisable to promote products in that field to your audience.
If you promote comic books to your audience, it might be confusing. Stay relevant and consistent.
Let’s promote.
You have written an article on “The best wedding bands for men” You can now add your unique links in and between the paragraphs. These links are your affiliate links linking to a product or service you recommend.
Something like this –
“You will love these tungsten rings. They represent a true man”
Or
You can have a banner like the one below placed strategically throughout your blog.
If one of your visitors to your blog clicks on the link and buys a ring I will make a commission!
Yeay!
It all seems very straight forward and easy to do but most people forget that people need to hear why they need a product or service. You can’t bank on traffic alone to make money online. You have to sell your link. Read more here.
The best thing you can do is to remember that nothing comes easy and people make money online but it takes time. Most of the online so-called gurus do make money, but they have things figured out.
They also write and sell online courses making as if it is easy, in fact, it’s not. I am not saying it is not doable, I am saying it is going to take some effort from your side.
Just keep on hustling.
Wrapping it Up
Start an awesome blog you love around a niche you know or passionate about. Join an email marketing service like Mailerlite to get fantastic services for FREE and start capturing emails from day one.
Drive super targeted traffic to your blog and start building an audience. Join affiliate networks like Offerforge in South Africa to get access to unique links and banners you can display on your blog.
Lastly, you are not going to make money out of the gate, but with persistence you might make enough money to quit your job and do affiliate marketing full-time.
Imagine the possibilities?
Happy days.
Affiliate Disclaimer: In this or most of my post I recommend products or services via links or and banners. If any of these links end up in a sale I get a small commision at no extra cost to you.
If you have any questions regarding this article please leave a comment below. We would love to hear from you.
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