If you want to know how to make money with Forex in South Africa, I will give you the full guide on all the different ways that forex traders in South Africa make money.
Forex in South Africa is extremely well-known and is one of the most commonly attempted ways to make money. It also has a dark side that we all know about because of the abundance of people who lose money, sometimes due to legitimately being scammed out of “forex scammers”.
Now, I am not here to judge the market or what people do, but simply here to tell you how all of the different methods work and let you know what to look out for.
Table of Contents
What is Forex?
The foreign exchange market is considered as one of the most lucrative markets that traders have access to. It deals with the buying and selling of different international currencies on the international market. Forex markets differ from other markets as there is no central marketplace or entity that controls the market. Instead, currency markets are affected by a variety of different factors such as different geo-political events, changes in any national government regulations and other economic considerations.
Forex trading has been traditionally in the hands of large-scale investors who deal mainly in the spot market, forwards market and the futures market. However, due to recent technological advancements, a class of electronic trading platforms and online forex brokers have emerged. As a result, the spot market has seen an influx of individual speculators and investors, some of whom have amassed fortunes by taking the right trading decisions.
How To Make Money with Forex in South Africa
There are four ways to make money with Forex in South Africa.
- Being a Forex Trader
- Creating Forex Content
- Referral Agreements
- Forex Seminars and Classes
We will now go through each of the different ways in detail and I will give you examples of where you can see each different one.
Being a Forex Trader
This method is the foundation of all other forex money making strategies.
First things first, trading forex in this way is a high risk, high reward game. This means that you can make a lot of money in a short space of time, but you can also lose a lot of money very quickly.
To be a forex trader you have to know how the forex market works. You have to constantly study the markets and have a trading strategy that you are consistent with.
To fully understand how this side of forex works, check out our article on Forex Trading in South Africa.
Fake Forex Traders
Forex is very well-known in South Africa and is tried by many hopefuls, young and old, trying to make money. Because of this demand, there is the inevitable demand of those who will take advantage of people in the process.
With regards to South Africa, the public image of forex is represented mostly by tricksters and unscrupulous individuals whose main interest is to make money from hopeful investors.
The majority of forex traders that you will see, whether on Instagram, YouTube and any other social media are most likely to be scammers, or at least misrepresenting how their money is made.
Very few actual professional traders in South Africa are seen on public platforms for various reasons. Chief among them being that they specialise in forex only spend a substantial amount of hours in their craft, and else.
Reputable Forex Traders
Now, it is understandable that most people need to have someone in whose footsteps to follow, at least until you are well acquainted with the market.
To find a legitimate forex trader to follow, you have to, at the minimum, know the fundamentals of forex trading. This will allow you to be able to easily spot whether somebody is a legitimate forex trader who is teaching something valuable or not. But the truth is, most of the successful forex traders will not be seen online.
An example of someone who is a legitimate forex trader that I have seen, is Clinton Fester of FestX. He trades the NASDAQ, and has done a few videos showing exactly how he works and done some interviews with other legitimate forex traders. He also teaches about the psychology of forex, an important part of it, the risks, and does not misrepresent how he makes his money. Below is a video from him. Note how he talks about the work, and not about money or the flashy things that typically lure those looking for get-rich-quick schemes.
I don’t trade forex myself so I don’t know of any other forex traders who I have seen whose message I felt comfortable with. But I have seen a lot of obvious scamsters and he was the first respectable forex trader I have seen online.
Again, don’t take this as a gospel recommendation. Do your own research, and make your own judgement, but at least this will give you some direction in terms of legitimate forex trading.
If you know of any other legitimate forex traders worth looking at, let me know and I will add them to the article.
Things you need to be a successful forex trader
Knowledge of the markets – Like any other field, you have to know how the forex market works. If you are trading specific pairs, you have to know how those pairs move, and how they react to different factors. It’s like anything else, you can’t read a few articles and watch a few videos about construction and then think you can build a house. You have to spend a significant amount of time learning the craft, usually from a teacher of some sort, and then learning on your own after that.
Choose a strategy and master it – The forex market is diverse and ther are many strategies that forex traders use. You have to choose strategy that most resonates with you, and master it. As they say, jack of all trades, master of none.
Be disciplined – The quickest way to lose money very quickly in trading is to let your emotions carry you away. People who trade forex professionally on a long term basis use tested strategies and stick to those strategies consistently. If you are not following a strategy in your trading, then you are not trading; you are gambling and might as well go to the casino instead.
Create forex related content
If you are passionate about forex as a field, you can create forex content online through a website and through social media. In essence, you can become an influencer of sorts and sell your expertise on the subject to those who are looking to learn more.
There are several ways in which to monetize this information, and some of them have been listed above already.
Forex YouTube Channel
YouTube is one of the biggest marketing platforms in the current day. If you are skilled at something and can present it in a relatable way, you can build a following and make money from that following. With a YouTube channel, you can make money either through advertising as a YouTube partner, or by promoting specific products, or selling our own product, which leads us to the next two forms of monetization.
Forex Website
If you aren’t the confident type who enjoys being in front of a camera or a large group of people, you can create forex content through a website that people will look up when they have questions about forex. There are several ways to make money with forex information on a website, such as display ads, people paying you for guest articles, and affiliate marketing, which is how I make money from content that I write such as this.
Online Course in Forex
Once you are a reputable trader, you can can create a course that you can sell to those looking to learn from you. The key with this one is that if you have built a good reputation and your product offers value, this model offers the possibility of exponential growth. And unlike with live seminars and classes where you are limited to how many places you can go to physically, with a course you can build and record a course once, and keep earning from it for years for as long as people find it valuable. You can build courses on various platforms such as Udemy, or through a custom platform that you can create yourself with the help of web developers.
Forex Referral Programs
A lot of the forex traders that you see online are actually not forex traders themselves, but often earn their money through programs where they earn a commission for those that they bring along to the platform.
So you can either have an agreement with an individual broker who pays you a commission for each client that you bring them, or you can become part of the partner network of an institutional forex brokering entity, and get paid for each referral through something like CPA or an affiliate programme.
A common example of this is the mirror trading platforms that many of the Forex influencers use to entice customers who want to make money through forex, but don’t want to learn how to do it themselves and would rather “do what the expert is doing” and benefit from the experience of the expert.
There are, in fact, legitimate mirror trading schemes, but this can easily be used to entice beginners because the prospect of making money that easily is difficult to resist.
This mirror trading strategy carries the same amount of risk as normal trading, and can offer a larger risk because, especially in South Africa, it is used by forex traders who are not reputable and for them to get customers with this strategy is easier than most strategies.
Forex Seminars and Classes
This method is quite straightforward. You build awareness around your brand of forex, and then once you have a decent following and brand awareness, you can hold seminars and classes teaching people how to trade forex.
This method is quite notorious in South Africa because it is the method that is used by the majority of forex scammers in the country.
If you spend a lot of time on social media, then you have probably seen many of these examples. Various well-know people in South Africa such as Jabulani “CashFlow” Ngcobo, Louis Tshakoane Jr, Ref Wayne and many others fall in this group.
This strategy is very similar to the network marketing strategy, where the supposed forex trader travels throughout the country, giving seminars or classes about how to make money with forex in South Africa that will assumably make you rich.
Bad Reputation for Forex
This is how the majority of “Forex Traders” that you see online and through social media operate and many people in South Africa have been scammed through this method.
It didn’t help either that national TV channels gave some of these individuals air time, so:
Do not judge mainstream media, I.e. the normal news channels such as SABC and take that as a verification that someone you are learning from is legit. Here is an example of one of the dubious traders being interviews on a mainstream television channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8nj2xFM6DQ
The founder of the notorious Pipcoin scam being interviewed in a positive light on a national news channel.
Remember that news outlets simply report the stories, and the legitimacy of forex traders and the likes are your responsibility to determine.
Red Flags to beware of
All flash, no substance
The most common tactic used by forex tricksters in South Africa is the allure of money and flash things. You can usually see this by the fact that the often show you all kinds of flash possessions, but nothing at all or very little about how things actually work and how to make money with forex.
Too good to be true
This is the old saying which is applies to all kinds of opportunities and businesses. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. There are usually no shortcuts to making a lot of money quickly and if someone makes it sound or look easy, you should run the other way.
Doing to many other things
An expert forex trader tends to only do forex. If you are a trader, you have to watch the market at all times so it is not feasible to be in a million other things. You will often see Forex scammers also doing things related to cryptocurrency and a litany of other things, even ministry. When someone is trying to sell you too many things, it is often a warning sign for you to tread carefully and look deeper.
Read Reviews
We live in the age of the internet and it is not too difficult to vet any business or individual. Before you buy into something, look for reviews on what they are selling. In the case of forex traders who are selling you something, google their name and see if there are any reports of that person being accused of scamming. Additionally, you can so look through their comments, whether on YouTube or Instagram. When people are scammed, they often show it from the rooftops so look for any such indicators and take your time in vetting that person or programme before you invest your hard-earned money.
Conclusion
And there you have it. Now you know how to make money with Forex in South Africa. As you saw above, forex trading is a worldwide market where you can make a lot of money if you know what you are doing, but you can also lose a lot of money very quickly if you don’t.
There are various ways to make money through forex, many of them outside of the foreign exchange market itself. If you want to make money with forex, choose your money-making strategy carefully, and then focus on mastering that strategy until you know your way around the market. There is no shortcut to making real money in forex (just like in any other business), so which ever strategy you choose, be patient, put in the hours, and you will have the potential to make a good amount of money.