How to Start a Blog in South Africa in Four Basic Steps

So.. you’d like to share your story, your passion and your words with everyone? Welcome to the wonderful world of blogging! It may seem overwhelming, but it can be done, with perseverance, consistency, and a lot of learning. I’ve been blogging for more than ten years and I still take the opportunity to learn new things. But, if you’re starting from scratch, you’ve come to the right place to get an outline of how to start a blog in South Africa.

The steps for setting up a blog in South Africa are similar to the rest of the world, but I’ve included a few local service providers where possible and local links for where you can sign up for support and opportunities.

STEP ONE: Set up a blog in South Africa

1- Niche: Your What and Why

What would you like to write about? It has to be something that you’re interested in, otherwise you won’t have the passion to keep going. It could be an online journal about your family. It could be a record of your child. It could be all about food. Maybe you love fashion or beauty? Perhaps you know everything about finance? What is your skill? Think about that and think about a name for your blog. The more specific and unique, the better.

2- Your home and street address on the net: Hosting and domain

Think of your blog as needing a place to stay. You could use someone else’s spot for free (e.g. wordpress.com or blogspot.com) but it won’t really be your place which you can do your own thing and advertise and monetise and have your own place. I’ve also written this post about my bad experiences with a free host. You need a host (place) and you need to register a domain (street address e.g. www.yoursite.co.za) for your blog.

Two places I recommend and use are: Hostgator and Domains.co.za. Do your research and make sure that “https” is included (SSL).

3- Add WordPress

There are a lot of platforms you can choose to blog on. In my opinion there is a lot more you can do with WordPress. Normally you can get your host to add WordPress for you (Domains.co.za did it for me) and for Hostgator it’s just a few clicks. It’s pretty simple and they will help you.

STEP TWO: Appearance

1-Set up a theme

There are loads of themes out there for you to choose from. Choose something that will fit your topic. Choose a theme that is reliable and is from a reputable place. I’ve made all the mistakes here in the past just Googling things and landing up with problems.

I recommend Kadence as your base theme from which you can build onto using one of their starter templates. Under Appearance => Themes in your dashboard you can upload Kadence and select starter themes from there. There are loads to choose from in a whole lot of different niches.

Another good one, which I use for my blogs, is Restored316 (which also uses Kadence as a base).

2-Make your logo and flavicon

You can get a graphic designer to help you, or you can go into Canva and make something for yourself. This will be your brand of your blog and be part of your unique flavour. You’ll also need a tiny logo to put in the address bar of a browser – an icon that shows your mark, too.

3-Create Four Essential Pages

You need at least these four basic pages:

1. Home page
2. About page (tell everyone about yourself and your background)
3. Contact page (so people can get hold of you – do a form, not an email, as the spam bots will create problems for you.)
4. Privacy Policy

4- Permalink

Under Settings => Permalink, make sure that you do a custom structure of category and post name. This is to help you with SEO, it’s better than just having the date of your post on your URL.

STEP THREE: Captivating Content and an Engaged Community

1- Start blogging

Start creating excellent content and making blog posts. Pour out your heart about your life, or create posts about things that people are searching for in your niche. This is actually the most important thing. Good, useful writing will be things that people will enjoy and share. And if it’s your cheap version of therapy to write about your life – that’s fantastic too.

2-Set up an opt in form for subscribers and create a professional email

Do not rely only on social media. You can have all the followers in the world and they can kick you off when they feel like it. Anyone who has been in this game long enough has experienced it, or at least knows someone who has.

If you have your own list of subscribers, that is incredibly valuable. You can provide a newsletter with your latest blog posts and other news.

I currently use MailerLite which has a lot of things you can do in terms of graphics and integrations. I’ve also used MailPoet in the past which integrates into WordPress. There’s a load of other options: do your research.

You also need to create a professional email which is part of your branding. You can do this with your host.

3- Share your posts on social media

Find out where your audience hangs out and use that social media to promote your posts. If you do a lot of cooking and arts and crafts, Pinterest is definitely going to help you. Facebook and Instagram are good for moms as well. With Instagram you have to use the link in your bio to promote your blog. With Facebook, use a Facebook page and use that to post into relevant groups (after checking on the rules of the groups. Some of them you may have to pay, or post on certain days).

If you are a mom with a blog you can join SA Mom Blogs Facebook group. I also recommend the SA Bloggers Network group for South African bloggers and influencers. For these two you have to post your blog posts under the date. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram too. You can also look at our Pinterest and email me about joining a relevant board if it fits your niche.

4- Add essential plugins

There are so many plugins out there. Bascially, if you have a problem, there’s usually a plugin that can help.

The most important plugins are:

1. Keep your site safe (Akismet) (should already be there)
2. Get your stats (a plugin for Google Analytics)
3. Share your posts on social media
4. Privacy policy plugin (linked to the page you did earlier)

There are different options for 2 and 3. I suggest trying them out. Set up Google Analytics here and get a plugin here. (There are others as well, do your research) I’m also using Ultimate Social Media Plus. (There are other options as well). I’m not an expert on the privacy policy as things keep updating and there’s probably a better, more updated one out there. The one I’m currently using is called Cookie Notice & Compliance for GDPR / CCPA.

STEP FOUR: Monetise

Don’t expect to make money overnight from blogging, and don’t start a blog because you want to make money. Start a blog because you want to share your message and because you like writing.

Here are some ways that you can make money:

1. Sponsored posts. You can set up your media kit (you can subscribe to get a template) and approach brands. You can also sign up on various platforms like theSalt, Webfluential and Intellifluence.
2. Affiliate marketing: Sell other people’s products on your blog. Add the affiliate link to your post about the product.
3. Sell your own products and courses. (Take a look at my shop and see how to set it up in this workshop).
4. Adverts on your blog e.g. Google Adsense

Money is just a nice extra. Probably the most rewarding thing about blogging has been the people I’ve met and the support I’ve gotten along the way. It really has been the most incredible experience.

Still confused? Want step by step videos?

You can get all the detail of the above steps in my video course which takes you through all of the above – with screensharing. It’s five hours of videos, lots of detail, lots of real life stories and real problems and how I solved them.

Check it out here

You can also watch a video of a webinar I did about blogging in this post (scroll down to the YouTube video).

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.

Images are from Styled Stock Society.

You can also check out 16 experts that I got together at a blogging / influencing summit recently here.

Get my free blogging basics and media kit below: