Today, I will be sharing with you a simple but powerful strategy on how to make money online in Nigeria. And to make you understand how simple it is to make money online, I will be using StrategicBusinessTeam.com as a case study to show you how I make money blogging. I was prompted to write specifically on this because I receive questions from Nigerians on daily basis asking how they can make money online. Some of the questions I receive frequently are:
- a. How can I make money online?
- b. Is making money online for real or a scam?
- c. What genuine ways can a Nigerian make money online?
- d. How can I start an internet business?
- e. How can I make money with Clickbank.com and Google adsense?
So in this article, I will be teaching you exactly how I make money online in Nigeria and how you too can. All I need from you is to keep an open mind and learn.
Is it Possible for a Nigerian to Make Money Online?
Many Nigerians still believe that the “make money online” or “make money blogging” concept is hype but I stand to dispute that ideology. If you must know; some people in the U.S and other European countries make a full living online. Darren Rowse makes a full living from blogging and Jeremy Shoemaker makes an average of $140,000/month from his network of blogs. Same goes with John Chow. If you have been on the net for maybe a year, I believe you must have heard of Ewen Chia. He is the internet’s No 1 affiliate marketer. He made $1,000,000 in 48Hours from just a single product. He is second only to John Reese, who made this same amount of money in 36Hours. You might say making such amount of money online is possible for these individuals because they reside in countries with thriving economy, so I think I will come home.
Have you heard of NairaLand.com? It is the most popular forum in Nigeria and it rakes in nothing less than $1,000 a day. Now check $1000 X 365 days, that will give us about $365,000 per year. Now convert it to Naira and see for yourself. The owner “Seun Osewa” built and still continues to run that website right from Nigeria. But that is not even the main gist. The main gist is that the owner “Seun Osewa” said he is going to sell NairaLand.com for a non negotiable sum of 25 Billion Naira and that’s the truth, NairaLand.com is worth at least 25 Billion Naira.
Are you still in doubt? Then maybe you have not heard of Lateef Olajide; the Nigerian high school dropout who made $36,000 within a space of 30 days from one single product. The product was an eBook on Dog bite prevention and the amazing thing was that Lateef Olajide didn’t write the eBook; he knows nothing about dogs and he hates dogs. Yet, he made $36,000 from a subject he hates. Can you beat that?
Now the cynics may say that these Nigerians didn’t make their money from blogging but let me tell you this: I am a Nigerian and I make money blogging in Nigeria. This is my business blog so you are free to take a look around and judge from what you see. Am I the only one blogging in Nigeria? My answer is no. Lateef Olajide also owns one of the largest internet marketing blog in Nigeria.
Have you heard of Onibalusi Bamidele? As at the time of writing this, Onibalusi is just seventeen years but he owns one of the fastest growing young entrepreneur’s blog and makes nothing less than $3,000 every month. You can check him out at YoungPrePro. If this seventeen year old Nigerian can do it, then what stops you from blogging in Nigeria? What stops you from making money online with blogs? My answer is nothing. Only your doubts and skepticism can stop you; no one else can.
Why you should start your own blog today
The new trend online is that people are growing tired of sales pitches and less personal marketing techniques. They are tired of ads that scream “Make $1,000 in one hour.” I want to tell you that it’s easier to sell a product to someone you’ve built a relationship with. Blogs are a powerful communication tool that you can use to communicate with friends and family and also to market to other people. Moreover, Google and other search engines love these types of sites! By setting up and marketing your blog, you can stand to make some pretty decent cash and you will instantly become a BIG PLAYER in the Internet marketing world once you build your blog followership or readership.
How to Make Money Online in Nigeria: My personal experience
I have written a lot of articles online with respect to making money online. One of my most popular articles is titled “How to build a successful blog” it’s published on JohnChow.com. Now if you are still in doubt about the possibilities of making money online in Nigeria by Blogging, then I see no reason why you are reading this article. In fact, I was almost tempted to refrain from teaching Nigerians how to make money online because of the high level of self doubts I see. Instead of stopping my teachings and seminars; I started giving away my materials for next to nothing.
Now back to my personal experience, I want you to take a good look at this blog you are on now. I launched this business blog on the 7th of October 2009 to share business development strategies and startup advice with aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners. But today, this blog puts a lot of dollars in my pocket everyday even while I am asleep.
Take a look at the top of this page and the side bars on your right hand side; you will see banner adverts. Those ads make me money even when asleep and I also pull in some small profits from Amazon.com; the world largest bookstore. But majority of my income comes from GOOGLE. All this took me less than three hours to set up. If you are ready to set up your own money making blog, please read on as I share with you below, my seven step guide to making money online by blogging.
How to Make Money Online in Nigeria by Blogging
1. Develop your mindset
This is always the first point I stress whenever I am sharing information that challenges you or requires you to take action. Before ever venturing online to make money or earn a full living, you must first see yourself achieving it. You must believe it is possible and achievable regardless of your region or country; whether United States, U.K, Ghana or Nigeria. You must see blogging in Nigeria and making money online as a possibility; all I am saying in essence is that you must challenge your self doubt and laziness. Ultimately, you must be prepared to leave your comfort zone. After challenging your self doubt, you must set a specific goal or target. What is your expectation online? It might be to make your first $100 or to become an expert in a niche. Whatever goal you set, make sure it is achievable.
2. Find a niche and choose a topic
Now what is a Niche? A Niche is simply a small group of people with a common interest. Examples of popular niches are football fans, Students, Teenagers, Sports Betting, Forex Traders, Weight Watchers, Pool, Arsenal Fans, Chelsea Fans, Man U Fans, Singles, Game lovers, Housewives, Nursing Mothers, Careers, Dating, Education, Marriage, making Money and so on.
Therefore Niche blogs are going to be blogs related to different topics that a select group of people are interested in. The reason for this is because there may be a lot of people interested in a particular topic but don’t know where to go to get more information about that topic. That is where you come in; to provide the content they need and in return these visitors will buy products from you or click on your ads to generate a nice income for you. Niche blogging is more powerful because you don’t have to compete with other competitors for the same crowd. Armed with the right knowledge, you can go into a niche and completely dominate. A good rule of thumb in niche blogging is that your niche must be a high paying, low competitive niche.
How to find a high paying, low competitive Niche
The Basics of Keyword Research
The first step is to compile a list of niches you have interest in. Examples are book lovers, students, football fans, basket ball fans, game lovers, photographers and so on. If you are short of niche ideas, you can rush now to the following websites for more ideas and research:
Amazon – www.amazon.com is by far one of the best sites to do your niche market research on. Search any of their department for niche ideas. They have certain sections that tell you exactly what’s selling in their marketplace, some of such sections are:
- Hot New Releases
- Most Gifted
- Most Wished For
- Movers & Shakers
EBay Pulse – pulse.ebay.com will give you the breakdown of current trends and cool stuff that is selling on eBay. It also gives you a list of popular searches, largest stores and most watched items
Google Trends – www.google.com/trends is used to compare certain niches to see if it is the right time of year to launch a blog. This will compare the world’s interest in chosen niche markets.
Traffic Potential – After you’ve identified a few potential niches you want to see if the traffic is there or if people are even searching for information or products in this niche. I usually use Google Keyword Tool – adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Next I will enter my main keyword, in this case I found a niche pertaining to “digital slr” which basically is all about digital camera/photography. So enter “digital slr” (without quotes) and it returns a number of keywords I can target. As you can see, this niche is getting a lot of traffic. I normally focus my efforts on keywords getting between 14,000 and 30,000 searches per month and narrow it down from there. Here are the potential keywords that I found:
- Sigma digital slr
- Digital slr review
- Best digital slr camera
- Digital slr photography
- Digital slr lenses
- Best digital slr
I will continue to use this example throughout this article, so you can have a full example of how to research a niche and setup a blog around a certain topic. Is it Profitable? – This is by far the easiest step in niche research to see if there is money in your particular niche. Essentially, there are several ways to monetize a blog and I will be explaining them here in this article. But first, you will want to check the keywords and see what advertisers are paying per click. The keyword cost per click (CPC) has to be at least $1.00; this will let you know that we have businesses paying money for their business/product to get exposure. So I did a search for the 6 keywords I’m targeting to see if they are averaging at least $1 CPC.
As you can see collectively, this set of niche keywords is averaging $1 CPC. Now we want to check to see if there are any related affiliate programs that we can promote. There are two ways we can go about doing this; a Simple Google Search like niche keyword + “affiliate program.”
After searching it returned over 220,000 results or possible affiliate programs that I can promote and make money from. The second way you would find affiliate programs is by simply searching the big affiliate networks where businesses or vendors go to tap into an affiliate program. You can search these networks for your niche to see if there are any good products to promote.
Commission Junction – www.cj.com
Shareasale – www.shareasale.com
Clickbank – www.clickbank.com
How to Start a Niche blog on your personal strengths or skill
Now I will explain how to build a niche blog on your strengths, hobby, talent or personal skill and still make a hell of money from it. Building a niche blog on this model will fit those who love to write and talk about their hobbies. You can make money online by simply by writing or talking about your personal life, hobby or anything else. It is very possible to turn any hobby, talent or skill you possess into a cash machine. But I think it’s worthwhile you know that not all blog niches are inherently profitable because the topic you choose, often determines the future size and profitability of your blog to some extent.
When going this route, it is important to pick a niche that you are genuinely interested in because the natural passion you have for the topic sustains the content creation process and will actually make the whole chore of blogging enjoyable. So the first thing you would do is create a list of topics that interest you. So my own list would be something like this:
- Making money
- Reading
- Entrepreneurship
- Investing
- Writing
- Martial Arts
So I would start with Entrepreneurship and investing, since I love building businesses and investing money. Entrepreneurship is my passion, I love teaching people how to start a business and that’s why I created StrategicBusinessTeam.com. Apart from my passion for entrepreneurship, I also love the game of investing. Now I don’t know what your passion may be but if you want to dive deeper and see if there are sub niches that you can blog about. Do a simple Google blog search http://blogsearch.google.com to see what others are blogging about and see if you can carve a niche out of it. When writing about your passions and interest, it is important to also check the search volume and see the traffic potential so you will not waste your time writing about a topic that doesn’t make you any money.
3. Join a community related to your niche
The third step to making money online in Nigeria by Blogging is to join a community related to your chosen niche. For instance, if you have researched and discovered that a niche exist for guitar players, all you have to do is join social networks and forum for guitar players. Joining this forum will help you see the problems or needs existing in the niche.
I am a member of several communities related to business, entrepreneurship and investing. These communities bring me closer to my targeted niche. Using these communities as leverage, I can have a sneak preview into the minds of entrepreneurs to know the challenges they are facing currently. When you address the problems of people and offer them a solution, you draw them closer to yourself and make them loyal readers of your blog.
4. Start your blog
After carrying out your research and identifying one or two communities related to your niche, your next step is to build a blog. But as one of my mentors ‘Steve Pavlina’ advised; don’t just build a blog on your niche. Instead, build a complete website around that niche.
Today, I see some blogs with post summaries interfaced on the home page. Instead of making your home page a summary of your recent articles, make it a static page just like I did with StrategicBusinessTeam.com and link to all other pages and posts. I don’t know if my ideology is right but I think its okay for me. Also, it is my team’s long term strategy to implement a forum on this blog when the traffic rate reaches our target figure. We also have other long term plans for this blog. That’s what I mean by building a complete website around your niche, not just a blog. Building a blog does not require you to be a web savvy or a programmer. With just the simple ability of holding and clicking a mouse, you can install a blog.
5. Add valuable content to your blog
The primary reason I advised you join a community related to your niche is for the purpose of generating valuable content that will attract readers and turn them to loyalist. There is a saying that goes online that “content is king.” Your content will be considered valuable by readers if it solves a problem or address a certain issue. Content is the main reason why highly niche related blogs command more power than personal blogs. Except you are a celebrity, musical star or an award winning movie star, nobody gives a damn about your personal life. I write this because I see individuals launching blogs in their personal names or domain names like www.JohnxxxMark.com
If you intend to build a professional business blog with a high market value, then you must register a professional domain name that reflects the niche. Examples of professional domain names are ABCMarketing.com, GolfPro.com, BloggingTips.com. A popular internet marketer John Chow once confessed that one of the greatest mistakes he made online was registering his blog in his personal name JohnChow.com and he advised his protégés to avoid this mistake.
Having digressed a little, let’s go back to the importance of providing valuable content on your blog. Your content is your leverage to position yourself as an expert in a niche. Your blog is your gun, content is the bullet. If your content is strong, the impact on your readers will be strong but if it’s weak, the effect on your readers will be like pouring water on a rock. Don’t substitute quality for quantity. Even if you are publishing one article per week, make that article a ‘never to be forgotten‘ article. Write something that readers will love to bookmark or return often to read again and again. What’s the essence of writing or publishing daily articles that are worthless or valueless? There are trillions of content online so yours must be unique to enable it stand out from the crowd.
How to Make Money Online in Nigeria starting from Today
6. Monetize your blog and Make Money
The next step after building your blog is to monetize it. Monetization of a blog is simply the process of adding a money generating system to your blog. There are several ways you can make money online with a blog and some of them are:
a) Direct Advertising – This is monetization strategy where you generate income by selling adverts directly on your blog at your own fixed rate.
b) Third party ads company – these companies will act as third parties by connecting you with blog advertisers. Examples are BlogAds.com and Adbrite.com
c) Cost per click ads – These are ads displayed on your blogs by third party companies where income is generated on a pay per click basis. Examples of companies that offer pay per click services are Google Adsense and Clicksor.com
d) Affiliate programs – You can monetize your blog with affiliate programs. Programs that pay you for every referral or sale you generate. You can source for such programs individually or through affiliate networks. Examples of such network are ClickBank.com, Cj.com and ShareASale.com
You can also generate income from your blog by selling links through TextLinkAds.com and InfoLinks.com, or you can sell your own products such as eBooks and software. You may also choose to generate income by selling services or doing product reviews. Whatever income stream you choose, just make sure it blends with your niche or blog theme.
7. Promote your blog and make money
The last but not the least step is the promotion of your blog. This is the most important step in the process of making money online with blogs. Blog or website promotion is all about generating traffic or visitors to your blog. No matter how beautiful or valuable your content is, if there are no visitors, then your entire blog will be worthless. You are reading this article today because I promoted it using different means. If I did not market this blog, you won’t be here reading this article and if you don’t come to my blog to read my articles, I will not money.
So the end point of this is that your blog traffic or visitors is directly proportional to your income. You must exhaust all marketing avenues to make sure you blog content reaches the targeted audience. You must promote your blog both online and offline. I can’t exhaust the blog marketing or promotion techniques here in this article but I will explain in details maybe in forthcoming articles.
How do you start a blog with no money? What does it take to build a successful blog from scratch? What’s the success secret of this business blog? How was I able to start and build this blog “StrategicBusinessTeam.com” to profitability without any marketing or advertising budget? If you are interested in the answer to the questions above, please read on.
