Wondering how to make money online in South Africa?

If you live in South Africa, as I do, then you may find that online jobs that are suited to you are a little harder to come by than if you had to reside in the USA or in Canada.  This can be quite frustrating.

There are however some great opportunities that do exist if you want to know how to make money online in South Africa.

Where Is South Africa?

For those of you who have never experienced South Africa, you are certainly missing out on a lot. It is an awesome tourist destination, and because the Rand/Dollar exchange rate is so low, you will have a wonderful holiday here for next to nothing.

South Africa is a beautiful country on the bottom tip of Africa. We have beautiful cities, exciting touristy things to do and wildlife galore to behold.

Our political situation is a little unsettled at the moment, but then again, so it goes with most countries in the world. The crime rates and unemployment rates are also quite high, but again this is a worldwide problem at the moment.

How To Make Money Online In South Africa

Unfortunately, we must be one of the last countries to have climbed on the bandwagon when it comes to making money online. Most of the online companies are American based, and a lot of opportunities online that are any good are only available to US and Canadian Citizens.

Fortunately, this doesn’t mean that there are not South Africans who aren’t making a killing online. There are many things that South Africans can do to earn money working online, and you just need to know where to find the right opportunities.

Google is your best friend, and you can ask him or it anything. With a little research you will soon come up with loads of money making opportunities which include things like:

• Network Marketing
• MLM Companies
• Typing up of Articles for a fee
• Website Design jobs
• SEO jobs for those that know how to do this
• Surveys
• Affiliate Marketing
• Hiring Out Ad Space on your Website

The opportunities are endless, and it is just a matter of finding the right opportunity for yourself.

Network Marketing/MLM

If you enjoy selling goods to others then you might like to try your hand at network marketing or join an MLM company.

A word of caution though, this is not for everyone, and you will need to work extremely hard before you make enough money to live on. You will also need great leadership qualities, as you will normally recruit a team to work under you, and you need to push them and motivate them on a constant basis to keep them working.

There are a few things to watch out for before you join one of these companies. Make sure that the company is actually selling a quality product that is going to be easy for you to sell. If they are just swapping cash, it could be a pyramid scheme and these are actually illegal in South Africa.

There are endless opportunities to sell a vast choice of products from coffee to wine to cosmetics. Do your research on the company you are interested in and make sure that it has been around for a while as many of these companies open and shut their doors in the same year.

Typing/Writing Jobs

There are many people online looking for people to type for them or write articles for their websites.

As a South African getting paid in dollars, this can be quite lucrative as you can get paid anything from $4 and upwards for an article, depending on the length.

Also, most South African’s are very good at speaking and writing in English which will go a long way, as most people want articles in good English.

If you are a fast typist you should be able to rack up those articles quite quickly.

Here are a few places to try your luck in getting writing jobs.

Hiresine.com

Airtasker.com/

Talentdesire.com

Freelancer.com

Website/SEO Development Jobs

If you know how to set up a website and do SEO, then there are many people out there that would hire you to do just this for their companies.

It’s easier than you think, and you can learn all the skills you need to do this simply and online. It is exactly what I do, except that I design websites for myself that earn me a passive income.

Luckily this is relatively easy to learn how to do, especially with technology as it is today. all the technical stuff is done for you and you don’t need to know anything about programming.

Read How I Learnt How To Design Websites And Do SEO

Surveys

At the moment there are very few people who offer surveys for South Africans, so it is doubtful that you will be able to earn a full-time income doing this, but if you are looking for some extra pocket money it is an option.

Most survey sites are only looking of US citizens to perform their surveys, and there is nothing more frustrating than being thrown out of a survey when you have spent a good twenty minutes doing one, and then the system kicks you out if you don’t meet all the criteria the client is after.

Surveys also take up time and a lot of the sites pay you in rewards and points instead of cash. Also, a lot of the sites only pay you when you get to a certain amount, which could take years.

Unless you love doing surveys, I can think of better ways on how to make money online in South Africa.

Affiliate Marketing

This is my absolute favourite method when it comes to how to make money online in South Africa.

There are many companies that let people promote their products for them, and then give them a commission for every product that is sold by these promoters. This is called affiliate marketing.

Commissions range from 2 percent up to as high as 50 percent, depending on who you are promoting for and what you are selling.

I promote products for Amazon and Clickbank mostly, but there are thousands of other places that offer the same or sometimes even better deals than the two I have just mentioned.

Amazon is the worlds biggest online shop/store, and although the commissions are low, it is easy to sell just about anything you can dream of using this platform. The small commissions will quickly rack up each month, and many marketers are making a full-time income from promoting Amazon Products alone.

ClickBank, on the other hand, sells digital products. Some are good, and others not, so you need to find the gems to promote, but the commission payout is excellent.

The best way to do affiliate marketing is to have a website. This will act as your online shop and it will save you a packet in advertising over the long term.

The other method, which I don’t recommend, especially for beginners, is paying for advertising. If you don’t know what you are doing, you could lose a lot of money in trial and error here.

With a website, your aim will be to let the search engines do their work and send you traffic. This will be people looking for products you are marketing.

There is a lot to learn here, and the best place to get this training is at this company.

You can read more about them by clicking here.

Advertising

Placing ads on your site from Google or any other network is a great way to earn extra money, as it is like hiring out space on your website for others to advertise relevant products.

As far as I am concerned if you don’t have at least a few ads on your site, you are leaving money on the table.

How To Get Paid If You Are South African

Because most of the affiliate companies you will be promoting for are in the United States, you will need to ensure there is a way that you can get paid.

This is how I get paid with the three main affiliate companies that I use.

ClickBank

You can set a limit anywhere from $100  and up for when you want them to pay you. I usually have them wire the money straight into my bank account. Unfortunately, they take off $35 each time they do this, so the higher you set your limit the less money you will lose in the long term.

Unfortunately, you need to watch ClickBank earnings. If you go for ninety days or more without making a sale, $1 gets taken off your earnings every two weeks, which is like R14 with the current exchange rate in South Africa. If you find you are not making sales and you have over $100 then sometimes it is best to cash it before your money dwindles too much.

Amazon

Amazon also has a minimum limit of $100 before they will post you a cheque.

The problem here is that the cheque normally takes anything from five weeks to three months to arrive. In one case I never got my cheque and had to cancel it so that Amazon could issue me another.

If you are willing to wait for your money then go for a higher threshold like $150 to $200 to make it worth your while.

Amazon at least doesn’t charge to mail cheques to overseas affiliates, but the bank does take a hefty commission which you won’t be able to get away from.

Update: Amazon has just introduced a new way to get paid. They will now pay the money directly into your bank account if you are an overseas promoter. I will try this method for my next cheque and let you know how it goes. They say they don’t charge anything for this service, but I am sure the bank here will still take a commission if it is foreign exchange.

Google Adwords

This one is the easiest, especially for South Africans. Once you hit the R1000 mark, the next month you will get the monies straight into the account of your choice with no fees taken off.

Never underestimate Google Adwords. Those few ads on your website could be racking up quite a bit of money for you in the background, especially if you are getting a lot of traffic.

PayPal

Using PayPal is one of the safest ways to get paid online. It is easy to open a PayPal account and you can use this account as a safe method to do online payments through your credit card or get paid.

First National Bank is the only bank at present in South Africa that will accept PayPal transfers into your bank account, so if you want to sell products and get paid through PayPal, then you will definitely need a First National Bank Account of some sort.

So Fellow South Africans, as you can see there are simply no more excuses why you too can’t work from home. It is not rocket science when it comes to how to make money online in South Africa, but you will need to work consistently on your online business if you want to see results.

If you are willing to put in some hard work, you could be earning your own money as an entrepreneur from home. All you need is a computer or laptop, an internet connection and you are set to go.