smartbusinessinfohubIn Nigeria starting a blog might not be as difficult as you think it is. Nowadays, anybody can start and grow a successful blog from the comfort of their home. You can start a lucrative business with your blog and start making money right away. Learn how to start a blog in Nigeria and make money with it.
Follow this guide to get started.
Why Start a Blog
A blog is a great marketing tool for businesses, but the popularity of blogging is largely because it also offers ordinary people the opportunity to become stars as well as make a reasonable living from their blogs.
Choose what to Blog about
One of the first decisions you make after deciding you want to start a blog is to figure out what you will blog about. Some new bloggers fall into the trap of writing about everything that comes to mind.
Yes, blogging is about sharing your thoughts, research, and experience, but if you are interested in professional blogging that thought must be targeted at a clearly defined audience.
Remember that one of the goals of professional bloggers is to build a reputation. Certainly, you cannot build a reputation on everything.
You need to build a reputation on something. This is why before you start a blog, you have to give a long hard thought on what you want to be blogging about.
Your blog should be about your interest and passion. It should be about a topic you are happy discussing. It should be about something you are passionate about.
Passion is very important in blogging because it takes time and energy to build a reputation and make money from blogs and without passion you will certainly give up.
Top Blogging Niches for Bloggers
Here are a few niches to choose and start your blogging career in case you’re thinking of what to blog about in Nigeria.
- Health
- Personal finance
- Online business
- Travel
- Affiliate Marketing
- Fitness
- Cryptocurrency
- Wealth
- Investing
- News & Entertainment
- Make Money online
- Dieting
How to Start a Blog In Nigeria and Make Money
Choose a Blog Platform
A blog platform is an online software that enables you create and maintain a blog. A blogging platform offers you an easy to use interface for posting content to your blog.
You can write, format, and edit your posts, as well as add photos and videos to your posts via your blogging platform.
The blog platform also creates an easy interface for customizing the look and feel of your blogs. They also offer plug-ins and widgets for extending the functionality of your blog and making it more useful to your readers.
I will advise you to pick WordPress. WordPress has thousands of plugins that you can use to add lots of functionality to your blog and offers the level of customization that no other blogging platform offers. In addition, WordPress has a large community of users that can help you with any challenge you may run into.
Note that there are two types of WordPress: www.wordpress.com and www.wordPress.org . I am recommending WordPress.org, the self-hosted version. WordPress.com is similar to Blogger and share some of its limitations.
So, I recommend that if you have plans to start a blog, WordPress should be your first choice. You can also choose other blogging platforms like Blogger.com, Tumblr, and Medium.
Choose a Domain Name
A good domain name and a hosting account are the two very important elements of your blog. If you choose a funny domain name, your blog visitors will have a difficult time remembering your domain name and even your brand name.
You might be asking yourself what a domain name is? A domain name is simply the web address that leads to your blog and also the name of your blog is its central address on the internet.
A domain name is another little detail you need to get settled before you start a blog. Here are some tips on how to choose a domain name for your blog:
Choose short memorable domain names – Some of the best domains are short and memorable.
Add your keyword to your domain – If it is possible, add your major keyword to your domain name.
Consider future expansions – When choosing your domain name you need to consider the future expansion for your blog.
Use a popular TLD – Top Level Domains TLDs are letters that end a domain name eg. .com, .org, .net. .com is the most popular top level domain and should be your first choice. You can also try .org and .net in that order.
Avoid using other people’s brand names and registered names – Avoid using business brand names in your domain or registered brand names. This will ensure you do not run into legal trouble tomorrow.
In the same vein, your blog name should be as short as possible, memorable, and avoid using other people’s brand names or registered names.
Choose a Web Hosting Company
You have chosen a domain name. Now it is time to host your blog.
There are loads of good hosting companies out there. If you’re starting a WordPress, self-hosted blog, there are a near-endless amount of options.
A web hosting company like Bluehost is a service that stores the files that make up your blog on servers connected to the internet in such a way that they are accessible to your readers through your domain name.
The important thing is to do your due diligence and pick the right one that’s suitable to your budget and to ensure that the service-level and uptime guarantee is there.
In the beginning, you’ll likely want to start out with Shared Hosting Server and scale from there. Eventually, you’ll probably need a dedicated-hosting solution with a CDN (below) once you break through a few thousand visitors per day.
Bluehost.com offers cheap hosting package (as low as $2.95/mo) if you are looking for an affordable hosting company.
CLICK HERE: 10 Top Ways to Promote a New Blog
Installing WordPress Plugins
WordPress plugins are like mobile phone applications. They help you achieve a task easily without coding skills.
If you recall, during the time to choose web hosting, I recommended you untick some options.
Yes. That is right because you have many WordPress plugins that will do the same job for you free of charge.
Just to mention a few – based on what you want, here are the basic and must-have WordPress plugins.
- RankMath– Rank Math is a revolutionary SEO product that combines the features of many SEO tools and lets you multiply your traffic in the easiest way possible.
- Elementor– The most advanced frontend drag & drop page builder. Create high-end, pixel perfect websites at record speeds. Any theme, any page, any design.
- WPS Hide Login– Protect your website by changing the login URL and preventing access to wp-login.php page and wp-admin directory while not logged-in.
- WordFence– The Wordfence WordPress security plugin provides free enterprise-class WordPress security, protecting your website from hacks and malware.
- LuckyWP Table of Contents– Creates a table of contents for your posts/pages. Works automatically or manually (via shortcode, Gutenberg block or widget).
- Two Factor– Extra Two-Factor Authentication using time-based one-time passwords, Universal 2nd Factor (FIDO U2F), email and backup verification codes.
- Akismet Anti-Spam– Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from spam. It keeps your site protected even while you sleep. To get started: install and activate the Akismet plugin and then go to your Akismet Settings page to set up your API key.
- Hustle– Hustle is another WordPress plugin you want to download and install is Hustle. With Hustle you can start collecting email addresses and quickly grow your mailing list with big bold pop-ups, slide-ins, widgets, or in post opt-in forms.
Set up your Blog for Launch
Just before you get started, there are important steps you want to take.
Here’s my favorite beginner setup at the lowest cost with the best features (based on my experience):
- Click here to go to Bluehost.com (<- that link gets you a discount) and click Get Started Now.
- Choose the Choice Plus Plan.
- Enter the domain name you want to use (i.e. smartbusinessinfohub.com).
- Enter your account information.
- Under Package Information, choose an account plan based on how long you want to pay. (Remember, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee with all plans, so no risk!)
- Uncheck the Package Extras (you don’t need them.)
- Complete your purchase, choose your password, and login to your Bluehost account.
- Answer the onboarding questions or skip them, but choose “blog” when prompted.
- Click “skip” when it comes to choosing your theme. (We’ll get that sorted out later.)
- From the Bluehost dashboard, click the WordPress button on the top right and you’ll be taken to WordPress.
Congrats! You now have a self-hosted WordPress blog! 😀
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Set up your Blog Permalinks
Permalinks help your blog with SEO by defining your URL – blog link.
Here is example to relate with.
Now if you write a blog post on “how to cook white rice”.
Which do you think is friendlier and will be ranked by Google?
The one that has the keyword in the link (URL), right?
If you said yes, then that is right.
So, you need to change your blog Permalinks for ranking.
Quickly, look at your left dashboard and go to Settings > Permalinks.
Select the permalink that says “Post Name”. That is the best permalinks for blogs.
And if your blog will be a news blog then go with “Day and name” or “Month and name”.
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Set up your Blog for SEO – Traffic from Search Engines
Optimizing or setting up your blog for Search Engine Traffic is the process of making your blog found in search engines for particular keywords and phrases.
While SEO is a topic on its own, but to get the immediate result, you want to use and install a free WordPress plugin called RankMath.
The plugin makes it super simple to optimize the technical aspects of your blog to be found on Google and other Search Engines.
An alternative and more popular SEO plugin is Yoast.
For me, RanthMath is versatile than Yoast, so, you want to install it for SEO.
Click here to install RankMath | How to set up your RankMath
READ THIS: Top 7 Benefits of Link Building For SEO
Write and publish your blog post
While starting a blog and having a nice looking blog is great you should not focus so much on looks initially especially at the expense of building content on your site.
While you are designing a great looking blog you should also be adding great content to it. You need to learn how to write good content for your blog.
Now that your blog site is up and running, it’s time for you to do some blogging.
Go to the left hand side – where you have the menu and click on “Blog”.
Then, click on “Add blog post”.
The next screen you will see is the post editor box (see image below). Type your blog post title in the top box, and write the main blog post body in the lower box.
Within the WordPress post editor screen, you have various option to customize the feel and look of your post. You also have options to add images and videos.
Once you are done writing you post, it’s time to publish it. Before you click on the “Publish” button, you may choose to preview your content or save it for a later date.
When you are ready to make your blog post public, just click on the “Publish” button at the top right of your screen.
In case you are wondering what a great content looks like. Here is a brief characteristics of a great content:
- It is useful and have keywords in all the right places
- It must answer a key question (or one key question and a couple of related questions)
- A Great Content must be unique
- A Great Content is easy to read and understand
- It includes images when necessary
Note that content is not necessarily just articles and text and images. Content includes videos, infographic, slideshows, podcast, webinar, etc
Implement Performance Tracking
Once you get a number of posts and writings under your belt (say 5 or 10 or more), you should then register your blog with search engine webmaster tools (like Google and Bing) and add tracking and analytics code (Google Analytics) to your blog.
The webmaster tools offer useful information about the SEO health of your blog. Make sure you submit an XML sitemap to help search engines index your site faster.
Tracking services like Google Analytics provides lots of useful information about your traffic and audience. These will enable you write better content to satisfy them.
Integrate Blog with Social Media
Social Media is a big deals these days with billions on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. This is why your blog need to be on social media.
Open social media accounts for your blog. You don’t have to be in all of them. Choose the social site that is used by most people in your niche.
READ THIS: Top 12 Benefits of Email Marketing For Business
Build your fans and regularly share your content with them. Sharing your posts is very important because social is one of the signal search engines like Google use in determining relevance and authority.
Blogging is easy, putting Ads on your blog is also easy, the hard part is making money from your blog.
Drive Traffic & Promote your Blog
What is traffic and why is it important?
If you don’t promote your blog, how will anyone know about your great content? Driving traffic to your blog is about as essential to your blogging success as your writing itself.
READ THIS: Top 20 Places You Can Promote Your Business For Free
Traffic is a process where readers come to your blog to read your content.
- With traffic, if you monetize your site via ads your readers will click on it and you make money.
- And if you monetize via affiliate marketing, readers will also buy the products you recommend and you’ll be paid for it.
- Also, if you are offering freelance services, it is from the people coming into your blog that your services will be appreciated.
Go out there and blow the trumpet that you’ve started a blog and why the world needs to hear about it.
Here are a few free traffic sources you can take advantage, and bring in visitors to your new blog.
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Forum Posting
As you’re a Nigerian, the most popular forum in Nigeria and Africa is Nairaland, so that is where you want to start from.
Go ahead and create an account, create helpful posts, and drive the initial traffic to your blog site.
Drive Traffic using Facebook Groups
Another route to free traffic is making use of Facebook groups in your niche. And how do you find Facebook groups in your niche?
- Just go to Facebook and enter your niche in the search bar and click on Enter.
- Wait for it to bring out the available groups.
- Join them and start contributing.
- Drop your links when relevant to your content
Drive Traffic using Twitter
Take the opportunity to cross promote your blog on Twitter. Tweeting about your blog can be an incredible way to reach out and connect with your consumer.
With over 600 million users you can find lots of new readers through tweeting too. If you use Twitter well, it can drive tons of traffic back to your blog. When tweeting make use of #Hashtag.
Drive Traffic via Guest Posting
Guest posting means you are a guest that posts content on another blog. Here is how it works.
As your blog is new, no one knows about you.
With that in mind, one of the best ways to get known is leveraging on the audiences of blog sites like you.
Here is what to do.
- Check out blogs like yours on Google. (Food blogs in Nigeria, Business Blog in Nigeria, DIY Blogs in Nigeria, etc.).
- Check out if they have opportunities to accept guest posting – contact even if they don’t have.
- Contact them that you want to write a guest post on their blog – please be nice to the blog owner.
- Write your guest post-draft and send it to them for vetting.
- Get your guest post published.
- Get visits to your blog and a free backlink to help your site rank better on the search engines.
(Backlinks – these are links that point back to your blog – they help in SEO).
Drive Traffic via Blog Commenting
Blog commenting is about going out of your space to contribute to another site like yours.
- For instance, if your blog is on “African cuisines”, you can enter “how to Cook Nigerian cuisines” on Google.
- When the result is out, click to check out the posts.
- When you’re done going through it, leave valuable comments.
- Include the link to your blog – this is called backlinks (the link that comes back to your blog, it helps with SEO/ranking).
- Do that on many other blogs as you can – this is important as a new blogger.
Drive Traffic via Pinterest
Another great place to start getting free traffic is on Pinterest. But it is not as simple as it sounds.
- To get traffic on Pinterest, you need to create pins – for free
- Join relevant Pinterest group boards.
- Pin your articles.
The advantage of pinning your post in the group boards is, while the boards are shown to thousands of other Pinterest readers, some will click on your Pin and land on your site.
READ THIS: How To Get Your Website On Top Google Search
Drive Traffic via Quora
The thing with Quora traffic is, it is not quality at times, and most especially if you monetize your blog with affiliate marketing only.
But if there are ads or freelance services on your site, then Quora traffic is a good source of traffic.
What to do.
- Create a Quora account and verify it.
- Join your niche (sports, education and life stories as related to your area of blogging).
- Start answering questions
- Leave a link back to your blog when relevant.
With over 400,000 answer views on Quora and a top writer in one of the top niches, I can say that I have had a bit of success on Quora.
And yes, I have had my answer sent to Quora users email blasts so I pretty know how to help you with it.
With the guide, you will see where to get answers and answer Quora questions and drive traffic back to your site.
Drive Traffic by Boosting posts on your Facebook Page
This means of driving traffic is simple but not free.
What it means to boost your blog post on Facebook is actually spending money to put the post in front of Facebook users.
Don’t worry you can start boosting your articles with N1,500 per post, and when you start making money you increase to N5,000+ per post.
- To get started, you will need to create a Facebook page.
- Post some content.
- Get a few page likes. Invite friends to like your page.
- Boost your post.
The above will get you started, but you might want to start with Forum, Quora, and commenting.
And if you can write guest posts, then better as it is the best in the long run.
Having said the above, it only makes sense to get rewarded for your efforts, so, how will you get paid as a Nigerian blogger?
Let’s see a few ways to make money on your blog.
Monetize your Blog
Before we see how to monetize your blog in Nigeria. one thing is, don’t let the “monetize word” scare you.
There are various ways to make money off your blog and here are a few you want to start with as a beginner.
- Monetize your blog with Affiliate Marketing
- Monetize your blog with Display Advertisements Networks
- Monetize your blog with Service offers
How to Monetize your blog with Affiliate Marketing
First off, what is Affiliate Marketing? Very simple.
Affiliate marketing is getting commissions to recommend products to your audiences.
Just as I recommend you create your blog on Bluehost – that is affiliate marketing.
As you clicked the link and paid for your web hosting service where you got a free domain name, I will earn a little commission.
That commission is what is known as affiliate income.
And that is one form of monetizing your blog with affiliate marketing.
Because I promoted the service, I am called an Affiliate.
As in, an affiliate of or with Bluehost.
How to Monetize your blog with Display Advertisements Networks in Nigeria
Display Advertisements are the adverts you see on different blogs you visit.
The companies that manage or run these Display Advertisements are called Display Advertisements Networks or companies.
A few we have are Google AdSense, Medianet, Ezoic, Mediavine, and more.
I am sure you’ve heard of bloggers making money with AdSense in Nigeria, right?
Yes, they are paid by the Display Advertisements Networks they work with.
As a beginner, and a Nigerian Blogger, the best and recommended ad network to monetize your blog is Google AdSense. Why?
Because other ad networks might require you have a great number of visits per month before being accepted to their networks.
For instance, you need 8,000 -10,000 visits/readers per month to monetize your blog with Ezoic Ad Company.
With Mediavine Ad Company you need 22,000 – 25,000 readers per month and more.
To get started with AdSense, all you need to do is apply and get approved.
Another route to making money off your blog when you grow big is sponsored posts.
This is where companies will contact and ask to post content on your blog and you will charge them from $50 depending on the authority of your blog.
READ THIS: Top 12 Benefits of Being a Web Designer
Scale your Blog using Email Marketing
From day 1, you want to collect the email addresses of your readers. Why is this important?
Because the money is in the email list you collect today.
Apart from the fact that you will send them emails to read your blog articles, you will make money building relationships before you launch your services or an online course.
In fact, the first course I sold was bought from one of my audiences.
Therefore, encourage them to sign up for Newsletters and updates.
To get started, use a recommended email service like Email Octopus without paying anything.
With EmailOctopus, you can manage up to 4,000 emails before you need to upgrade as a paying customer.
Alternatively, MailChimp will help you manage 2,000 emails before you start paying.
Summary
In summary, starting a blog in Nigeria is super easy. Creating one that will be successful and make money for you is where the hard work is. With dedication, focus and the right attitude, you can create a blog that can be generating substantial income on a regular basis.
One thing that I have learnt about blogging is that the rewards outweigh the risk.
Blogs are easy to setup, organize and publish. The hard work in when you need to promote your posts. Take advantage of what you have learnt on marketing your blog; then, making money with it will be much easier.
Remember, to be successful as a blogger, you need to be passionate about your topic.
In addition, always put your audience first in all your post. That is to say, remember that your contents are created for humans.
So, for beginner bloggers planning to start a blog, my recommendations are simple. Learn how to build your authority and traffic first then money will come.
Are you ready to start your blog? Get started for just $2.95/month (63% off your hosting plan).
READ THIS:
Top 13 Free Keyword Research Tools for Bloggers
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Top 7 Benefits of Link Building For SEO
Top 7 Ways On How To Get Inbound Links To Your Website
10 Top Ways to Promote a New Blog
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