Image representing OpenX as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

Across the web there are a lot of guides to monetizing your blog, most of which do have information relevant to a South African blogger; but not focussed on a South African. A large portion of our reader base is South African and so we have some experience with this, and have decided to write a short post guiding you (a South African blogger) in the right direction.

Firstly, don’t forget about networks like AdSense or YPN - not all your visitors will be South African and this is an easy way to monetize some of your international traffic (and some local). The best option is to install an advertising portal like “OpenX” which will let you focus your South African ads on people from ZA, and show AdSense ads to the others.

Once you have this set up you need to start looking at making money in the South African market - as per sale and per lead payouts are almost always higher than CPC/CPM ads (like Google). OfferForge is a great place to start with the affiliate marketing - they allow you to easily select adverts which you think will appeal to your users and earn money from any sales you are involved in. For example, if you make an Outsurance sale you could get R70-90  (per sale) at the moment. So get smart and blog about how Outsurance helped you, with the ads, and you might be in the money!

Also look into AdGator - a newly released South African CPM (by views) advertising network focussed on blogs. They offer a 50% revenue share and pay in rands.

That should have your impression and affiliate based South African marketing covered. Now I’d like to talk about something called Text Link Ads - adverts that have links on your page to advertisers. This is only worth your time if your blog has a PageRank of 4 or higher - to find this out install the Google toolbar (which has a pagerank shower) or SearchStatus. With this you can make several hundred dollars per page thats PR4 and above! Apply here.

Finally, don’t forget to have a link near your adverts allowing people to purchase adverts directly from you! This may not happen often, especially when you first start out, but never turn away 100% of the revenue from an advertiser.

To sum it all up, the networks

and the tools

Feel free to leave any questions or additional tips!

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