Before you plan to become a blogger in Kenya there are essential things you have to bear in mind. While blogging pays in the long run, becoming a top blogger is not a mean feat.
When you read several blogs online, all you get is that bloggers make a lot of money, they are rich. You look at the most popular blogs and become motivated. What is strange is that most of the aspiring bloggers always imagine that coming up with content is a simple task. Recently I met a graduate who was claimed that blogging is the easiest thing a human being can do. This is what he told me,”sasa kuandika pekee ndio unanishtua nayo,I can even write 100 articles per day”.I replied,”well,if that’s the case,let me give you a simple task—I will pay you. Go and write for me this article, “most marketable courses in Kenya 2019”, the article should have 3,000 to 5,000 words, it should also be 90%-100% unique. I offered to pay him Ksh 2,000. Do you know what happened? he rushed to create the article. The following day,I got this message from him, ”boss,wacha hiyo pesa ikae,to hell with blogging!”. What am I trying to say, that blogging is not as easy as it looks.
Before you gather thoughts of becoming a blogger, there are the things you should bear in mind:
- Passion
Passion is the most important thing in blogging. Even as you want to make money, you must have internal drive, something that prompts you to work in excitement. If your main intention is to make a lot of money yet you are bored with what you do, you won’t last for long.
I started Venas News in 2013 and for close to two years I didn’t earn any money from the blog. But I was excited every day I created content for my readers. My main aim was not to make millions but to provide information to Kenyans and our audience in general. It’s because of passion that I managed to keep the fire burning up to now.
Since I started blogging I have seen blogs come and go, the owners simply couldn’t keep up with the pace of our blogs.
- Domain name, Domain registration and Website hosting
Another important aspect of blogging is the choice of your domain name, domain registration and website hosting. Before you decide to register your domain, make sure you come up with a unique domain name. What baffles me most is when people see popular sites like Venas News, Tuko, Ghafla, Mpasho, CNN and believe they can start websites with such names. For your information, the aforementioned sites have stamped their authority in the blogosphere and copying everything they do, including content will be a waste of time. If you want to develop, come up with unique domain name which everyone will identify you with.
You should also know whether you’ll register a domain with .co.ke or .com.If you want your blog to grow globally, register a .com domain. To register, visit Bluehost via this link .it will cost you Ksh1,100 to Ksh2,000. If you want a .co.ke domain, contact Kenya Website Experts
Another thing, you also need to know which is the best hosting company and how to host your site. For new websites, host your website at Kenya Website experts, but for websites with heavy traffic, join Bluehost or Kinsta
- Costs of running a blog
You need Ksh 1,000 to Ksh 2 million per year if you want your blog to grow. When a blog is new, the cost is small, usually Ksh 1,000 to Ksh15,000 per year but as it grows, the cost of running it skyrocket.
Most aspiring bloggers believe that once they register the blog and start blogging, that’s it.
For a blog like Venas News, the cost of running it is Ksh 30,000 to Ksh100,000 per month. We pay for hosting (Ksh20,000 to Ksh80,000 per month), we pay for Alexa, we pay for share and page view plugins, we pay for https services, we pay for article writing—there are also other miscellaneous costs we incur that push the total costs of running this blog to Ksh800,000 per year.
- Blog migration
In the long run, you may find difficulties in hosting your blog in Kenya, which will force you to migrate the blog to popular hosting sites in USA.One mistake I won’t like new bloggers to make is to host with mediocre web hosting companies. I did the same mistake when I was new in blogging and almost gave up.I used to find my blog suspended regularly due to resource limit. I decided to move my websites to Bluehost and Kinsta,which solved my problems completely. I will advise you to join Bluehost right away to avoid inconveniences in future. You will be paying Ksh 400 to Ksh1000 monthly, click here to register your domain at Bluehost.
Migrating your content from one hosting company to the other is hectic, sometimes you can lose some content. It’s good to identify a good hosting company you can stick with forever.
- Income
Even if passion is paramount, you also need something to motivate you–money. Everyone would create content but when it comes to making money, they get stuck.
There are numerous possible ways of making money. The most popular is through Google AdSense which almost every blogger in Kenya is monetizing with. But I will list some of the income streams we use for our blog.
- Sponsored articles
- Stand-alone advertisement
- AdSense alternative(MGID)(Click here to register)
- Affiliate marketing (Click here to join)
- Marketing products and professional skills
Affiliate marketing has recurring income. Venas News is registered with 25 affiliate marketing companies and in a month they can generate between Ksh 300,000 and Ksh 1 million.
If you can generate unique and interesting content, you’ll get numerous sponsored content. Venas News receives 2 to 10 sponsored articles per week and each content costs Ksh 10,000 to Ksh50,000. You can see in a week we can make Ksh 20,000 to Ksh500,000 from sponsored content.
There is array of income streams for top sites in Kenya. I know a couple of sites which are using affiliate marketing model and are making over Ksh500,000 per month.
One mistake which most bloggers in Kenya make is that they heavily rely on AdSense. I can assure you that AdSense will not pay you more than Ksh300,000 per month unless you own top blogs like Standardmedia or Nation. The only way you can become rich in Kenya is by selling affiliate products, attracting sponsored content and stand-alone advertisements.
- Unique content
Micro bloggers have the tendency of copying everything that is found in popular sites. Most of them are trying to look like the popular site, copying almost everything, including design and article titles. My friend, if you are doing that you better stop. There is nothing search engines like Google hate like plagiarizing content. If your main intention of becoming a blogger is to look and behave like a particular popular site, you will soon get bored and quit.
Make sure when you join, you have a long term strategy. Copying will only help you within a short term but in the long run you’ll lose all the visitors because they ‘ll know you have nothing important or unique to offer.
I always see some micro bloggers struggling to write like Venas News, they will get tired soon!
- Traffic
Without people visiting your site, you won’t make any money. Few years ago Facebook and Twitter used to provide quality traffic but the social media sites are less useful nowadays. The best traffic is from search engines like Yahoo, Google, Ask or Bing. Make sure your articles are searchable, they should be unique enough to appear on the first page of the search engines.
Let me surprise you today, Venas News doesn’t share its articles on social media but the traffic we receive per day is huge.
We decided to develop unique articles which are searchable by particular groups. The best traffic is called Organic traffic or direct traffic. Organic traffic comes from search engines while direct traffic comes from people searching form your blog online or from people who have bookmarked your blog.
