Blogging in Kenya – How To Start A Blog in Kenya 2024

If you have heard around about blogging and you want a simple guide on how to start a blog in Kenya, then this is the article for you. In this detailed guide, I will introduce you to the world of blogging, what you need to get started blogging in Kenya, and the tools you will need to ensure your blog is a success.

This article is for anyone, whether a complete beginner to an experienced blogger. I will share with you the knowledge and experience I have gained from being a WordPress blogger for more than 4 years. If in any section of the article, you feel stuck and in need of help, don’t hesitate to ask for help, and I will be there for you.

My name is Henfrey Wangulu, a blogger from Kenya, and I have been blogging for a little over 4 years now. I have built over 5 blogs over the previous years, some of which have failed, but most have succeeded therefore creating an extra source of income. It is my experience over the years that has made me an expert in this field of blogging, and therefore, If you follow my tips and tricks, I will take you from being a complete beginner to a blogging guru in this guide to blogging for beginners.

My Blogging Journey Blogging In Kenya

If blogging seems overwhelming for you, don’t worry, I have been there, and I get what you are feeling. When I started, I did it blindly and made a lot of mistakes, which cost me money, time and effort all failing. I started a blog back in 2014, just after finishing my High school studies. I had just finished school and I was looking for ways I could make money and make a future for myself.

I heard about blogging and decided I wanted to start my blog. Now, in those days, there was not a lot of information about blogging, especially for beginners, and WordPress was still a bit new(to me of course), and I could also not afford it.

I got some cash from construction work I was doing and started my first blog, which was exciting and all that. I thought that it was going to be a smooth process and I would be able to earn a few dollars in about a month, boy was I in for a shock? Was I in for a rude shock, 6 months later I gave up on my blog because I saw no results.

I don’t want to discourage you, but I believe in telling the truth. If you want like me, to start a blog and think you will make money from the first day, I suppose you might be wrong. It requires planning, patience and mentoring. I will provide the mentoring for free because if I had one, I would have been more successful now. What is want for you is the willingness to work and patience. Think you can do that?

What is a blog?

Before we get started, I know some of you may not really be familiar with what blogging is. Let me make it simple for you. According to SendPulse, blogging is defined as;

“Blogging is the process that implies creating articles, photos, and other forms of content and publishing them on a website.”

https://sendpulse.com/support/glossary/blogging#:~:text=Blogging%20is%20the%20process%20that,high%20level%20of%20customer%20engagement.

To give a simpler and more practical explanation. Think of the internet as a big library, where everyone can access to get any information. The books in the library(Internet) are the blogs and websites out there. So a blog is like a book, where you write information and publish it so that everyone who needs to read it can.

Why you would want to start blogging in Kenya

There are several reasons why you would want to start your blog in Kenya this 2024;

1. Blogging can be a hobby. If you love writing like me and sharing your content with the world, a blog can be a great way of doing this. What I love the most about, is that it is a great experience where you will learn more and meet more people.
2. Building an online presence for your business. If you have a business, a blog can be a great way of building your online presence. This exposes you to many more potential customers, and therefore, many more more sales.
3. A good source of income. A blog, after consistent effort, can be an extra source of income for you. Bloggers in Kenya can make between 60K to 300K per month.

So I know all you are eagerly wanting to know is how you can start a blog. You only need these 8 simple steps on how to start a blog for beginners;

8 Steps On Starting A Blog in Kenya For Beginners – Blogging In Kenya

1. Picking a niche for your blog. This is very important
2. Choosing a domain name for your blog
3. Choosing a blogging platform
4. Customizing your blog
5. Making your blog live
6. Adding blog articles to your blog and publishing them
7. Promoting your blog
8. Making money from your blog.

How To Start Blogging In Kenya

Step 1: Selecting A Niche For Your Blog

This is critical if you want to start blogging in Kenya, my friend. A niche is a topic or field you want to write on. Now, I am not saying that you need to write on only one niche, but it will help you connect with your audience and rank better on search engines. There are websites out there writing about different niches, but what I have learnt about blogging is that having a focused niche is easier.

If you can’t focus on one niche, get about 2, not more than 4. For example, for Henittoz Tech, I write about Health, Tech and Blogging. If you don’t know which niche you want, you can look at the list of niches available by clicking here. Think of Niche as a hobby, and this is what makes it important to choose a niche, if you write about something you like, researching and writing about it is easier, unlike writing about something you don’t like.

Some of the popular blogging niches available include;

• Lifestyle
• Fashion
• Animals
• Travelling
• Finance
• Relationships
• Technology
• Health and Fitness
• Affiliate marketing
• Celebrity gossip and news

Step 2: Choosing a domain name for your blog

A domain name is also essential. Facebook.com is an example of a domain name. Using Facebook as an example, you can easily access the social media site by typing the URL Facebook dot com on your search engine and you will be taken there directly. Therefore in this example, facebook.com is a domain name, and it helps people access the site.

Therefore, you also need a domain name. Choose a domain name that is simple enough for your visitors to remember.

Tips On Choosing A Domain – Blogging in Kenya

Here are some of the guidelines you should consider when choosing a domain name for your blog;

• Make it short and memorable, preferably less than 32 characters.
• Ensure it is easy to remember. For example, if you want to start a blog on fashion, a domain name like fashionguru.com or fashionguru.co.ke can be a good domain name.
• Avoid spaces, numbers and hyphens on your domain name.
• Choose top-level domains, like .com, or .co.ke for your domain name, these domains, although come at a price, are the most trusted by search engines and are likely to rank on Google and other search engines faster.

How To Register A Domain Name for Your Blog in Kenya

To have a domain, you will need to register a domain with a hosting company. There are many hosting companies there, but I would recommend True Host. I have been using them to run my two blogs for more than 3 years, and I can tell you that their services are good. I made a special deal for you guys so that you can get a special offer when you register your domain name using my link. With Truehost you can get a .co.ke domain extension for as low as Ksh. 725 annually. Click here to get this deal.

After accessing the site scroll down till you see “Domain registration in Kenya”, search for your desired domain, without writing the .com or .co.ke extension, and click on search to see if it is available. If available, click on add to cart, fill out your personal details and pay via mpesa. After completing payment, you will receive an email from Truehost with further instructions.

Step 3: Choosing a blogging platform

Now that we have our domain name, we need to select a hosting platform for our blog. The three most popular blogging platforms include;

• WordPress.com. Another free one, I wouldn’t advice you to use this if you want to do blogging professionally.
• WordPress.org. It lets you self-host your website giving you 100% control of your blog. This is the one we will be using for making our blog.
• Blogger.com. This is a Google owned platform. While you can get free hosting, you do not own your content and Google can delete your blog anytime they want. You also get a free domain, which will have the .blogspot.com extension, which is not a top-level domain(Not recommended).

Using WordPress.org For our blog

You will need to get hosting for this, you can get hosting from Truehost.com. As a blogging beginner, I would recommend that you start with a cheap hosting plan and upgrade your hosting plan as your blog grows and gets more visitors. A good place to start is Truehost Silver Hosting which costs about 1,499 per year.

After completing payment, you will receive a cPanel link and password via your email so that you can access your cPanel. A cPanel is basically the control panel for your blog. After logging into your cPanel account, scroll down until you find WordPress under Softaculous apps

Click on the WordPress option, then click on the install option on the next page. Choose the latest version of WordPress, then select a password and username. Leave the directory field empty and click on install, which usually takes less than 5 minutes. After doing this, you can now customize your blog and add content to your blog.

Step 4: How To Customize Your Blog – Blogging in Kenya

Now that we have installed WordPress on our blog, let us now start customizing it. To customize your blog;

• Go to your WordPress dashboard by going to yoursite.com/wp-admin, or yoursite.co.ke/wp-admin depending on which domain extension you registered. Replace “your site” with your domain name.
• Enter your username and password. These are the ones you set when you installed WordPress via your cPanel.
• Go to Appearance > Themes > Add New. Search for OceanWP, which is the best in my opinion.
• Done, you have a new theme. You can check how your site looks by using your URL, for example, mysite.com.

Step 5: Create your first Blogpost

Now that our blog is ready for new content, let us add some. When you’ve just created a new blog, there are starter template blog posts that you will find as posts. We must delete these, make our own articles, and officially start our blogging journey. To create your first WordPress article for your blog, follow these simple steps;

On your WordPress dashboard, look for the “Posts” option and click it, or choose all Posts. You will then be shown the number of posts on your blog.

To delete the premade articles that come with WordPress installation;

• Tick all the boxes next to the blog post. If you want to select all at once, check the box next to the Title to select all posts on your blog at once.
• Click on the Bulk action dropdown and select the Move to Trash option.
• Then click on Apply to delete all the articles.
• Now that we have a blank post-less(if that is even a word) blog, let us add some of our first blog posts by clicking on Add New Post.
• Add the heading for your article. For example, I want to write a blog post with the title, “How I Feel Now That I Can Start Blogging In Kenya”.
• By default, the WordPress Editor comes in two types, a Classic editor and a Block editor. By default, you will start with a Block editor.
• Now that we have our heading, We can add the first paragraph by clicking on the +(plus) sign =, or by just starting to type.
• Next, you might want to add an image to your blog post, to do this, click on the + sign below your paragraph, and search for an image. Click on upload.
• If you have an image on your computer, you can upload it, by clicking on Upload.
• Your article now looks great, now click on Publish to publish your article to the world. Click on “View Post” to see your article.
• Congratulations, your article is now live. You can now share your articles with your friends to let them see it.

Now that you have your article live, I know you might want to start searching on Google to see if it is live on Google or other search engines but hold your horses. For now, if you want anyone to see your article, you need to share the link with them.

If you want your blog to be found on search engines, you will need to notify search engines that your site is live. After notifying them, they will do something called Indexing your blog. Indexing just means that search engines like Google will check out your blog, look for all pages and articles available, and then rank you on Google so that anyone can find it when they search for it.

Adding your blog to Google is simple, but I will talk about it more in-depth in an article I will later link to on this article. For now, I will give you simplified steps on how to add your blog to Google in Kenya. This does not only apply to those blogging in Kenya but to other countries too.

Step 6: How To Add Your Blog On Google In Kenya – Blogging in Kenya

To add your site to the Google search engine, we will be using the Google Search Console for this. To add your site to Google, do the following;

1. Visit Google Search Console by clicking here.
2. Click on Start Now to start the process of adding your blog on Google.
3. You will need to log in to your Google account by entering your email and password. If you don’t have a Gmail account, you will need to create an email to proceed.
4. Click on Add New Site. You will be given two options to verify your blog, using URL prefix or domain. Choose one and follow the instructions given.
5. If you don’t understand the steps given, please read my detailed guide on how to add your site to Google, because going in-depth on this article will make it very long.
6. After completing the process, your site will be on Google after some days or hours, just give it time.

If you want to see if your new blog is on Google, go to your search engine, and type “site: your domain” without the hyphen, for example, site: pricekenya.co.ke. If your site is already live on Google, you will see it in the search results.

Now that your blog is on Google, you will need to write more articles because, in the world of blogging, content is King. Writing more content means more topics that can be read by more people.

Step 7: How To Promote Your Blog and Get Visitors To Your Blog

Before you get consistent traffic on your blog, you will have to get visitors from other sources and make your blog more popular. Sources of traffic you can use to get visitors to your blog include;

1. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. A good source is Facebook pages, or creating Facebook groups, building a following and sharing your content to the group or page. If you write good content and make your page entertaining, a certain percentage of your followers will visit your blog.
2. Sharing your articles with friends and relatives on WhatsApp can also get you a good amount of visitors.
3. Getting email subscribers. Getting people to subscribe to your blog is guaranteed that you have a sure amount of people who follow you and your content.
4. Paid traffic. You can run Google ads, Facebook ads or TikTok ads to get visitors to your site. This is especially good if you have a business and you want to grow your customer base faster. Before running ads, make sure you do proper research so that you can spend enough with maximum impact.

How To Make Money From Your Blog

Now that we have our blog running, and you have gained some consistent traffic, it is time you start making some money. I would advice you to run the blog for some time without monetizing your blog so that you have a consistent source of traffic from search engines. This may take weeks or months depending on your efforts. In my opinion, having a traffic of about 200 – 500 may be a good signal to start monetizing.

I know this traffic volume may not produce a lot, but seeing a small income, even if it is really low, gives you motivation to keep pressing on. When I started monetizing my blog, I started by earning 20bob a day. It motivated me to see a little hope. Right now my blog makes between Ksh, 1500 – Ksh, 2000 per day. This is only from ads, not mentioning other sources of monetization.

Here are some ways you can monetize your blog and make money;

1. Google AdSense is considered one of the best ways to make money from your blog, but it’s recommended that you have at least 500 daily visitors. To start earning with AdSense, you’ll need to apply and get approved, which can be difficult due to their strict policies. However, once approved, you’ll get paid on the 23rd of every month, as long as your earnings meet the minimum withdrawal threshold of 70 dollars in Kenya. AdSense pays per click, meaning you’ll earn a certain amount for every click on an ad placed on your blog. The amount you earn will depend on the country the click comes from – clicks from countries like the USA typically pay more than clicks from other countries.
2. Adsterra is another monetization option you can use to monetize your blog. Adsterra on the other hand pays per 1000 impressions or views. For example, if you get 1000 people to view an ad, they pay you a certain amount for the views. This amount will depend on the countries these visitors come from, just like Google Adsense.
3. Affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is also a great way of monetizing your blog. Affiliate marketing means you advertise a product on behalf of a company, and they pay you a certain percentage of the amount sold. Popular affiliate sites in Kenya include Kilimall, Jumia Affiliates(Currently not available in Kenya), and Amazon Affiliate. A good way to do this is to write about a product you have used and review it, then recommend the product to your followers so that when they buy it using your link, you get a commission.
4. Sponsorships: after gaining popularity through blogging, companies may sponsor you to promote their brand.

Final Thoughts

Am glad you made the decision to start this process of blogging, and you have made your first blog. As they always say, the first step really matters. I will hold your hand every step of the journey to ensure you achieve success. I know the article may not have covered enough because I feared it might be lengthy, but I am making an ebook that will have all the details you will need in this blogging journey. I also have a YouTube page where I will also be adding tutorials for blogging plus other content. Be sure to subscribe to the channel by clicking here.

In case you have any problems, head over to Henittoz Tech Bloggers Hub, ask your questions and the community will help you out. You could also send me an email and I will respond to your queries. Finally, remember to subscribe to my blog’s newsletter so that you will be the first to be notified when I drop new blogging tips