How to Start Your Career as A Professional Blogger in Nigeria

A blog is a webpage that allows an individual to directly communicate with an audience through articles, videos, audio or any other form of content. So whenever you visit some links and you read many articles, you are simply interacting with the owner of the blog. This is some form of communication.

That said, it is necessary to mention here that a blog is different from a website. Although these differences are minimal, it is still worthy to mention them in record. The major difference is in the fact that a blog is usually updated frequently. It could be hourly, daily, bi-weekly or at any regular interval. On the other hand, most websites are static. Their content are not frequently updated (except there is a blog section on the website) 

A website can have a blog. But a blog is not a website.

When you decide to start a blog, it is a big mistake for you to decide that you just want to blog about news updates, story writing, and all others.

Being a professional blogger in Nigeria will bring you money but it'll require a lot of task and ensure the following procedures are properly followed.

1. Select a Niche

You have to be very specific about starting a blog by choosing a niche. A Niche is a category, field or interest that you are passionate about and can conveniently or comfortably write articles about. So, for example if you love fashion (or you are a tailor), you can run a fashion blog. In the same vein, a medical student can run a student health blog

You are an Educationist, you can start a blog on tutorials

You love baking and cooking, you can run a blog on that. 

Whatever thing that interests you, you can blog about it, just make sure you are consistent. 

 Today, there are different blogs that are specific to different things.

It totally depends on what interests you.

Now, the reason why this interest is necessary is because blogging can be tiring. 

It is honestly not easy to write good, interesting and comprehensive blog posts.

 And for many people, the sweet side they hear about blogging is that you can make sweet money in blogging by making huge dollars every month.

This is very true. But, you will work and put in a lot of work. 

 So, if you are considering starting your blog because of money and you leave out interests, it is only a matter of time before you burn out. 

You will not be able to write tangible content and you will outdo yourself.

Today, we have millions of blogs online. If you check www.internetlivestats.com, you will see the number of websites and blogs created today alone.

In Nigeria, we've a growing population of blogeers striving to get known and make money. So you must know that you are not in this game alone. 

2. Do a Proper Research

Apart from your interests in selecting a niche, it is necessary that you engage further research to identify your niche within a niche.

So, by choosing a niche within a niche, you are practically using the concentric circle structure of onions.

For example, you want to blog about Law. This is a niche, but it is still broad. You can then narrow it to Law Students. This is still quite broad. You then narrow it further to Nigerian Law School Students. 

If you settle down and decide to create a blog on this very specific niche and do the real work, you will reap gold to the extent that which you're consistent with it. 

3. Choose a Blogging Platform. 

There are different platforms on which you can create your blog. You can create your blog on Medium, Substack, Blogger, Wordpress, Tumble and much more. All these platforms have advantages and disadvantages, and you should make proper research before choosing any blogging platform. To help you, here are a few things  you should consider before picking a platform.

1. Choice and Management of the Blog

2. Cost Effectiveness

3. Proficiency of the Developer

4. Site Efficiency itself.

There are two very popular platforms for Blogging today that many have probably heard about. 

Blogger and Wordpress. These two are the real contention sef. They are the platforms bringing up those disadvantages and advantages in a way. 

Tips To Grow Your Blog. 

1. Write Consistently: If you remember our definition of a blog, you'd know that you need to consistently put out content on your blog for people to read it. A blog cannot exist without tangible and regular content. Posting consistently will help you grow your blog. 

2. Share your Posts. Use social media wisely. Create a Facebook page, a facebook group, what's app and telegram pages and as well, utilise your status. I used to have 4000+ contacts as at December last year before I deleted some irrelevant lines (and now have 200p+). You can imagine how much traffic I get averagely especially if a link is coming from me. 

3. Encourage Comments on your blog. Let your articles strike a conversation. The more people engage your blog, the more trustworthy it becomes to Google. That is one way that helps you to rank well and show up in Google Search when people are looking for one thing or the other

4. Learn new skills. Dive into Digital Marketing, especially Search Engine Optimisation. You will need it for your blog to grow properly. Blogger has strong possibilities (because it is owned by Google) 

Monetize Your Blog

 There are different ways to earn from your blog. Adsense is the most popular one. There is Medicine, Ezoic, Adnaira, Bidvertiser, NgAdverts, Affiliate marketing and as space sales among others. 

But Adsense has stringent rules so you need someone to guide you (my advice).

You can be adventurous though and try to apply for Adsense by yourself. But if you are not careful and don't meet the requirements, they will reject your site or ban you.

 This is a whole lot and it's an entire subset of the blogging course on its own. I will only list a few here. 

1. Avoid Plagiarism. One line of copied content and you'd get rejected. You may be lucky if Google bypasses you, but it is a great risk.

2. Avoid scrap content. Make sure your articles have at least 700 words. I advise 1000 words to be very safe. (You can delete the sample post and start blogging with articles in your niche when you see this) 

3. Put up necessary pages. Don't be a mysterious blogger. You need an About, Contact and Privacy Policy Page. When you get to that bridge, I'd help you cross. 

Get the first two and reach out to me. If you successfully have 50 articles that meet the first two criteria, and you buy your domain and a good theme, you will get Google Adsense in one month.

But you may have issues later on. Also, if you want to change to a custom domain (.com or any other domain extension) in the future, you will lose all your Adsense earnings and you have to re-apply with the new domain. 

Blogging is a goldmine. But you have to dig out the gold. You need to put in the work to make the money in blogging. 

The digital media is getting very complicated because many people are into tech today. So, you can hold on to this part of it and create the relevance you desire. 

1. Write at least two posts weekly. If you can and have the time, write one article everyday.

2. Continually learn other skills. This is just one of many and like I mentioned, digital marketing skills will help your blogging grow in multiple folds.

Tips For Content Publishing On Your Blog 

1.Your titles must be in sentence case. The first letter of each word must be in capital letters while the rest should be in small letters. If you write in capital letters, it means that you are shouting at your audience, so you should only use it for emphasis. This is from the basic rules English and you should go back to your books so you can improve your writing. 

2. Punctuate Your Article Properly. Do not include full stop after an article's title.

3. Always upload a related image to your blog posts. 

4. Use proper alignment for your articles. I talked about how blogger looks like Microsoft word if you open it on your system. So, make sure that it aligns properly for your blog's view. 

Blogging is a very rewarding career if you can pay the price of consistency and daily research about knowledge.