Blogging in Kenya can be a really profitable venture if properly implemented with the right strategies. 

The average Kenyan blogger can earn anywhere from 100K-500K per month depending on the monetization strategy implemented on their blog/website.

However, attaining such figures is not always an overnight success and may require a bit of time and patience to achieve especially if you are starting out as a new blogger.

Nonetheless, this does not necessarily mean that you cannot shorten the period required to realize any substantial results for your new blog.

To do this, you are required to be dedicated, patient and of course work smart, not hard.

Work smart???🤓 You might ask.

Well, for any successful outcome in any scenario, careful and strategic planning is important. Be it business, sports, entertainment, school or marketing, the same applies also to blogging.

If you want to start a successful blog in Kenya and you do not yet have a plan, do not worry. 

In this article, we will highlight to you 4 key areas you should focus on to have your blog up and running as well as earning you money in less than 6 months.

1. Choose A Profitable Niche

Just like in business, your choice of product/service determines your profit margin at the end of the day. 

It may make no business sense to stock up on a fast moving product that only brings in Kes1 profit compared to a slow moving product that brings in Kes100 profit.

Similarly, the same applies to blogging since there are some niches that bring in more revenue than others.

Some of the most profitable niches include; finance, business, health & fitness, fashion, lifestyle, technology, travel etc

However, before settling on any particular niche, you should consider several factors that will determine the sustainability of your blog in the long run.

Factors To Consider When Choosing A Profitable Niche In Kenya

i) Competition: To reap the rewards of your niche, you must first ensure that you are visible to potential readers and at times, this is easier said than done since there are million other highly authoritative sites competing for the same niche audience as you.

To counter this, you should choose a low competition niche that is not highly saturated with ‘big’ sites.

ii) Expertise: Your choice of niche should also be determined by how well you are conversant with a particular topic without constantly turning to Wikipedia or Google to search for answers.

Possessing considerable knowledge in your chosen niche ensures that you are providing accurate and helpful information to your readers which may eventually make you an authoritative blog in your topic.

iii) Passion: Choose a niche that you are interested in and one that ensures that you do not ‘burn out’ or lose interest after a period of time.

iv) Legality: There are some niche topics that are considered illegal in nature or offensive such as pornography, hacking, gambling, counterfeits etc and are not allowed to be monetized.

2. Choose A Reliable Blogging Platform

It may be considered senseless to own extremely valuable items and not invest in securing them from theft or any other form of negative external influences.

Likewise, blogging on an unreliable platform that is prone to constant system downtime, hacks or lacks efficient technical support will reverse all your efforts in running a successful blog.

Currently, there are a wide range of blogging platforms to choose from including blogger, wordpress, Joomla, medium, tumblr, jimdo etc

Despite the abundance of options, settling on a choice may seem difficult especially if you are trying to start a successful blog in Kenya with zero technical skills on the subject.

Fortunately, we will highlight to you what to look out for when choosing a blogging platform.

Factors To Consider When Choosing A Blogging Platform In Kenya

i) Expertise: Depending on your skill level in web development, you have the option to choose between full involvement in managing all the various components of your website such as security, storage, speed, customization etc or otherwise delegate such duties and fully focus on writing content.

ii) Budget: There is always something for everyone including freebies. However, to realize growth, you must be willing to spend in order to achieve it. There are numerous service providers offering various packages at different prices depending on your preference.

iii) Technical support: Like any other form of technology, problems are bound to arise at some point but what matters is the efficiency at which the situation is handled and reversed to normalcy.

It is advisable to choose a platform with high ratings of customer support to avoid future inconveniences in your blogging career.

With the above factors in mind, you can now be able to effectively narrow down your choices to specific service providers both local or international.

Best Local Hosting Providers In Kenya

i) Kenya web experts: Kenya Web experts is a hosting company that offers high value, low cost website & email hosting and domain name services. It claims to currently host over 50K websites in over 80 countries and has won awards as the best web hosting platform in 2015, 2017 & 2019.

It offers basic, business & cloud SSD web hosting, unmanaged VPS & dedicated servers, Google Workspace, domain registration & transfer among other services.

To start your blogging career with Kenya web experts, simply navigate to the Kenya web experts website and create your account.

ii) Truehost: Truehost is another notable Kenyan web hosting company that caters to 30K+ clients across 5 continents and guarantees its clients reliable, powerful & innovative managed cloud hosting with 99.99% uptime.

In addition, it also claims to provide 24/07 phone, email, chat, tickets & excellent support services.

Truehost offers windows/reseller/web/email hosting, cloud & dedicated servers, CPanel licenses, SSL certificates etc

To start your blogging career with Truehost, simply navigate to the Truehost website and create your account.

iii) HostPinnacle: HostPinnacle boasts of 20K+ hosted clientele with a 98.7% customer satisfaction rate and 99.9% uptime guarantee.

The services offered include; domain registration, world class web hosting, reseller/VPS hosting, dedicated servers, web design and many more.

To start your blogging career with HostPinnacle, simply navigate to the HostPinnacle website and create your account.

iv) Digital Webframe: This is another hosting company located in Kenya that provides hosting services such as web, cloud, reseller, VPS as well as dedicated servers.

Other extra addons include; SSL certificates, website builder, security & backup and VPN appliances.

To begin your blogging career with Digital Webframe, simply navigate to the Digital Webframe website and create your account.

Best International Hosting Providers

i) WordPress .com: Not to be confused with wordpress .org, the former is a managed platform service whereby you do not need to have special skills to run your website.

Everything, such as website speed, security, bandwidth, storage etc is managed for you by a team of dedicated WordPress staff and all you have to do is keep writing articles and increase your site traffic.

One other beautiful reason to join wordpress .com is that there is a FREE plan whereby you do not have to pay for anything as you continue to grow your blog.

To start your blogging career with wordpress .com, simply navigate to the wordpress .com website and create your account.

Other notable hosting providers that do not have a free plan include Bluehost, Hostinger, Kinsta, Hostgator etc

3. Choose An Effective Monetization Program

The term blog monetization simply means putting in place mechanisms that lead to generating money from a blog and it is considered the most important aspect of running any successful blog in Kenya.

Currently, there are several ways to earn revenue from a blog/website and they include; sponsoring posts, selling ad spaces, drop shipping, selling courses, affiliate product marketing etc

However, new bloggers without any experience of the above may settle for the more popular form of blog monetization networks such as Google AdSense.

Statistically, 90% of new bloggers start out with AdSense before branching out to the other monetization forms highlighted above.

Although AdSense is popular, this does not mean that it is necessarily the best since there are little known AdSense alternative that pays bloggers triple what AdSense pays with the same amount of views.

Below is a brief comparison summary between the two networks.

AdSense	AdSense alternative
Payment threshold is $100	Payment threshold is $20
Payment method is through bank account	Payment method is through Payoneer & PayPal
Revenue earned through clicks (CPC)	Revenue earned through clicks (CPC) and impressions (CPM)
No dedicated account manager to solve arising issues	Dedicated account manager available as you ascend the levels
No courses or seminars to assist in revenue growth	Availability of courses & seminars to assist in revenue growth
Frequent permanent bans of AdSense violations	Prevents permanent AdSense bans when linked with AdSense

If you are impressed by the endless possibilities, signing up for your account is as easy as following the below steps.

Create an account by navigating to the ad network’s website and clicking on ‘Get Started’ tab

Depending on your monthly pageviews, you will have a choice of two options from which to join from i.e. 

If you have less than 10K monthly pageviews, click on ‘Join Access Now’. Otherwise, If you have more than 10K pageviews per month, click on ‘Get Started’ tab and proceed to input your valid email address then provide the domain name of your website.

Afterwards, select your website’s aspects (Ad revenue/Site Speed/Analytics) that you intend on improving by joining the network.

Once this has been done, your account will be created thus requiring you to finalize the 4-step process necessary to fully activate your account and start earning.

These 4-step processes include;

Step 1: Complete account setup by providing your full names and password.
Step 2: Integrating your blog
Step 3: Setting up Ad testing
Step 4: Setting up Leap feature

Upon 100% completion of the above, focus on posting original & unique content, sit back and enjoy as the amounts roll in!

4. Choose An Efficient Payment Method

There is no greater feeling of excitement as reaping the fruits of one’s efforts and in this case, spending your hard-earned blogging money.

To do this, you must first set up a method to receive your payments.

For AdSense users, a bank account is mandatory since it does not offer any other payment channels to Kenyan bloggers.

On the other hand, the AdSense alternative has two payment channels to choose from i.e. PayPal & Payoneer

Payoneer payments can only be withdrawn through a bank account while PayPal payments can be withdrawn via bank account or M-Pesa.

To set up a Payoneer account in Kenya, simply navigate to the Payoneer website and complete the signup process whereas for PayPal, go to PayPal website and complete the process.