Are there any South African Pro Bloggers out there?

I attended Ramon‘s Blogging for Business Seminar yesterday. This half-day seminar is intended for non-technical, business people who would like to use the powerful platform of blogging and social media to further benefit their career and/or business. We discussed the basic concepts around and tools used in getting started with blogging, social bookmarking and social networking on the Web.

Anyway, I had been thinking of this before the seminar, but since then I’ve become even more curious about it.

A long while back I remember reading on problogger about Paula’s List of Blogger and Webmaster Salaries, and since then I’ve seen and heard of a lot of overseas bloggers that are earning a full-time salary from blogging.

So I was wondering, since the South African blogosphere is significantly smaller than overseas, are there any South African individual bloggers out there that are earning a full-time salary from blogging? Where are our blogger success stories?

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12 Responses to "Are there any South African Pro Bloggers out there?"

Ramon Thomas says:

15 September 2007 at 15:05

Miguel I’m setting up a Pro blogging business in the Eastern Cape of all places. I’ve recruited two people. One writer and one photographer who’ll be creating blogs – useful blogs with useful information – and specifically moneytizing them for income. It’s a business model followed by my friend Tony Roocroft, whom 2 years ago already made more than US$100K per annum!

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redsaid says:

15 September 2007 at 22:41

Me. Yeah, I can’t quite believe it myself either!

I had no idea when I won my little blog in a writing contest in the States all those years ago that it would lead to so many opportunities for me. (And a satellite radio! :-D) It has been AMAZING! I write for Jetstreaker as well as some trends blogs overseas. Understand, I’m not rolling in the dough – and a glamorous day includes me actually getting out of my pajamas and putting ‘real’ clothes on – but it’s incredibly satisfying to get paid for something that I love to do so much!

This international magazine approaching me is just a bit of icing on the cake.

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Miguel dos Santos says:

15 September 2007 at 23:57

Thanks Ramon for the tip off, and Great stuff Redsaid, I’m glad things are taking off for you.

I feel we should be hearing more South African blogging success stories, so please if there are any more people who know of any more South African Pro Bloggers out there drop us a comment. Thanks

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seanhayz says:

17 September 2007 at 18:44

I feel that if you want to make money from blogging, you got to do it the opposite to the norm and make it great!

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Charl says:

17 September 2007 at 19:58

I own a network of blogs and earn a modest adsense cheque each month.. I dont think theres anyone on the scale of Problogger, JohnChow or Shoemoney..

We dont have enough traffic to go around in SA

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Henre says:

19 September 2007 at 15:12

I blog professionally for a couple of our clients and there are demands and interest shown from others as well.

It is not on the scale of ProBlogger, but it does generate a great enough ROI to continue delivering the service.

I have two clients in development phase which are relatively big role-players in SA and Europe, so it seems to be steering toward a full time occupation.

Luckily online is moving in the right direction in SA so in the near future we’ll see many more such success stories and hopefully mine will continue to grow.

I’ll keep you posted.

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Miguel dos Santos says:

19 September 2007 at 16:22

Awesome stuff Henre. I’ll be checking out your blog. Hopefully we see some success stories soon 😉

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Dave Duarte says:

20 September 2007 at 07:40

Hey Miguel,
The first blog I ever worked on was a SA based pro-blog that made significant revenue – Backpackers.com.
The model is to drive traffic from the blog to a hostel booking section where decent affiliiate income was earned.
The blogger is now Pia Taylor.

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Vincent Maher says:

20 September 2007 at 12:22

Hi Miguel,

Virgin Money pay me to run the Money Talks blog, but it definitely isn’t a full-time thing.

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Miguel dos Santos says:

20 September 2007 at 13:46

Cool stuff guys. We also make some revenue from our blog. Nothing significant to call it a full-time thing also, but I guess what I was thinking is, if there are bloggers who started blogging part-time in South Africa and then started earning enough money from blogging to do it full-time. The kind of success stories you hear coming from overseas.

@ Dave, I remember backpackers from way back, but I guess I just wasn’t following it, if they’re doing that well as you say, I’ll definitely subscribe and check it out more closely. Thanks.

@ Vincent, Thanks. I don’t suppose you could give us the lowdown on how much you’re getting paid to blog for Virgin Money 🙂

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Ramon Thomas says:

20 September 2007 at 20:17

I’m looking for a professional female blogger who can blog an even on 5 October called Women for Women. I’ve just clinched a deal with the organisers to set-up a blog, and blog the conference. And we’re doing a press release to my media database of 600 journalists, editors and producers. It’s a pity Laurian Clemence won’t be in town to help out. Anyone interested please get in touch.

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Ramon Thomas says:

26 September 2007 at 23:10

I’m looking for a someone who can manage the technical side of all my WordPress blogs and domains as well as one Joomla installation. I would prefer the person live in South Africa, Joburg or Cape Town. And that he is already managing his own WordPress installations hosted elsewhere. All my hosting is done in America but I’m open to moving them to the host with the best price/service ratio. Please contact me through my blog as the list of WordPress blogs will be on the increase. Understanding of DNS, email, backups, plugin, widget configurations essential and a passion for all things geek. Someone who can work unsupervised. We’ll do a weekly Skype call.

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