Blogging in Nigeria – 11 Things Nigerian Bloggers Can Relate With

blogging in nigeria – blogging laptop

Do you want to start a blog in Nigeria? Want to try blogging in Nigeria? Then this is a must read guide for you.

There are a lot of posts on how to start a blog, but only few have documented their blogging experience in Nigeria.
If you are looking for how to start a blog in Nigeria, I have a guide on it, click here.

But I see it compulsory for you to read the peculiarities of starting a blog in Nigeria
While starting a blog js a good business ideas for.anyone around the world including Nigeria, there are some challenges faced by Nigerian bloggers.

In this post I will be sharing both the challenges and the benefits of being a blogger in Nigeria.

So let get started with this.

What is blogging?

You must be a blogger for visiting this post, but I still do believe that a very few of us still don’t understand what blogging truly means.

Blogging is the act of writing Chronicles or stories to entertain or help solve a problem.
Blogging first started as a personal web blog for sharing personal stories in an informal way just to keep diaries online.

But as time goes, people began to see how well they can monetize their blog and turn it into a business.
This was what led to the massive adoption of blogging as a business.

Come to think of it, it is massive enough. We have more than a billion blogs on the internet.
That being said, a good fraction of those blogs end up being neglected by the blogger.

Which is why stats states that over 90% of bloggers quit blogging.
And the truth is that almost every blogger have once thought of quitting blogging.

The Phase of Blogging in Nigeria

Blogging in Nigeria wasn’t really appreciated because a lot of people doubt if it possible to make money from a blog not until Linda Ikeji story broke the internet (richest blogger in Nigeria).

Blogging became a professional business for a good number of people when the media carried the news of a blogger buying a mansion in Lekki ( an expenses area to live in Nigeria).
And to correct something here, Linda Ikejii wasn’t the first blogger in Nigeria.

There are other top bloggers who started before her like Bella Naija, and other unknown bloggers that quitted.
But all thanks to Linda Ikeji, blogging got its name through her in Nigeria.

Blogging in Nigeria though has been recognized as a professional career, only a few bloggers in Nigeria are actually treating it like that.

A lot of Nigerian bloggers are youngsters who care less about treating their blog as a professional but rather they copy and paste other bloggers work on their blog.

Some of them have had success doing that but a good percentage of the content theft bloggers end up not achieving anything with their blog because Google is totally against it.

That being said, Most of Nigerian bloggers make their money through AdSense.
This has been one of the reasons why a lot of bloggers in Nigeria earn very low compared to other bloggers in the world.

AdSense is not the best way to monetize a blog except you have a large number of traffic.
Before I end up spitting it all out here, let get the deal done with.

13 Things Nigeria Bloggers can Relate With – Blogging in Nigeria

1. Most Nigerian Bloggers run a Multi-Niche site

If you are not a blogger, it would be a bit difficult to understand this.
A Multi-Niche blog is a blog that covers different or multiple topics all on the same site.
While a single niche blog is a blog that covers one topic.

For example, a blog that discussed about wedding is a niche blog. While a blog about wedding, movies, music, books all on a site is a Multi-Niche site.

Though some Multi-Niche blog discusses multiple topics that are somehow related to the main topic, while some discuss totally different topics.

An example of this is a blog about entertainment and technology.
I am also a victim of this.

2. You Want to Cover it All

This is a feeling almost every blogger faces. And this is because most Bloggers aren’t professional.

If your main goal is to drive traffic to your blog and earn well from AdSense, then you will be tempted to cover all topics so far it is less competitive and has a high monthly volume search.

This is not something I just formulated, it is something I concluded after looking at the trends in Nigerian blogs.

It should not be strange that you will find a tech blogger blogging about NPower.

At least, I am referring to myself.

But the truth is that I am not the only one doing this. I have even started correcting all this in order to build a decent blog.

There are other bloggers like Jide Ogunsanya, a tech blogger. I visited his site one day and was shocked to find posts on recruitment, NPower, etc.

The shock was that I was expecting to find tech related stuff on the blog.
The implications of this is not farfetched.

It would be difficult to sell to an audience of different interest.
So you are better off sticking to your niche.

Lesson for Newbies
As an amateur blogger both in Nigeria and outside the country, choose a big niche that has a lot to cover.
Choose a blog niche and stick to the niche. Only add related niche to the blog after you are there is nothing to write concerning your blog niche.

3. Poor Electricity

This is another concern for Nigeria bloggers. You just can’t forget where you are from.
Blogging in a land where there is poor power supply is very difficult because you need to always be online working on your blog.

If you are not reading other blogs, you will be writing blog posts, or building links to your blog, sharing your posts to social media, joining bloggers community.

All of this is much like hell for bloggers who do not have a power supply.
As a full-time blogger, you will need to work for more than 10 hours on your blog and that is so much of power consumption.

I’m also a victim of this, the average amount of time I have actively spent is 5 hours.
And this is why a good number of bloggers are behind the rest because of the advantage we have over another.

But that shouldn’t be an excuse for not succeeding in the blogging profession.
Because of blogging, I had to make friends with business centres (cafe) owners in my community.

Just to be able to work from their shop and this has been helping because I could achieve 8 hours without spending a dime on power supply.

4. Copy and Paste

Hmm. My fellow Nigerian bloggers. You have an A at this.

A good number of Nigerian bloggers are content thieves. They steal from other bloggers and republish it on their blog.
I have seen some of my content being pirated by lazy bloggers and at a time, some were even ranking higher than I am.

You see the problem of content theft.

It is a threat to the real professional bloggers. They watch their content being stolen by lazy bloggers and their traffic source being plumetted

Well not anymore

I did tell you that my content was stolen. Then let me add that the first time i filed a DMCA complaint against those blogs, it was rejected.

I felt like Google doesn’t even have a good algorithm the way it’s being painted.
How could Google be telling me that, there was no good evidence that I own the content.

When a lot of problogger have said that Google has a good eye to catch cheaters.
Then I decided to do a bit of research again and recompose my complaint the second time.

And to my surprise, it was accepted and I have gone ahead to remove other content thieves that have stolen my content.

So you can also do the same, if you are suffering from this.
We need to treat the fuck up of lazy bloggers and let them know blogging isn’t for them.

Are you still with me?

5. AdSense is our Main Means of Survival

No matter how hard or how good the preachings of do not use AdSense on your blog, Nigerian bloggers only have a few options.

Before you cast a stone at me, let me clear myself.

The bloggers I am mostly referring to here are Bloggers that have Nigerians as their main audience.
Most Nigerians will not pay you 5,000 naira for an ebook, rather they we look for how to download it for free.

And these are the people we are catering for on our blogs.
So the main source of income is to expect them to click on the ads then we keep accumulating our little cents till its worth a while.

My fellow Nigerian bloggers do understand this.

Yes there are other ways of making money like services, but we can’t really afford not placing ads on our site.
Are you looking for other ways to make money blogging, I have written a guide on it here .

6. Costly Internet Services

Yes, I am referring to Data. Sometimes whenever I check my data usage and also review the amount of money I spend on data, I can’t help but think about other ways of making money Blogging.

Internet Services is expensive for a newbie because he has not started making any money from his blog.
So you should see why I’m saying this.
And in order to reduce my cost, sometimes I type my blog post through my phone.

This particular post you are reading was typed on phone.
And this was because of power supply and the expensive data services we have in Nigeria.

So when my laptop battery is flat, I resort to my phone to continue the work.
And this has been the way I have been working recently.

So if you are just starting, I will advise you to get a good laptop and also a good and widescreen phone too.

Not necessarily a tablet. I am not using a tablet.

7. Your Friends and Family Don’t Understand You Anymore.

This was one of the major reasons why I almost quitted blogging.
If you have family and friends who don’t know what you are doing and are also expert in calculating the amount you are wasting on blogging, you will understand what I went through.

Then, my dad would always tell me I was just wasting money on what isn’t real.
He was like I was getting slimmer and I was dashing Google and tele-communication network money.

And they were right because that is only what they understood by blogging.
Even my dad once told me that, blogging was a lazy man’s job.
And this is a big like that he later discovered.

If you are thinking about becoming a blogger in order to escape stress, then forget it.
Blogging is more stressful than your 9-5 day job if you are willing to make it a business.
You will have to spend around 10 hours daily in order to grow your blog as fast as possible.

So prepare your mind, because blogging is not as easy as you thought.
But it’s interesting though and you will find it fun if you are a good writer.

8. You Have Heard of Linda Ikeji and Bella

I was not thinking of this before😚, but I think it is worth adding it.
A good number of Nigeria bloggers started blogging just because they heard about Linda Ikeji and her rise to fame through blogging.

Well I can count myself out of this one. I never heard of Linda Ikeji not until I had already started my first blog.
And reason was because I never read a Nigerian blog on blogging because only few existed then.

So I only read ShoutMeLoud blog for blogging tips. And you sure bet that you can’t find Linda Ikeji name there because there are more wildly successful bloggers in the world.

But truth be told, she is actually an inspiration to a lot of bloggers in Nigeria and I admire her work
But let clear this again. If you are thinking you will be highly successful like Linda ikeji is, then rethink your strategy.

Entertainment blogs are no go area because of their competitiveness.
Linda Ikeji was lucky enough to start her blog in a time when blogging was not yet widely recognized.

So there was little competition compared to now. So you are better off thinking a new strategy to beat the competition rather than thinking of being another Linda.

9. No Investment

A lot of Nigerian bloggers do not give a darn concerning buying ebooks and online courses that will help them grow their blog fast.

This is another truth every Nigerian bloggers can relate to.
And it’s not our fault. The average cost of an online course on blogging by the so-called professional bloggers are way too expensive for us.

Imagine an online course on writing costs $1000. How can you expect Nigerians to buy the course?
$1000 dollars is equivalent to 360,000 naira.

And am sure if we had this money, we would have thought another Business to go into.
At least for a good number of us.

That amount is way too much and this is why most bloggers are of the believe that not until they make a dime there is nothing like buying a course or investing into blogging.

I also had this mindset as a beginner but things are now different.

10. Build a House and buy a car

At least most of us have this dream. They are beautiful dreams that we should all crave for.

I am also of the motion of building a house but that buying a car will come later on.

And also though these are beautiful dreams, let me give you a piece of my mind.
Do not lavish your blogging earnings. Try your best to re invest into other businesses too.

Online businesses are great to run because of their high profit potential but do not put all your eggs inside one basket.

Spread your investment into other physical businesses like poultry farming, real estate, restaurant business, etc.

So far for now, I have started my own poultry and it’s moving fast.
I will write a post detailing my experience in the poultry business and how you can start yours too.

Side note – I have an ebook on poultry farm insurance if you are interested in it.

11. Nigerian Bloggers are Poor in Collaboration

This has been on my mind for some time now. Nigerian bloggers just see blogging as a way of making money and surviving they don’t see the aspect of helping lives and building useful relationships.

And this has been what is limiting the profit potential of most blogs.
The very day I changed my mindset towards blogging was when I started making real money blogging.

Your Turn

We made it. There you have my own summary of my survey of blogging in Nigeria. This post was not written to bad name blogging but was written to reprogram the mind of Nigerian bloggers so that we can learn to appreciate the true call of bloggers.

Are you up for content collaboration? Then shoot mail at eniola@guruscoach.com

Do you need a digital marketer and writer to scale up your business through content marketing? I’m available for hire.

Shoot me an email on eniola@guruscoach.com and let discuss how I may be of help to you.
And for sponsored post, read this.

Let the comment behind to roll in.