Starting a blog in Nigeria may seem overwhelming and intimidating, this is why I created this free step-by-step blog guide to help beginners learn how to create a blog quickly and easily. This guide will teach you how to create a blog in Nigeria with just the most basic computer skills.
By the end of this guide, you will have your blog set up, ready to share with the world, and even make money in the process.
Don’t worry, this guide is beginner-friendly. It will walk you through each step to make it all clear.
What Is A Blog?
A blog is a type of website that focuses on written content. Bloggers here in Nigeria write from their perspective which allows them to connect directly with readers.
In fact, most blogs have a comment section where readers can interact with the blogger.
First blogging lesson for you:
Direct connection to the reader is one of the benefits of starting a blog in Nigeria. You get to build trust with your reader through these interactions.
Gaining this trust and loyalty of your readers allows you to make money from your blog because they will always return.
Why should you start a blog?
In a nutshell, a blog can help you educate, inform, promote and sell.
But is that enough?
Here are some reasons why people in Nigeria create blogs
- It’s an outlet for creative expression.
- It helps establish expertise and build an audience
- Helps network with others and grow a business
- Enhances writing and thinking skills
- Provides self-employment and a way to make money online in Nigeria.
So, how do you create a blog in Nigeria?
Learn how to create a blog in Nigeria following these steps:
- Pick a niche for your blog
- Choose a blogging platform
- Choose a domain and a web host
- Install WordPress
- Customize and choose a blog theme
- Write and publish your first blog
- Optimize your blog for search engines
- Promote, market, and grow your blog
- Make money blogging in Nigeria
#1. Pick a niche for your blog
Picking your niche is the first and the most important step in creating a blog. A niche is a specialized topic area that you will be focusing on when writing content.
For instance, if a blogger writes about the places people can go for vacations or during holidays or places they have visited, this can be called a travel blog.
Also, if a blogger writes about food and their recipes, how to prepare them, or even healthy foods, then it’ll be called a food blog.
As a beginner in Nigeria, you might be wondering which is the best niche for you and what should influence your choice. Well, you need to choose an area you are passionate about. If you choose a niche you are not passionate about you might lose interest and quit.
In short, if you are writing about a topic you are passionate about, it makes it easy for you to be consistent.
The end goal of starting a blog is to make money right?
Keeping this in mind when creating your blog will allow you to choose a niche that has the potential to generate daily income.
You need to figure out those niches which have commercial intent and choose one according to your interests.
Lastly, make sure you choose a niche that solves a problem. You need to start a blog about topics that people search for, so make sure it has a sizable audience.
These are one of the most important steps when creating a blog in Nigeria.
That said, some of the lucrative niches include:
- Entertainment
- Technology
- Health
- Make money online
- Business and entrepreneurship among others.
#2. Choose a blogging platform
The second step after understanding what you want to blog about is choosing a blogging platform for your blog in Nigeria.
And there are several platforms to choose from.
If you want to make some profit from your blog use WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace. With any of these three, you will be in complete control of your site.
For hobby blogs or making connections, you can you Medium or LinkedIn. They are free, but you do not have control over your blog and you can’t make money.
Which one should I use?
I don’t want to talk much on all these platforms.
Either way, I recommend WordPress since it’s the most popular blog platform out there and for very good reasons. WordPress is free, you only pay for hosting.
Additionally, WordPress is a highly customizable content management system (CMS) for bloggers who want to build a site that can grow into a business. It is also best if your goal is to make a profit from your blog.
It’s open-source, which means you have the freedom to tweak code however you want.
This explains why there are a ton of widgets, plugins, and other tools to customize WordPress blogs. You can create any kind of blog with WordPress.
Their CMS is blogger friendly with plenty of SEO features in it. To get the most out of it in terms of customizability, you have to be more hands-on with the plugins and widgets you choose and how you manage the backend.
#3. Choose a domain and a web host
The next step on how to create a blog in Nigeria?
Choose a good domain name and a hosting account.
See, you need to choose a domain name that your blog visitors can easily remember.
That’s the most important thing here!
A domain name is the web address that leads readers to your blog.
Note that when starting your blog in Nigeria you should aim at the .com extension for your domain because it is widely used and trusted around the world.
But if you intend on attracting an audience from within Nigerian borders, I’d suggest you go with .NG domain.
Why?
It is easier to rank with a .ng domain here in Nigeria than any other domain extension.
With the domain secured, you need hosting.
Web hosting is a platform that provides storage space on web servers for websites to store its file.
When someone types your domain name at the search bar of their browser, a request is automatically sent to your website’s hosting server for accessing your blog files.
You can go here to get both a domain name and hosting at a cheaper rate than anywhere else.
#4. Install WordPress
After getting a domain name and hosting the next step in how to create a blog in Nigeria is to install WordPress on your domain name.
WordPress is one of the best blogging platforms you could ever come across.
Follow these steps to install WP:
- Log into your CPanel account
- Search for ‘softaculous app installer’ and open it
- Find the wordpress app and click on install
- Follow the instructions and perform recommended settings
You can read more about how to start a WordPress blog.
#5. Customize and choose a blog theme
At this point, you have a blog but it’s a blank blog.
In this step on how to create a blog in Nigeria, you need to log in and customize your blog.
Once you login in, you will see the welcome page of the admin panel.
Here is where you customize your blog and choose a new theme.
To avoid being intimidated by the WordPress admin area, let me make it easier.
- Dashboard- This is the entire admin area.
- Posts – this is where you publish or edit your old post.
- Media – this area contains images and videos.
- Pages – this is where you can publish or edit your static pages.
- Comments – here you handle your post comments with your readers
- Appearance – you change the appearance of your blog here.
- Feedback – allows you to handle your feedback from your reader.
- Plugins –you can easily add or remove plugins here.
- Users – here you can also add users to create posts alongside you.
- Settings – this covers everything to do with settings.
So, you need two to do two things before going further.
First, install a wordpress theme. There are both free and paid ones, go with whichever you are comfortable with.
Next, install some essential plugins.
A plugin is an addon that increases the functionality of your wordpress blog in Nigeria.
To help you figure this out, you need:
- Backup Plugin
- SEO Plugin
- Security Plugin
- Caching Plugin
- Translation Plugin
- Social Sharing Plugin
#6. Write and publish your first blog
I told you creating a blog will be simple, now it’s time to start writing your first blog post.
It is important to ask yourself this question:
What does your target audience want to read?
To help you answer this question, use tools such as BuzzSumo. This tool aggregates trending topics and articles across social media and the entire internet.
Go through it and pick one.
Next, you are ready to start writing.
Let’s briefly discuss the essential steps for putting pen to paper.
How to write and publish your first blog post
- Generate ideas- consider your goals, niche, your target audience, and what you want to offer them.
- Create an outline- from the several ideas you generated, choose one and create an outline.
- Write your post just using your unique voice while keeping your audience in mind.
- Edit your grammar and content- after writing your content you need to do some editing. You can make use of Grammarly and plagiarism detectors to make your content even better.
- Craft your headline- the title of your blog is a critical part of getting your content seen by search engines.
- Add graphics- images are often what attracts readers to get some free images from pexel.com or buy some images from a site like iStock or Shutterstock.
#7. Optimize your blog for search engines
By now, your blog in Nigeria is beaming with quality content! But it is of no use if no one can read them, right?
Optimizing your posts for SEO can improve your search engine rankings and help you get more traffic. If you are just publishing your blog post without optimizing for WordPress SEO, then you’re limiting the amount of traffic you can get and that translates to the amount of money you can make too.
For you to be able to get the best from your blog, I have prepared a summary below.
Checklist to optimize your blog for SEO in Nigeria:
- Plan your content with proper keyword research – don’t depend on blind guesses, use keyword research to know what users are looking for.
- Find a semantic keyword for your focus keyword- after discovering keyword ideas, you need to pick the one with the highest search volume and low competition.
- Make your blog post title SEO-friendly by using your focus keyword in the title.
- Add Meta Description to your blog post.
Also, make your blog URL search engine friendly for your blog post to rank high.
For instance, https://yourblog.com/2022/07/author/post-topic is an ugly and unfriendly URL.
You need a clean URL.
A clean and friendly URL looks similar to this: https://yourblog.com/post-topic.
To change your URL to search engine friendly, go to “setting” >> “permalink” and then click on post name.
You now need to make your blog content SEO optimized, such that when you write an article, people searching for your article can see it on Google search results.
To successfully make your content SEO optimized, you need to download a plugin called YOAST SEO.
#8. Promote, market, and grow your blog
After creating your blog in Nigeria you will need to promote it for it is as important as creating content. To get visitors to your blog, you will need to take some time promoting it especially when you are new to blogging.
Promoting your blog once on social media and hoping it will grow from there won’t work. I’m going to give you some ideas on how you can promote your blog and benefit from that.
a). Alert Your Inner Circle
Ask your family, friends, and colleagues to follow your blog and share it with others.
b). Use Social Media Marketing
Create accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and Pinterest and post your links there. Also, post links to other sources that your audience has an interest in.
c). Comment on other blogs
Find other blogs in your community and engage with them. Introduce yourself in the comment section and constructive comments.
d). Interact with Your Visitors
Encourage your visitors to leave a comment and make sure you reply as soon as possible. When the author cares about his community the readers are naturally encouraged to return.
Give your readers affirmations and give them the room to give you suggestions on what kind of content they want to see.
e). Collaborate with other bloggers
Collaborating with other bloggers in your community helps your blog to grow. You can do collaborations through, guest posting, promoting each other’s blogs and products, and regularly interacting through comments and social media.
f). Post Content Regularly
Create a schedule for your upload and stick to that. You should try and post at least twice a week when starting. If you have long lapses between posts, your followers might drop slowing the growth of your blog.
It’s not easy posting on a schedule, but it’s something you absolutely must stick to if you want to see your blog grow.
g). Create an Email List
Email marketing in Nigeria helps get your new visitors to come back to your blog.
By collecting your visitors’ email addresses (with their permission of course), you can always notify them when you post new content on your blog. This keeps readers coming back to your blog, and through it, you gain more readers over time while also building a closer relationship with your audience.
#9. Make Money Blogging in Nigeria
After all the efforts of creating and promoting your blog, making money from your blog is soo easy. Many bloggers in Nigeria start a blog to make money from it.
But you need to understand that you will not make money in the first month. It can take up to a year to start seeing a steady stream of income. Blogging takes work and dedication to monetize your blog.
You can also make money in the following ways:
- Selling advertising space
- Selling affiliate products
- Selling digital downloads
- Selling products and services
- Selling memberships
Final Thoughts
Starting a blog in Nigeria is a great way to share your thoughts and experiences with others, build an audience, and potentially make money.
It is also a great way to learn new things and grow your skills. Just make sure you choose a topic you’re interested in and are willing to commit time to.
And don’t forget to promote your blog on social media and other websites.
I hope this guide has helped gain the knowledge you needed to create your blog.
Remember to share the blog to help us reach more people. From this side, we wish you the best as you get started as a blogger.
Thanks for reading!