businessMODE:
Linda Ikeji is one of Africa most successful bloggers and has served as an inspiration to many other young people. She told us her story quite a number of times and one among them is the story of how broke she was before shae started blogging. She said there was a day she went to use the ATM but found out she only had 900 and the least she could withdraw was 500 and the minimum balance 500. She had nothing to do than return broken. That was three years back. Last December, she gave her fans cash running into millions just for been there.

Blogging is one of the simplest online business models I know and it works well with any niche provided you have what your chosen target audience need. But to be a successful blogger and make money online, there are a couple of things you must put into consideration.

It is no longer story that Linda Ikeji’s Blog has been pulled down of allegation of copyright infringement. While I feel so bad about that retrogressive development, I deem it necessary to point out the basics of blogging to aspiring and existing bloggers. Its amazing how some successful bloggers don’t know these minutes basics.

In this little piece, we’ll be looking at LIB as case study to setting up a successful blog.

As an online business coach, the first thing I ask any aspiring blogger who come to me to help them setup a blog to do is pick a niche and their target audience. That alone when carefully done, makes you 55% done because at this point, you must have already though of the blogging model and the offering you will be using to monetize your blog.

Most bloggers just fumbled a couple of times before while trying to found their own successful blog. In the case of Linda, she got it right by chosen the celebrity, gossip and general entertainment niche. While that is not a very promising for a newbie, she was very fortunate to have risen to have come this far.

The next thing to do after deciding on a niche and audience is to pick a model. That may not be a deciding factor, but it helps you stay focus and soar high faster.

One important thing I stand against is using free domain and hosting. That is what broke Linda Ikeji. She was using a free domain and was hosted on blogger. I’ve criticize her blog on that ground previously, but proponents have felt she was successful and thus no need for that ignoring the fact that her success exposes her to complications as this. Other possibilities include the company folding or crashing of their servers which may lead to lost of data.

The host (blogger) in the case of LIB has the right to pull down the blog at anytime for any reason they feel violates their terms and conditions which you signed when creating the account. I once lost a blog too. I didn’t bother me because the blog was just a couple of weeks old.

At a point, I felt nothing will happen to LIB, but it’s quite unfortunate that blogger or google as the case maybe don’t care how successful your blog is, they pull it down at anytime. The question of copyright was just an excused to force her to patronize the blackmailer. In same light, I’ve written post on GossipHA and I saw it appear on a couple of blogs before. Some gave credits, some didn’t. Instead of feeling bad, I felt on point because I broke news and others copied from me.
Pls I want to start a blog, how do I start it
Those working against her are professional domain squatters who took advantage of her ignorance or rather, negligence to milk her. They actually bought all her brand name domains with all extensions including the .ng domain name which goes for N15,000. Thus for buying www.lindaikeji.ng and www.lindaikejiblog.ng alone, they spent a total of N30,000. That is aside about 10 other extensions and variation related to the brand. Now that the blog has been pulled down, the only hope she have is the mobile version www.lindaikeji.mobi

The guys have not named a price for any of the domains yet, but it is definitely going to run into several millions. When I tried registering a domain name for Labaran Maku, I was shocked to find out that www.labaranmaku.com was registered. When I traced it, the domain was placed for $5,000 –that’s over 800,000. Its amazing how they expect you to pay that huge sum for domain the paid just a token.

To start a successful blog, choose a niche, target audience, model, get domain name and web hosting. There are a lot of blogging platform you can use. All you need is to get web hosting and install the software. I’ve always recommended WordPress (the software from wordpress.org not ).


You can contact me to help you setup a professional blog >>> Ping me on 7C1FBF57 or SMS 08032910381

Click here to get web hosting and domain name registered http://www.hostgator.com.ng/