{"id":11476,"date":"2026-06-02T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cnti.org\/cnti-news\/\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T09:10:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T13:10:50","slug":"making-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cnti.org\/reports\/south-africa-indie-info-providers\/making-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Making money"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Like many countries, South Africa has faced multiple media crises in recent decades, resulting in “an increasingly constrained business environment.<\/a>” Larger media organizations had intermittently paused hiring journalists before COVID-19<\/a>, and the pandemic exacerbated this trend. Major publishers began to cut staff in larger swaths, publications were closed, and of those who did not lose their jobs, many saw their salaries cut. As a result, many journalists have turned to freelance opportunities and short-term contracts<\/a> to stay in the industry. In 2026, South Africa began taxing content creator income<\/a>, which adds even more complexity to making a living as a journalist. Given this overall financial uncertainty, it is critical to understand whether, and how, indie info providers are making money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How and why we did this <\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Note on terminology<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

There is no consensus on terminology, even among our interviewees. We primarily use the term “indie info provider” and sometimes “creator-journalist,” which was the term used in our survey and interviews. Both terms appear throughout the report to refer to the same group: \u201cpeople who are working to provide verified factual information with a personality- or voice-driven brand that leverages the creator economy.\u201d <\/em>That definition encompasses a tremendous amount of variation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why we did this<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

This is the second report in a two-country series about indie info providers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to our research<\/a>, about one in four people in South Africa get news from individuals rather than organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Moreover, the South African media environment is undergoing a profound transformation<\/a>. Media crises<\/a> in recent decades have led to \u201can increasingly constrained business environment<\/em><\/a>,\u201d forcing outlets to rely on freelance journalists<\/a> and short-term contracts to stay afloat and leaving many journalists without stable employment. This shift has coincided with a massive migration in audience habits: recent surveys find that about 7 in 10 surveyed (online, English-speaking) South Africans<\/a> get their news from social media, especially on their smartphones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To date, research<\/a> on this trend has largely focused on the broader landscape of content creators, including entertainers, politicians and other creators who do not necessarily focus on informing their audiences. And most research to date has focused on content sourcing and linking strategies. To enable a future for a plurality of fact-based sources that readers and viewers find relevant, our project sheds light on who indie info providers are and how they approach their role in the broader news landscape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How we did this<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In partnership with Code for Africa<\/a>, CNTI recruited 43 content producers in South Africa to take a screening survey, 42 of whom met the eligibility criteria, and chose 18 of them for a 60- to 90-minute virtual interview. (The one who did not meet the criteria was neither South African-based nor working for a primarily South African audience.)  CNTI selected interviewees to represent a range of professional backgrounds, such as project management and the military, beyond legacy journalism. This report is based primarily on insights from the interviews, with data from the survey as a secondary source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In interviews, we asked participants about their backgrounds and motivations, audience engagement, their relationships with other indie info providers and legacy news outlets, platforms, and algorithms, revenue and business strategies, and their view of success and satisfaction with their own work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We developed codes using a bottom-up iterative approach as themes emerged from the analysis. Code categories largely reflected the range of interview topics, as well as the addition of the broader theme \u201capartheid and historical context.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These methods provide richness and depth; however, it\u2019s not possible to generalize about the frequency of behaviors from these interactions, so we limit our use of quantitative terms to our interviewees throughout this report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CNTI research and professional staff prepared this report. This project was made possible by the financial support of the Lenfest Institute and a second anonymous donor.
See \u201cAbout this study<\/a>\u201d<\/strong> for more details.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/details>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Making a living is one of the biggest challenges for South African interviewees.<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

More than half of our interviewees highlighted monetization as one of their biggest challenges. \u201cHow do we keep this afloat?\u201d <\/em>one interviewee asked. Others described the \u201cuncertainty and financial insecurity of this kind of work\u201d <\/em>as stressful even for those who are doing relatively well. Several interviewees said that it is harder to monetize<\/a> in South Africa than elsewhere, while others see the problem as field-wide, rather than tied to any particular location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the pre-interview survey, just four of 18 participants said they were fully able to support their lifestyle, while six said they were not able to do that at all. The other eight fell in between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South African interviewees were divided roughly equally between those who struggled to articulate goals, those who had goals but not yet clear plans, and those who had a fully articulated strategy for making a living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some take a \u201cbuild it and they will come\u201d approach to business, driven by passion for their work, and view profit as a distraction, if not a necessary evil.<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Many South African interviewees contrasted the aspects of the job they love \u2014 creating content or doing journalism \u2014 with aspects that interest them less, specifically strategy and business operations. \u201cI\u2019m not there to build the brand, I\u2019m not there to do a PR job for them. I\u2019m there to do good journalism,\u201d <\/em>one interviewee said of their relationship with sponsors. Some interviewees even described the two as mutually exclusive. As one put it, \u201cThe problem with podcasters generally is they think it\u2019s a business model and it\u2019s not. It\u2019s an obsessive model. It\u2019s almost religious.\u201d <\/em>This person\u2019s business strategy and advice amounted to \u201cbuild it and they will come,<\/em>\u201d although industry publications have long been skeptical<\/a> of this approach. Several interviewees were even more explicit in endorsing this logic, like one person who said that \u201cmy strategy is around creating content that will be readable.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rejecting capitalism: mutual aid as a business model<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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One small group of interviewees \u2014 all of whom are Rastafarians providing content about Rastafarianism \u2014 expressed explicitly anticapitalist motivations and goals. When asked about business strategy, these three interviewees spoke about working within interpersonal networks in a model more akin to mutual aid than to a product. One of them maintains a mental list of prices for different services that \u201cis mapped out even though it\u2019s not documented or it\u2019s not put in a paper or a business card.\u201d <\/em>They know the value of their work but prefer to navigate pricing person-to-person. For donations, another person said, \u201cWe can go to the aunties, people in your immediate family, your immediate friend group.\u201d <\/em>This person\u2019s sights are primarily on their immediate community as both an audience and a source of revenue. This vision was very different from those of other interviewees, who reach (or at least aspire to reach) an audience beyond their individual networks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/details>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Those who use more strategic approaches rely on intentionally diversified forms of revenue to promote their independence \u2014 and they are largely more financially successful.<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The interviewees with the most strategic approaches have diversified their revenue streams, and do it thoughtfully. They have learned which forms of revenue work well for them and which aren\u2019t worth the time and effort. In some cases, they work backwards from their needs and rely on different sources of income to pay for different expenses. One person explained their logic in detail: \u201cWe need to make this many shows a month at this level of views to get this amount of YouTube ad revenue to pay one sum. And then, if I’m going to pay another salary, we need to get a brand partnership deal\u2026\u201d<\/em> Some interviewees have diversified even within a single form of revenue: one balances three different forms of sponsorship (direct, a separate advertorial platform that subsidizes the editorial platform, and premium corporate subscriptions), and another is \u201cdonor and philanthropy funded\u201d <\/em>but makes a point of cultivating different types of funders for different types of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Many South African interviewees sponsored their own work through independent businesses or day jobs.<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At least seven of the 18 interviewees described serving as their own sponsors, funding their indie brand directly. Three of them have a for-profit arm that creates content or runs events on a work-for-hire basis, while their journalism is produced under a non-profit entity. The others work in largely unrelated fields. In most cases, the subsidizing branch of the business is legally separated \u2014 like the person who said they \u201chad to start another business to fund\u201d<\/em> their journalism or the person who runs \u201cjust a boring old business that makes me money.\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several interviewees had gone to extreme lengths to subsidize their indie brands, although they were still trying to make the work pay for itself. One of them had built a business in a different sector to underwrite this work. Instead of \u201cskiing holidays, I put all the profit into this loss-making entity called journalism that no one can seem to monetize unless you\u2019re, like, Financial Times or New York Times,\u201d<\/em> they said. Another person had given up many middle-class creature comforts to keep doing this work, selling their house to escape debt. All the same, they said, \u201cI love what I do. I don’t need to own a house or have a retirement plan.\u201d <\/em>Journalism, in the view of these interviewees, is fundamentally not a profitable enterprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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