Hello teenagers, matriculants, parents of teenagers and matriculants, friends and family of teenagers and matriculants, and to any South Africans wanting to know more about:

what to do after matric,
what happens after matric,
how to prepare for after matric
how to find work after matric

It’s near the end of October 2011. We’re Terry and Tony, and we live in East London in South Africa. Terry is 42 and Tony is 51. We work from home, offering a variety of freelance services like web design, WordPress site set up, website analysis, website Search Engine Optimization, writing, Internet research, and photo editing. We also make some extra income online.

This After Matric aftermatric.co.za site is a blogsite using a free WordPress theme
- the Cover WP free WordPress theme, but we customized it ourselves to make it look more like we want it to look. Customizing WordPress themes is also one of the freelance services we offer.

How the Cover WP free WordPress theme looked before we customized it.

We already have a few other sites, but decided to start this site, After Matric, to help South African matriculants.

Some of the reasons why we decided to start this After Matric site:

One of our most popular sites is workfromhomeideas.co.za and when checking the visitor statistics of workfromhomeideas.co.za we have found that a lot of South Africans are finding the site after using a search Engine like Google to look for jobs for matrics and what to do after matric. workfromhomeideas.co.za is a general work from home ideas site, but we felt that a site related to only matrics and what they can do after matric would be more of a help to South African matriculants.

Of course we won’t deny that a niche site often works out well when we are trying to monetize a site at the same time as trying to help people.

Another reason to start this After Matric site is very much related to an article that we wrote on the Work From Home South Africa blog of workfromhomeideas.co.za about how matrics can make money from helping matrics find work – where we suggest that matriculants – or even teenagers who are not yet in matric – do a “project” that may make it easier for them to find work after matric. They may even earn extra income from the “project” itself. My (Terry) own children will be matriculating in a few years time and I can start helping them prepare for after matric now already, by also doing the “project” myself.

Also, although we work from home, this doesn’t mean life is easy. Some months are still a struggle. We started working from home a little over 3 and a half years ago when we couldn’t find work in East London, South Africa.

We are very aware that many South Africans are struggling to find work, and that many matriculants cannot find work at all, even if they have studied further and have a degree. We, Terry and Tony, have no degrees and have done no courses related to web design, WordPress or SEO – we learned to do what we do from reading and studying free information on the Internet.

Some South African matriculants are gifted, lucky or get lucky, but many others struggle to find work after matric, or are unable to find a job that pays them as much as they need.

We hope that this After Matric site will be of some help.

© copyright Teresa Schultz 2011