How to Begin a Successful Blogging in Nigeria

Are you tired of reading about blogging as means to make money online? So you think you rather try blogging? Well, I think that’s a good one! The journey of a thousand mile begins by the first step, so I think you’ve made an excellent step.

Blogging in Nigeria is longer a new thing; many Nigerians and others are earning a living from it. Some have to quit their day to day jobs to become a full-time blogger. Are you ready to begin to become either a part-time or full-time blogger? If your answer is yes then I bet you, you are on the right place.

I started blogging right from midyear of 2010. I started as a newbie but time changes; I have grown to professional blogger and now I’m going to teach you how to begin blogging and even what to do or not do to succeed in blogging.

Here I will walk you through the process of setting up excellent blog, and what to do to ensure that you succeed in blogging in Nigeria.
The secret of blogging that I will be leaking out here now have been written by many internet marketers and sold in form of eBooks, junk of PDF etc, for thousands of $$$ but here you get it free of charge.
Before I get in-depth, may I ask you; why do you start blogging in the first place?

I blog for money, this may be your first answer. You blog to make money; yes, I agree with you but don’t make it you primarily focus as you are about to start blogging. Some reasons why you may blog are to;

• share ideas and information,
•  Express yourself
• And ultimately make money.

Probably, you are aware of this already. So, let’s get to business of the day; how to begin and succeed on blogging in Nigeria.
Don’t say I did not warn you, the process and steps of beginning a blog I’m taking you through may last for half an hour. So, get your cup of coffee close and relax to read; if you don’t understand any of steps very well, don’t hesitate to call my attention.

Let’s begin blogging;

1. Choose a blog niche
This is the beginning of your blog success. Think of anything you know how to do or you can find out information on how to do, begin a blog on that. It is your blog niche. This should be something you are passionate to talk about. Search the internet to know those blogs or websites that are in this niche area and think of your ability to cloud hijack those existing blog.
Done that, right? Should I proceed to the next step? Ok, hold on! Let me help you on blogging ideas or blog niche area.
Some lucrative blogs in Nigeria include Fashion, entertainment and gossip blogs; sports, sport betting and sport highlight blogs, online shopping sites, and forums. So do you have idea on any of them, start from one if you’ve not choose a niche.

2. Choose a domain name
Your domain name is what people will enter into search engine when searching for your blog in the internet. That is what people will know as the name of your blog. It is very important you choose the right domain name for better search engine ranking of your blog. This is where most bloggers got it wrong. If you want your blog to appear on Google page 1 of index page for your niche area, you have to choose the right domain name. Example, my blog is on online business; my domain name is www.naijaonlinebiz.com. This is for better search engine ranking of my blog.
So, I wait 5 minutes for you to coin your domain name. Done, right? Let’s proceed.

3. Choose a blogging platform
Now, choose a blogging platform. There are a number of blogging platform, you can choose from. One important one is wordpress. WordPress is my No.1 blogging platform. It’s by far the best blogging platform with lots of ways to create, design and customize your blog. In addition to that, it’s also the most known blogging platform with over 80 million active users.
But some other alternatives blogging platform that you might want to consider/try include; blogger-second best, tumblr, squarespace etc.
I will suggest you consider choosing wordpresss because
• It’s super easy to set up.
• Easy and free layouts and themes to choose from.
• They have huge support forum to help you out in difficult time
• Your blog will load fast and it’ll look awesome and so on.
Check out it, 2 minutes for this.

4. Self-host your blog or choose free hosted blog platform

Aha, here you are! You have to make your biggest decision here.
WordPress, Tumblr and Blogger offer a free blogging platform. That’s great isn’t it? Well, it is. But see the free blogging platform have some short-falls:
• Your blog web address/ URL will not look professional at all. It will be looking like this; yourblog.wordpress.com, yourblog.blogspot.com
• You will not fully be allowed to monetize it, you don’t have possibility to upload endless videos/images and your access to ALL THE FREE themes will be denied.
• You will have full access to design and customize your blog the way you want it.

On the other hand, with your self-hosted domain you can achieve all these. Now, you might want to know how much domain name and hosting will cost? Not much, approximately N6400 per year for your start. You can check out the list of top domain and host reseller companies in Nigeria, if you want to host the domain with Nigeria hosting Company. Or you can host it on a foreign hosting company like www.hostgator.com, www.godaddy.com blueboat etc all you need is credit card. If you need credit card, here are the banks that issue credit card in Nigeria.
If you don’t have money to host your blog, then I suggest you try blogger free blogging platform since you can still monetize it.
So, I will give you 15 minutes to do this. Done, I believe.

5. Set up your blog on your own domain name
Now that you have come up with an excellent domain name related to your blog niche and you have found a hosting company that can host your blog. Set up the blog.
NB: Blog hosting is a service that puts your blog LIVES on the web and connects it with your domain.
I use wordpress twenty fourteen theme for all this while and I can’t really say any bad words about it. It is absolutely FREE. All I did is to create a child theme of the template in case if the theme is updated. I can easily update theme without uttering anything on my blog and the blog is hosted on web4africa. If you don’t want to go with free theme (for some reason), feel free to use any other theme may be a paid them. It won’t cost much. Most hosting companies if not all of them have integrated “One-Click-Install” for WordPress blogs. In other words, you just need to click a few buttons and your blog will be up and running. There’s absolutely no need to install it manually or upload anything which could take hours for a beginner.
Domain privacy is optional and website essentials are not actually needed, but I’d recommend whois privacy (to keep you fully anonymous) and automated backups (for security purposes).
Once you’ve installed WordPress, you can log in from “YOURBLOG.COM/WP-ADMIN” to get into your admin area.

6. Design your blog
Log in to your WordPress blog and look for unique themes under “Appearance” => “Themes” I usually pick something that looks professional and easy to customize, 2 or 3 layout theme are usually my best option. WordPress also has this awesome feature that allows you to change themes with a few clicks. So if you are tired of your current blog theme, you can just switch to another one without losing any content or images.
Mess around with the available tool on your wordpress admin area to get the design of your blog It might be slightly confusing at first, but eventually you’ll get use to it.

7. Use our ultimate bloggers’ guide to kick-off your blog success. Because I want you to success on blogging in Nigeria, I have that ultimate bloggers’ guide as a complete resource material in blogging to guide you through. The dos and don’ts of blogging are there.
When it is time to make money, use our make money through blogging step by step guide. All that you need in making money through blogging is there.

Remember; if you get stuck on the way don’t forget to hit on me

Aha, it is 30 minutes now. Bye.