Blogging as a source of alternative information outlet and business market had its start and genesis in the early nineties with such renowned persons as Justin Hall,Brad Fitzpatrick(publisher of the Live Journal)Jerry Pournelle,Markos Moulitas Z`uniga(Dail Koz) Anna Marie Cox(Wonkette)among other pioneer bloggers getting prominence from their weblogs which often featured political articles.Pro blogging however is a recent phenomenom gaining prominence as from 2001 where certain bloggers have began to generate revenue through affiliate marketing, product review ,endorsements etc.The January 2005 fortune magazine listed some eight bloggers that Business in Europe and the USA cannot afford to ignore including Peter Rojas,Xeni Jordin,Ben Trott,Mena Trott,Jonathan Schwart,Jason Goldman,Robert Scoble and Jason Calacanis .This illustrates the power and pull that effective market oriented blogs can have!
Another story of succes in blogging is illustrated in the Life of Greek born pundit Arriana Huffington( of huffingtonpost) who prior to 2005 was the usual day to day author with an opinion on almost everything.Her blog generates at present a massive three million hits a month and has a full editorial team to match up the consumer expectation.While her previous political background,hollywood associates and high ranking friends definately gave impetus and recognition to her blog,the ulimate success of the blog came fromher adept skills at social marketing.
However making a succes out of blogging is easier said than done!Great skill and strategy is needed since competition in the blogosphere is stiff.Technorati monitors over 12 million blogs and yet hundreds of thousands are being churned daily focusing on different niches.
The blogosphere is awash with numerous articles on how to make it big with bloggers such as johnchow, problogger generating money by boasting on how theyve made money via the web and how their readers can do the same.But the truth lies in the fact that blogs are social tools and the best way of generating traffic is through social networks i.e creating friends,links and ultimately a readership niche.There are no great secrets.Therefore if an african blogger intends to monetize he or she has to develop a localized readership base before they can make it big on the world wide web. Interestingly despite the fact that Africa is so extensive due to inadequate blogger activity most blogger awards have one category for Africa and the Middle East .That in effect details the amount of work African bloggers have to take inorder to gain a distinct recognition for their content.There is at present no notable African Pro blogger that one can easily refer to with a readership base and economic success accross the Continent.
The IT giants Microsoft and Google are constantly involved in technological wars over dominance of the blogosphere since as was experienced in the rathergate scandal ; blogs are a powerful source of influence and they are gaining immense popularity blogs are the next pitch.It therefore stands that the african blogosphere must rapidly expand and develop inorder to establish its presence on the world stage.The south african blogosphere is actually doing tremendously well in this regards! A number of African bloggers are getting due attention internationaly such as aquilaonline which has made it to the top 100,000 ranking on technorati afrigadget adii , cherryflava ,SArocks, vegandiet
There are several start up web companies doing well in South africa blogosphere such as:
- Afrigator exclusively African blog aggregator founded by South African Mark Stopforth,Stiaan Pretorious among others
- Amatomu South African blog aggregator
- Amagama blogging community for wordpress blogs
- Modelbase online photo portofolio for south african models and photographers
- Synthasite browser based Ajax website construction tool
- Blueworld south african based social network
- Muti South African Social bookmarking site
- Offerforge south african and US based affiliate ad network
The rest of Africa is yet to catch up with the trend!
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Great post..shot for the mention too.
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