The first steps to start making money on-line in South Africa

The first step to making money online in South Africa is to create an alternate e-mail account. Free e-mail services are available from Hotmail, Yahoo and many others, and allow you up to 5 Gig of storage space. “Why create an alternate e-mail?” I hear you ask. Because this is my guide and I say so. Well, seriously, it is simply to spare you from getting swamped with e-mails on your private mail account. When you embark on making money online in SA, you can get hundreds of e-mails a day, and it just makes more sense to me to keep all these mails in one account and your private mail in a separate account. You do not want to open your private mail and be inundated with hundreds of business e-mails a day. Keep them separate, it just makes sense.


The second step in making money online in South Africa is to find a niche market. Yeah right! That is just the secret of making any business a success, and I gave it to you, free of charge. Well you can pay me later if you want, I will give you my Paypal account details. Oh sorry! Paypal doesn’t work in South Africa! Damn! I will have to do it for free then.

So here it goes. Finding a niche market can be a very daunting and difficult task, but I have a few steps that you can follow to find a niche market that will work for you. There are two ways to find this niche. I prefer the first way and I will discuss it in detail below. The second way I will briefly discuss later.

Let us start by looking at the word “niche”. If you look up synonyms for the word niche you will find the following: place, position, slot, but most important “FORTE”. In other words what are you good at, what do you know a lot of, or what is YOUR forte. Now please don’t tell me “I am good at nothing”, because you will be lying to yourself. Every single one of us have some knowledge or expertise that we can share with the world. Just pay attention to the guests next time you have a braai (barbeque for the foreigners). We are a nation of experts in how rugby should be played or coached, or who should be selected for the Protea’s next game. All you need is a subject that you have good knowledge of, or understanding in. You can have knowledge on pregnancy and babies (for the moms out there) or a particular sport, computers, photography or anything you like.

So using your “forte”, you will find your place, position or slot in the sun (Remember this guide is primarily for South Africans, for UK residents replace the word sun with rain). So make a list of at least five things that you would consider your forte. You can have more than five, but try for at least five, as some of them will get discarded if they are not well ranked. (Don’t worry, we will get to the ranking later). If you think you have your niche, think again, we still have some way to go to find the best niche.

Can South Africans make money on-line?

The short answer is yes, you can make money on-line living in South Africa  The long answer will follow, with reasons of course.

I started this site in for two reasons:

To explore how to make money on-line, and to share my experience with all eager South Africans wishing to do the same. Residents from other countries can follow this guide as well and it will work for you too, but my main focus will be to help South Africans to get past the many hurdles we face to make such a venture a successful one.

The answer to the question still remains, is it possible to make money on-line when you live in good old South Africa.

The long answer to that question is not that easy to answer. As a resident of our country, we surely have the odds stacked against us. Let me explain!

Start earning dollars into your bank account working a few hours daily!!

Fill in surveys and get paid $40 dollars per hour!

Get paid to read e-mails!

Oh! They sound so tempting. Have you tried to register for one of these quick money making schemes. Well, let me save you the time.

THEY DON'T WORK!!!

First of all, you must think realistically. If it was so easy why are the telling you, and not keeping this amazing secret to themselves. Because they need YOU to make the money. Selling their story to you is how they make their money.

The majority of these survey schemes only work if you live in USA, UK or Australia. Large companies are not interested in the opinion of South Africans, they want USA, UK and OZ. I registered for several of these and got one $5 survey in three months. Not exactly breaking my bank account hey!

Getting paid to surf or read mail is just as ridiculous. Making a few cents per e-mail you read or page you visit. In SA we pay for bandwidth and the cost of that exceeds the money you are likely to make.

And lastly, if you do happen to come across some scheme that actually makes some money, you face the daunting task of getting your money into the country. The most popular electronic payment system worldwide, Paypal, does not allow South Africans to receive payment or withdraw funds. 

So over the next few weeks, let us embark on a journey to see what it takes to make money on-line when you live in South Africa, or anywhere in the world.