How to start a blog in Nigeria to make money
Here, you will learn how to start a blog in Nigeria that generates money. As you may already know, blogging as an activity is profitable in any part of the world, including Nigeria. We hear of top Nigerian bloggers like Linda Ikeji, Laila, Jide Ogunsanga, Noble Igwe, Japheth Omojuwa, Chude Jideonwo, etc. earning millions of Naira monthly from blogging and wonder if it’s not too late to start a blog of your own here in Nigeria.
You might feel the blogging scene is saturated; well, the scene is never saturated with unique blogging ideas. However, to get to the top, you have to put in a high level of commitment and dedication.
Blogging is not an escape from work as most people would want you to believe; instead, it is a means of achieving financial freedom in Nigeria only if you’re willing to give it what it takes in terms of time and commitment.
How Lucrative is Blogging?
There are about 30 million bloggers and over 500 million blogs. Of the 30 million bloggers, 10% or less are full-time bloggers, while the rest are part-time bloggers earning less than N5,000 daily from their blogs.
As a full-time blogger, starting a blog in Nigeria can earn you as high as N90,000 ($200) daily. However, you need to be a full-time blogger, with a 100% commitment to your blog to earn that much. Although, you can choose to do it part-time like me while you have time to do other business.
For instance, I earn around N200,000 to N300,000 from one of my blogs every single month without doing anything. I haven’t updated the blog generating this income for the past 6 months yet I keep getting paychecks monthly. Check my earning dashboard below…
Here’s another dashboard displaying earnings from affiliate commissions. The earning is from a blog I created purely for promoting affiliate products. I get around N376,000 – N700,000 transferred to my bank account from this network monthly.
Although earning from your blog may not be immediate, but you can start earning from your blog right from the first month of starting your blog, depending on your commitment.
If you really need to start a blog in Nigeria and make money, I strongly advise you to follow all the steps in this guide to the end and do exactly what we share here. When you have successfully set up your blog, kindly thank me through the contact page in order to celebrate with you. Don’t be shy!
How to start a blog in Nigeria and generate money.
Starting a blog in Nigeria to earn money means that you’re ready to learn, make mistakes, and try again, unafraid of failing. Don’t be afraid of losing money, because blogging is one of the least risky activities you can venture into financially.
To start a blog in Nigeria, you will need little capital to purchase a domain name for a year [Update: You can now get a domain name from Bluehost for free if you buy a hosting plan altogether], and also pay for hosting services from Bluehost. The following steps focus on guiding you on how to start a blog in Nigeria and generate a good monthly income.
- Decide on a blogging niche
A niche is the central theme of your blog. It is what the content of your blog will be focusing on. Therefore, choosing a blogging niche depends on what you want to write about, i.e., the message to your audience.
Since the goal of your blog is to reach out to a large audience base, it is important to choose a broader niche that appeals to a large audience base.
The popular and most lucrative blogging niches include finance, Insurance, health, fitness, Fashion and Beauty, Food, Travel and tourism, parenting, home décor, lifestyle, education, technology, entertainment, personal growth and development, Cryptocurrency, Sports, Relationship and Romance, gardening, and gambling.
After deciding on the niche to blog about, move on to the next step.
- Decide & Buy a domain name
Your domain name is the address by which internet users can locate your blog online. An example of a domain name is ‘www.myblog.com.’
Factors to consider before choosing a domain name.
- Choose a ‘.com’ extension for your domain name because it gives your blog a worldwide awareness compared with country-specific extensions like .ng, .us, .co.uk, etc.
- Your domain name should be short, not exceeding three words or 15 characters. E.g., myblog.com has only two words, which makes a total of 6 characters.
- do not use a hyphen in your domain name because it makes your domain name difficult to type. Also, there is an assumption that addresses containing hyphens are indications of spam.
- Use a domain name with a keyword in it; it makes your blog SEO friendly. For instance, DavidFashionStories.com, FoodblogNigeria.com SandraBeautyUpdate.com, etc.
- Get a blog hosting plan
A web host provides a platform for publishing your blog online. Your hosting provider provides you with the bandwidth, storage, site security, and other resources you need to get your blog online. Go to https://bluehost.com and enter the domain name you chose, buy a hosting plan and move on to the next step to install WordPress. I suggest you choose the least plan as a beginner (You can upgrade later when you start growing).
- Install WordPress on Bluehost
Bluehost has 1-click install for WordPress. So just click on this link, click on the big green Get Started button and follow the registration process. After that, choose your domain name.
When you’re through selecting a domain name for your new blog, enter your personal details with your billing information and click the Submit button to create your account.
You will be redirected to the installation process after you have paid and selected your password.
- Choose a Theme for your blog
A theme defines the looks and appearance of your blog. You can choose from the list of themes presented to you or change your theme from your WordPress dashboard under the ‘Appearance’ settings.
WordPress has one of the largest theme repository made up of more than 16,000 premium and freemium theme templates.
You can use any of WordPress’s themes to customize the looks and display of your blog by choosing a theme template that complements your blog niche and title.
- Create pages for your blog
Now that you’ve hosted your blog and also set up your WordPress, you’re almost ready to go. Before making a blog post, you need to create the following pages on your blog
- About us
- Contact info
- Privacy policy
- FAQ
- Disclaimer, etc
- Create SEO optimized content for your blog
An important thing you need to learn how to start a blog to earn money is the ability to create SEO, engaging, and reader-friendly content for your blog. Search engine optimized content is highly engaging, well-paragraphed content with keywords naturally blending in with the rest of the texts.
Creating engaging SEO content improves your ranking on google’s Search Engine Result Page because of its ability to keep readers engaged, therefore, spending more time on your blog. In case you cannot write, you can hire a freelance writer or a good Nigeria content writing company like MoreWriters to help you write contents for your new blog.
In creating content for your blog, you need to have a schedule to follow. You can choose to post twice daily, twice weekly, or weekly.
After filling out your blog with quality contents, I think you can monetize it at this stage.
How Blogs generate money
Here, you will learn how to start a blog and monetize your blog
- Monetize your blog with Google Adsense
Adsense is Google’s advertising platform. Millions of companies pay Google to advertise their products and services via Adsense platforms.
Adsense works by displaying matching ads on your blog. Each click on the advertisement by visitors to your blog earns you money (commission). There are testimonies of bloggers earning a massive amount of money from Google Adsense. However, for you to participate in the Google Adsense program, you have to register your blog for Google Adsense.
The top bloggers in Nigeria earn at least a fourth of their income from Google Adsense. Click here to find out more about Google Adsense.
For your blog to earn from Google Adsense, it has to meet the following criteria
- Your blog should be at least six months old to participate in Google Adsense
- Your content must be original (free from plagiarism), knowledgeable, and engaging
- Your blog must have a domain name. E.g., myblog.com
- Use blog themes with a good layout optimized for mobile view
- Use original images
- Create an ‘about us’ and ‘Contact’ page on your blog
If your blog meets up with the above criteria, signup for Google Adsense and start earning big from adverts today. Before signing up for Google Adsense, read and understand Google’s Adsense policy. Violating any of the policies can lead to Google banning your Adsense account.
For more on earning on Google Adsense, check out our article on ‘How to make money with Google Adsense.’
- Earn money from Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing works by recommending a product or services and getting a commission when purchases are made via your ‘affiliate link.’
Affiliate marketing works best when you build your content around the products or services you’re marketing. This makes it easy to refer products to your visitors.
In Nigeria, bloggers earn much from Affiliate programs. There is no limit to the money you can earn as an affiliate marketer as long as your blog experiences a steady flow of traffic.
Konga awarded a million Naira to Mr Pascal for being the best affiliate marketer, aside from the commission he earns from referring products to visitors on his blog.
You, too, can earn up to a million Naira by participating in genuine affiliate programs in Nigeria. Sign up for an affiliate program of your choice today.
Here is a list of affiliate programs you can join.
- Amazon affiliate program
- Shopify affiliate program
- Jumia Affiliate
- Konga Affiliate
- Payporte Affiliate
- Wakanow Affiliate program
- Bet9ja Affiliate program
- DealDey affiliate program
- AlliExpress Affiliate program
- Web4Africa Affiliate Program
- Make money from publishing and selling books on your blog
As a blogger, you can convert your blogging skills to writing and publishing books (hard copy or ebook format). An example is James Altucher, a blogger who wrote the book ‘Choose Yourself.’ The book sold over 500,000 copies as of 2016.
As a successful blogger, you can start by publishing your book and using your blog as an advertising platform to earn money. You can also advertise and sell ebooks and other digital materials on your blog.
- Earn money as a guest speaker
Successful bloggers in their chosen niche get invitations as a guest speaker in various programs and conferences from their audiences.
Although it will take time and commitment to pull it off as a successful blogger, if you do, it wouldn’t be long before you start getting invitations as a guest speaker in programs and conferences.
- Sell freelance activities
Although freelancing is quite tedious, you can sell your services as a freelance writer on your blog. You can also make your blog a hub for freelancers by advertising freelance services such as blog designing, photography, programmer, digital marketing, etc.
Generating traffic to your blog
Earning from your blog depends on how much daily traffic your blog records. Hence, you need to put in place mechanisms to generate traffic flow to your blog. You can explore the following ways to generate traffic to your blog
- Social Media platforms
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Nairaland forum, Whatsapp, are some common social media platforms you can use to promote and generate traffic to your blog. Hence, you must set up social media accounts for your blogs and grow your traffic by growing your social media presence.
- Creating superb content for your blog
‘content is king.’ Well written and knowledgeable content that solves people’s problem provides a solution, or provide better alternatives goes a long way in attracting traffic to your blog.
Also, your content should be optimized for search engines to improve your ranking on Google’s Search Engine Result Page (SERP). This will make your blog visible to google search engine users searching for related search terms.
- Comment on other blogs and websites
Your comment should be thoughtful and should include a backlink to your blog. Besides, you can also be a guest writer for other blogs, as this will enable you to tap into the opportunity of getting new audiences.
- Run paid ads
Since you’re starting a new blog, you will need to run ads on social media to gather viewers. You can run paid ads on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google to promote your blog. Before running paid ads, make sure your blog has engaging content to retain its visitors.
Since your ultimate goal of starting a blog in Nigeria is to make money from your blog, then you will have to monetize your blog before you can start earning from your blog.
Conclusion
Starting a blog in Nigeria is one of the most natural things you can do to earn passive income. However, you need to input a lot of time, commitment, and dedication before you can start reaping profitably from your blog.
To maximize your earnings from your blog, you need to tailor your content to suit your chosen income stream. If you’ve decided to earn through affiliate marketing, then your content needs to be in line with the products and services you’ll be referring to your blog visitors.
Also, you can install additional plugins on your blog to improve its functionality. If you intend to create a blog focused on sales, you can download and install the e-commerce plugin on your blog to give it the functionality of an e-commerce platform.
To help you in building your audience base, you need to invest in marketing outreach tools, chief of which is the email marketing outreach. MailChimp is a popular email outreach tool you can use to build your audience base.
Take action today, follow our articles and guides on ‘how to start a blog’ to create a money-generating blog.
If you haven’t started yet, quickly go to Bluehost and signup, install WordPress and start blogging. It’s that easy.
