Pro Tips to Becoming a Successful Blogger in Nigeria

Blogging is sweet if you do it well, but it can be challenging to become a successful blogger in Nigeria.

Why Is Blogging Sweet?

We’ll only be considering contents that do not expire. Some contents expire, like celebrity gist, mostly become useless after a few days. Most of what we will discuss here has to deal with content that don’t expire, which are content that will remain relevant even after years, see this, for example.

So let me give you a few reasons why blogging is sweet and why you should consider it

1. You attract more audience

For example, before I started blogging/Youtube, I was on less than 2000 followers, and now I’m on 12.5M, sorry I mean 12.5K; GLORY TO GOD because we are moving forward.

2. You actually help people

Suppose you are the type that finds peace in helping others. It definitely works.

3. You develop yourself

Having to write for people forces you to learn more, research, read more about certain subjects. In cases like that, you unconsciously learn more, and learning without even knowing that you are learning is the best way to learn #DontLeaveMe

4. Make Money (MOST IMPORTANT)

Making money is sweet. Honestly. Even though blog money might not come easy (not trying to overhype it or discourage you), just being factual. I started making money after about 3/4 months, writing on average three times a week. Not a lot of money, but enough to boost the spirit to do more.

Some people won’t make money even after two years. But I was fortunate enough to have learned from the best. So some of the little tactics are what I’ll tell you around here.

Why Is Becoming a Successful Blogger in Nigeria Difficult?

1. It is hard work

It’s not easy having to write 1000 words of content you are not even sure anyone will read. Only a strong man can survive ‘and woman.’

2. It takes time

Not as much time as Youtube requires; it’s still softer. To be a successful blogger in Nigeria, you need to dedicate adequate time to your blog.

3. You need to do your homework

You can’t just write stuff like that; you need to do research and get your facts right. Wrong information can be misleading and will discredit your blog.

4. It requires a good knowledge of SEO

As a blogger, you should be an expert at SEO. We would reflect on this better later in this lecture, and stay engaged.

How To Build A Blog ‘yourself’ With Less Than 5,000 Naira.

We aren’t going into this but go through this ‘How To Build A Blog‘ guide, which Fattkay wrote. I used some of the tips in the guide. You will find it very resourceful

You can also explore this comprehensive article on building a successful blog in Nigeria. 

Important Factors To Becoming A Successful Blogger In Nigeria

1. Choose A Niche

To become a successful blogger in Nigeria, it is important you choose a niche you want to blog about. Below are a few things you should consider while choosing your blog (writing) niche.

• Do you have an interest in the niche?

You have no business blogging about games when you don’t even like games. Even though it’s possible, the flow won’t be natural. So what do you like? Alcohol? Do you drink ogogoro(alcohol) a lot? Then maybe you should blog about liquors. Awkward as it sounds, it will work if you do it well.

• Does the content expire?

Do you want to blog about trending fashion? It’s cool. But understand that most of the content will become less relevant in a short time. There’s nothing wrong with this. But I need you to blog about topics that, even if you stop writing after some time, your old content will still bring money. Imagine people still seeing your blog from google after a year, and the content is still as fresh as new; what sort of free money is that? That’s smart blogging, not a waste of time. And it is the ultimate tip to becoming a successful blogger in Nigeria.

• How wide is the search audience?

Understand that most of your audience will come from search engines. People HARDLY visit blogs intentionally these days. Or when last did you type a blog in your browser to check?

So most of the people that will visit your blog are those that need your content. So when choosing a niche, make sure it’s a niche that has a good search volume. For instance, ‘makeup,’ a lot of people search about makeup daily. So that works. On the other hand, a wide search audience is not always the best idea. Check the next point for more details

• How competitive is the niche?

If you want to blog about makeup, you need to be ready for the HEAT. Too many big blogs are there, and you won’t beat them on google search results in 10 years (NO JOKES) because they have stronger domain authority (SEO TERM, GOOGLE IT). So it would be best if you also considered this.

• How Profitable?

To become a successful blogger in Nigeria, you should understand some niches will make you more money than others. Health, fitness, finance, real estate, tech, gaming, business and marketing, and travel. Those niches will make you more money because the advertisers are willing to pay more. If you blog about celebrity gist, the pay-per-click is very low because advertisers believe most people reading the blogs are jobless (lol), so they won’t pay much per click. However, by the time you do your calculation and think of the conversion rate of $100 Dollars to Naira, you will still feel fulfilled.  

Summarily, the most important factor is interest. Cause if you are interested in a topic, you will be able to dedicate your time to it even if there’s no monetary gain attached. If the niche is competitive, you only have to manipulate keywords and write about less competitive topics smartly. If the search audience is low, the niche will be less competitive, so you can easily dominate. That’s that on choosing a niche.

Read Also: 12 Lucrative Ways to Make Money from Blogging in Nigeria

2. Choosing a Hosting Plan

After you have your niche and audience size, the next thing is to develop the blog. To create a blog, you need a domain name and hosting.
I recommend Namecheap for a good domain name (.com) and whogohost for “.ng” domain extension. Like insigh.ng.
Namecheap is still my favourite when it comes to hosting services too.
However, you can check the list of other top Website hosting service providers and the top WordPress hosting plans.

2. Search Engine Optimization

This is the most important part. You’ll hardly get anywhere without SEO. There is a lot of basic understanding you need to have; check here.

But if I should explain to you in my own words,

SEO is when people check Google for a keyword, and they find your blog. For example, If you search “beauty blogger in Nigeria,” my blog shows first. That’s good search engine optimization alongside other keywords relating to my niche. When people go to Google to look for things like that, they find me, check my blog. Hopefully, they find one of the ads on my blog interesting, click the ads, and I make money. I join the club of successful bloggers in Nigeria. That’s a summary.

You will still need to do your homework concerning SEO, though, but here are some tips;

• Gain some links to your blog.

Imagine you want to apply for a digital marketer job at ABC company. And a digital marketer known by ABC company recommends you to the company. This gives you an advantage over other applicants. Now imagine more digital marketers recommend you to ABC company. They will pick interest in you and decide to go through your CV to see if you are even worth the hype.

That is how linking and SEO work. So as a beauty blogger, all I had to do was look for other beauty blogs, beg them, toast them, or pay them to link back to my blog. So that way, when Google bot visits their blog, it will see a link to my blog and be like, “who is this?” then the bot will check out my blog. Now, if I have good content, the blog will pick interest in my blog. After the bot picks interest in my content, I rank higher on that content search engine.

She posted a review of my e-book. Then linked to my blog. The more links you have, the better your chances. Some links are rather useless; we call them no-follow links, while useful links are do-follow links.

3. Content Creation
   

Once you’ve understood SEO, let’s talk about content creation.

Read also: How to hook your readers with great content

What do you want to write about? Concerning content, you don’t just write. You;

• Write what people are searching for.
• Produce original content, don’t copy and paste; Google will know.
• Write like a human being, not a robot.
• Social media and blogging are not the same.
• Be consistent: Twice a week is not bad for starters.
• Add pictures when writing.
• Feel free to hire writers.
• Educate and entertain: Don’t write like a strict teacher, and don’t write like a sadist.
• Write primarily for search engines, secondarily for humans.

Check this content for a proper SEO writing tutorial.

4. Monetization

This is the main, the main to becoming a successful blogger in Nigeria. Google Adsense is the case study here. Google Adsense is a popular advertising platform where companies pay Google, and Google then pays you to put the company’s adverts on your blog. It can be tedious before Google finds your blog worthy of placing adverts on. You have to produce quality, unique content before applying. But there’s a shortcut!

Easy, once you have a considerable amount of content on the blog, you can buy Adsense. Head to Nairaland and search, be careful not to get scammed. Read more on Adsense. Once you have Adsense, place it on your blog, and Google will automatically shuffle through adverts and find the best fit for your blog.

How much you make from Adsense depends on a lot of factors:

• Traffic: How many people visit your blog?
• Niche: How much are advertisers willing to pay per click for your niche? You can get $0.5 per click for a real estate ad and 0.01$ per click for some weird advert like a Jiji advert.
• Country: Advertisers are willing to pay more for some countries than others. If a USA person clicks your ad, you will make more money than a Nigerian clicking the same ad. Both human beings, but life no balance.

When you are writing, it’s safe to say don’t only write for a local audience, for more income.

Writing is such a critical skill for successful blogging business. Join our whatsapp community to get access to learning opportunities in writing.

10 Things Every Aspiring Blogger Must Know

1. Blogging takes a lot of voluntary effort.
2. It is a good way to make money but not one of the easiest ways. If you do it for passion or interest, you have a better chance of making good money. If you do it intentionally because of money, I’m afraid it can be frustrating.
3. You don’t have to send your blog post link to friends and families. Nah. It’s different from a YouTube video or Instagram post. Just do it, hoping someone that needs your content will find it on google someday.
4. Never copy and paste content from another blog; you cannot succeed with that.
5. You will need to learn new things, and you have to be comfortable with that.
6. Don’t expect comments on your blog (In fact, I removed the comment box from my blog)
7. It would be best if you built links to boost your rankings
8. Use internal linking to help Google (and people) navigate your site
9. Guest blog for more traffic, better SEO, and brand awareness (Guest blogging means writing for other blogs for free)
10. Blog if you love it. Don’t blog if you don’t want to.

Editor Note:

This article is a transcript of a lecture delivered by Mimie Jay on the topic “Best tips to becoming a successful blogger in Nigeria” at the Insightpreneur 2020 Digital Conference held on Telegram. You can click here to join the group and digest other enlightening knowledge delivered by other guest speakers at the program.

About Mimie Jay

Hi, I’m Mimie Jay, a beauty blogger. I’m also a Youtuber and an all-in-all content creator. Let’s just say I am an ordinary person with an extraordinary interest in delivering my fresh takes on beauty, lifestyle, and current makeup trends via my blog, Instagram, Youtube, and more. I’m an introvert in person, but I’m full-time extroverted in my online world.

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