Before you start a news blog in Kenya,the first thing you should ask yourself is, “are news blogs profitable in Kenya?”. It’s important as a blogger to focus on where you will get maximum benefits online and before making the final decision, do your own research.
About 10 websites in Kenya earn 90% of the total amount bloggers earn in Kenya. These sites include: Tuko News, Ghafla, Citizen TV, Kenyans, Nation, Standard Media, The Star, Business Daily Africa, Mpash and SDE.A website like Tuko earns up to Ksh 4 million per month from advertisements.
Starting a blog to compete with established media houses will be an uphill task. For three years, you will struggle to get even 5,000 views per day. The most demoralizing thing is that News blogs have the lowest CPC from AdSense. While Education and Business blogs attract a CPC of up to 10, the CPC for news blogs go as little as 0.01. For one to earn more than Ksh10,000, they have to get at least 70,000 page views per month.
News blogs are profitable but they require heavy amount of traffic. If you manage to have more than 1 million page views per month, you will make above Ksh 100,000.
It’s only when you reach the level of Tuko, Nation, Standard that you will start making reasonable income from blogging. The income will come from AdSense, direct adverts and sponsored content. To shed some light, here is the income of some of the news blogs in Kenya:
Nation—Ksh 4 million per month
Standard Media—Ksh 4 million per month
Ghafla—Ksh 900,000 per month
Mpasho—Ksh300,000 per month
Business Daily Africa—Ksh1 million per month
Kenyans—Ksh 2.5 million per month
K24 TV—Ksh 700,000 per month
KBC—Ksh300,000 per month
If your blog manages to draw traffic equivalent to what the aforementioned sites get per month, you’ll make what they earn.
But one disadvantage of owning a news blog is that your site might lose AdSense at any time. AdSense nowadays is sensitive to fake news, even gossip news is treated as fake news. The only way to avoid being penalized is to wait until the reliable media houses breaks a story, then repackage and post on your blog. But it’s almost impossible to compete with established media houses.