Starting a blogging Nigeria is one of the best ways to make money online if you consider joining hundreds of thousands of people taking advantage of the online space.
Just like any other type of business, you need to learn the ropes, you have to understand what works and what doesn’t work to be able to start a blog that will be lucrative.
Many people have started blogging businesses and stopped, on the other hand, many have started and are making a fortune out of it. It just depends on how you go about it.
Your ability to learn and implement what you have learned, to know what not to do again. Some of the skills you need to learn as a blogger are SEO ( Search engine optimization), writing, WordPress, digital marketing and advertising.
You need to put your best foot out because the competition in the online space is real, however, if you make your blog unique and you continuously dish out quality content, you will be able to make money blogging in Nigeria.
This blog will explain to you how you can start a blogging business in Nigeria from the ground up. Whether you are reading the post as a learner or expert, you will be learning something new. Keep reading to find out how.
How to start a blogging business in Nigeria
1. Decide your blog niche
What is a blogging niche?
According to Wikipedia Niche blogging is the act of creating a blog with the intent of using it to market to a particular niche market. Niche blogs may appeal to “geographic areas, a specialty industry, ethnic or age groups, or any other particular group of people.
It is simply blogging to appeal to a set of people. it is narrowing down your writing expertise to meet the needs of a specific group of people.
From the Wikipedia definition, a blog ought to meet the needs of
- A geographic area
- A speciality industry
- An ethnic
- An age group
- Particular groups of people
1. A geographic area
This type of blog focuses on people in a particular location.
Blogging target people in a particular location.
This makes it easy for the blogger to create contents that the people in that location would love. It reduces excesses and increases efficiency.
Blogging about cities like Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Nasarawa etc are examples of geographic niche blogging.
2. A speciality industry
This involves blogging about an area of expertise.
For example, a medical doctor specialising in Dermatology ( Skin ) can have a blog that talks about how to take care of the skin and all.
A teacher can start a blog to show other teachers how to overcome the day-to-day challenges of being a teacher in Nigeria.
You can create a blog in any field or speciality that will give value to your audience.
3. An ethnic group
Oxford dictionary defines an ethnic group as a community or population made up of people who share a common cultural background or descent.
An ethnic group blog will talk about the interests of people with common cultural backgrounds.
In Nigeria, that means ethnic groups like Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Ibibio, Tiv etc.
Your blog’s target market can be an ethnic group.
4. An age group
This type of blog involves creating content for children, youths or senior citizens
It solves the problems of people within any of the age groups mentioned above.
5. Particular groups of people
A blog can be created for any group of people provided that there are real people with needs to be met.
An additional blog niche could be a blog based on sex. Blogging to meet the needs of the male or female folks.
Now that you know what a blog niche is, the next thing to learn is How to choose a blog niche.
Benefits of choosing a blogging niche in Nigeria
We defined a writing niche previously, but the question is must you choose a writing niche? Can’t you just create content on everything?
Have you heard this quote before -Jack of all trade; master of none?
When you hear Ronaldo what comes to your mind? Football right? What about Tuface? Wole Soyinka, Bishop David Oyedepo?
They are all known for a particular thing or purpose.
You can’t do everything at once and expect to be successful at everything, the fact is you may end up not achieving anything at all and even risk being overworked.
There are benefits to choosing a writing niche, namely;
- Freedom
- Focus
- Specialisation
- Brand building
How to choose a blogging niche in Nigeria
Choosing a writing niche is something many people find difficult to do.
From my observation, I think the problem is not just about choosing a writing niche, generally, in life, people always find it difficult to make choices.
When people are faced with choosing between many good choices, it becomes difficult to decide – because most times almost all the available options look good to the eyes.
You may think you don’t have that challenge until you get to a party where you have a variety of good food displayed for you to choose from.
You will be wondering, should I eat fried rice, jollof rice, moi moi, amala, pounded yam, akpu or which kind of mixture can I make?
Is it jollof rice + fried rice + Moi Moi and then later top it with Amala?
Many things will be coming to your mind, especially if you are really hungry.
But assuming rice is the only available option, you would just eat it peacefully without becoming a human calculator.
Since blogging has many niches it becomes difficult to choose a niche.
I don’t believe someone should dictate a niche for you to specialize in, people can only make suggestions but you are to choose.
Why ? because you will be expected to write in that niche for a long time and if it’s not something you love you will give up early before you create a personal brand.
There is no one formula for choosing a writing niche but there are questions that could lead you to make a good choice
Some of the questions you should ask yourself are
- What are you passionate about?
- What can you do?
- What problems do you see around you that you can solve?
- What experiences do you have?
- What do you want to be known for?
1. What are you passionate about?
Passion is defined as any great, strong, powerful emotion, especially romantic love or extreme hate by Wiktionary.org
Forget about the strong romantic love part, bring your mind home- that’s not what we are talking about now.
You are passionate about something when you have strong emotions that are always making you want that thing.
Most men I know in Nigeria are passionate about football ( with a few exceptions though ). Even when their team is not performing well they still support them, hoping that someday soon they will do better.
I read a post one time where a girl wrote that ” Guys are not faithful in relationships anymore because they have given all of it to football”
Just go to a football viewing centre and see how they will be making analysis and sometimes intelligent arguments just to prove a point.
That’s a great niche right there! Create a blog that brings the latest football news to Nigerians, and write it in a style that will resonate with them.
On the other hand, create a forum that allows fans to discuss football topics on your website.
And then he uses that platform to sell jerseys to his followers, just imagine how he will increase his business reach with a larger audience blog has the potential to create.
Whatever your passion is, writing, eating, teaching, baking, make-up, fashion, agriculture, art, music, cooking etc.
You can be a specialised writer in that niche.
2. What can you do?
Many motivational speakers, clergymen and philosophers have been hammering on the fact that every man has something to offer the world for years.
What can you offer ? Think deep
- What do you do easily?
- What can you do for long hours even if you are not paid?
- What do people compliment you about?
Just think about it
It could be music, playing football, talking to people, listening to people, love for children, travelling, name it. You can find a niche out of it.
3. What problems around you can you solve?
Pastor Sunday Adelaja wrote a book titled “where there is a problem there is money”. He emphasized the need to look intently at problems to be able to find solutions that will generate money.
Look around you, what problems can you profer solutions to?
For instance, if you see that couples are finding it difficult to stay in the marriage and you have what it takes to counsel them.
What’s next? Create a relationship blog with your own uniqueness.
In every problem lies a potentially profitable blog niche.
4. What experiences do you have?
Adam Enfroy, known for building a profitable blog within a short time, advises people to leverage their skills while starting a blog.
The skills and experiences you have acquired over time could be used to start a blog.
Medical workers can start a blog talking about health-related matters. Engineers, agriculturists, teachers, clergymen and women, cooks etc can all start a blog related to their skills and profession.
5. What do you want to be known for?
Whatever dream you have, starting a blog in that niche could help you in becoming that person.
What do you see yourself becoming? Start a blog in that niche and gradually become that person.
These are a few questions I believe if answered correctly could make you find a perfect blog niche.
Related: 8 Best Blog Niches That Make Money In Nigeria.
Factors to consider before starting blogging in a particular niche
There is an important aspect of choosing a blog niche I haven’t mentioned, if you miss that aspect you may not go far with your blog because there won’t be motivation o keep you going.
You need to consider if the blog is profitable. How do you do that?
By considering the following factors
- Are other people making money from the niche you want to cover?
- Does it have an audience?
Are others making money from the niche?
If no one is making money out of that niche offline or online that’s a red flag.
There ought to be others making money out of that niche or a niche closely related to it; there’s nothing really new under the sun.
On the other hand, you can start a niche you’ve conducted research on and found the potential of it yielding income in future, and then stick to it until it pays off.
Does it have an audience?
People are everything in business; without people who do you sell to? Who do you Impact?
Your niche must solve people’s problems and answer their pressing questions.
If you discover people are not interested in your kind of knowledge then there’s no point stressing yourself to start a blog in that niche.
Even though there are exceptional cases where people don’t know they need something until you make them realize they do.
What is a blog?
A blog is a website where creators post content on the internet. Content on blogs appears in reverse chronological order, that’s to say, the latest post replaces the previous post.
That means a blog is dynamic and always changing. If a blog is functional, its content always changes with time.
A blog was initially used for an online diary, people usually post things happening around them on the blog for people to read, but in recent times a blog has become a source of income for many people.
Businesses now have blogs that serve as a source of traffic and a means to increase visibility and brand awareness.
Individuals on the hand have used blogs to build a brand online and to increase their income by monetizing the blog.
Platforms you can start a blog in Nigeria
There are more than one ways to start a blog blogging business in Nigeria, it depends on the platform you decide to use. Some of these platforms are free while others are not, they all have their pros and cons.
We will look at some people platforms you can use
1. Olitt
Olitt is a website builder in Nigeria that you can use to design your blog for free. It has templates you can use to design your blog within 5 minutes or less.
You just need to create an account with them and pick your templates. They have a free plan and a paid plan. When you register and are okay with the free plan, you can upgrade to the premium plan to enjoy better features.
The premium plan of Olitt is one of the best you can find in the online space.
2.Wordpress.com
WordPress.com allows you to register your website on their platform for free. You will be able to create a blog with the different themes available on the platform.
But, your domain is a subdomain of wordpress.com, that’s to say your website link will have a wordpress.com attached to it. For example, if your intended blog name is www.johnndoe, if you register your blog with WordPress.com, your blog address will be www.johndoe.wordpress.com.
And you won’t be able to enjoy advanced benefits unless you subscribe.
3. Blogger
Blogger operates almost the same way as WordPress.com. When you register on blogger your domain will be a subdomain of Blogspot, that is, it will have blogspot.com attached to your website name.
Just like in the previous example www.johndoe.blogspot.com will be your domain name if you register under them.
Blogger is owned by Google and it also has beautiful templates you can pick from to design your blog. Popular Nigerian blogger, Linda Ikeji started with Blogger before moving to her own domain and hosting.
4. Medium
Medium is another free website that you can use to blog online, you will be able to write and publish your content on the website. They have millions of monthly visitors which gives your content exposure.
You will be able to share your knowledge to a large audience and you can get paid if your content attracts lots of traffic.
5. WordPress.org
Using WordPress.org to design your blog gives you full control. You can design your blog how you want it and add all the features and functionalities you want.
WordPress is the most used content management system in the world. About 60 per cent of the websites in the world are designed with WordPress.
How to start a blogging business in Nigeria with WordPress
We have discussed elaborately how you can choose a blog niche for your website because that’s an area you need to look into deeply before starting a blog.
You can’t write in every niche and expect to make an impact or create something unique. You need to focus on a particular field. Having said that, you will learn how to design a blog with WordPress.org next.
1. Choose a domain name
A domain name is the identity of your website on the internet. That is the address people put on a web browser to access your blog or website.
Some examples of domain names are www.google.com, www.truehost.com.ng, www.facebook.com etc.
You can follow the following steps in choosing your domain name
- Make it simple and easy to remember
- Let the name relate to your blog purpose
- Use a suitable domain extension
Some examples of domain extensions are .com, .com.ng, .net, .co.UK etc.
After making your choice of the domain name you are to confirm if your desired name is available. Therefore, it’s advisable that you choose more than one domain name so that you can fall back on the second domain name if the first one is not available.
2. Register your hosting and domain
There are lots of web hosting companies you can use to register your domain name, both local and international but we will focus on a local web hosting company in Nigeria called Truehost.
The image below shows examples of some popular domain extensions available in Truehost for you to buy.
Truehost Nigeria web hosting
There are a lot of local and international web hosting companies that you can use to host your blog but we recommend Truehost Nigeria because of their affordability and credibility.
The price of their web hosting company is cheap compared to other web hosting companies.
After buying the hosting and domain from Truehost, you will be given credentials to Cpanel and other accounts.
Truehost Cpanel
Cpanel is the admin of your website that allows you to control your website files. You can install WordPress through your Truehost Cpanel.
3. Install WordPress
When you put in the login details in your Cpanel, you will be able to access the dashboard, from which you will scroll down to the Softaculous app installer under the software section to install WordPress on your website.
You are to click on the install button shown in the image above to install WordPress. Fill in your desired WordPress admin username and password.
It takes just about a minute to install WordPress on your website, after which you will be given a link to your WordPress admin dashboard.
When you are directed there, you will fill in the login details you used while installing WordPress. Another way to access your WordPress admin is by www.your blog domain/admin.
4. Install a theme
After buying hosting and domain, you need to install themes. A theme has templates that you can use to design a website. There are free and premium themes for you to use, if you need more customization you need to buy a premium theme.
5. Install plugins
Plugins are software that adds functionality to your website, there are free and premium plugins that you can use on your blog.
6. Set your blog SEO
There are SEO plugins that help to improve your website’s organic traffic. Some examples of popular SEO plugins are Yoast and All in One SEO.
You can install any of them to improve your website’s SEO.
7. Write your blog posts and pages
You can write a blog post when you click on the “posts button” in your admin dashboard.
To create a page you are to click on the page button and then publish it.
WordPress Setting
Your WordPress site can either be a website or a blog. To make it a website, select a static page as your home page.
But if you want to make it a blog, make your latest posts your homepage.
Tips for building to lucrative blogging business in Nigeria
1. Write high-quality content
Your blog posts need to be unique and comprehensive for people to get attracted to your blog.
If you write scanty and plagiarized blog posts, it will be difficult for you to grow your blog.
2. Implement SEO good practices
Try everything you can to bring as much organic traffic to your blog as you can. Practice on-page, off-page and technical SEO to make sure everything is in place.
3. Promote your blog
You can promote your blog through your social media platforms and guest blogging.
Related: Guest Blogging in Nigeria – A Guide to the Process for Beginners.
4. Monetize your blog
When you have accumulated a number of consistent traffic you will be able to monetize your blog.
Conclusion
Starting a Blogging business in Nigeria is one of the best ways you can use to make money online and this post has done justice to the topic.
It’s now your responsibility to buy your hosting and domain name to design your WordPress blog, so you can start making money online too.
