Expert Guide On How To Start A Blog For (Almost) Free In Nigeria

Blogging is one of the best ways you can make money online in Nigeria, and it is here to stay. Have you ever thought of starting your own? Whether for the promotion of your goods and services or to make money off the blog, this article is here for you.

Purchasing a web hosting and domain name might not be the most affordable expense you\’ll be making. Depending on your capacity, you might have to be spending anything from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand.
Of course, depending on the traffic and quantity of content, you\’ll be needing to upgrade with time.

However, have you ever thought of getting it cheaper? Maybe yes, then this article is for you.

How To Start Blogging In Nigeria Without Breaking Your Pocket

I have seen a lot of people recommending Wix and Squarespace, and they are really good options.
They however are all paid services and you\’ll be expecting some limitations if you do not upgrade to their paid plans. WordPress self-hosted websites are another amazing option but of course, they do not have any free plans.

I\’ll be teaching you how to get it for almost free on Blogger.com.
Blogger.com is owned by Tech giant, Google and is one of my best options for hosting a website free. It was launched on the 23rd of August, 1999 by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan, before being acquired by Google in

2003.

Blogger.com: Advantages of hosting your blog with Google

Some of the reasons I\’d pick Blogger over other hosting platforms include:-

They are totally secure:-

You can\’t hack a Blogger website basically. The only way to do something is by getting access to the Gmail account holding the admin role on the blog.
This is also almost impossible since Gmails are becoming stronger against being hacked with time.

Free for all, forever

There are almost no other companies that provide free for life applications like Google. They make money off ads and can afford to lift the load off starting bloggers like you and me.
No matter the number of contents you upload, it is free for you except you use up your Google storage and have to upgrade. 15gb is a lot though, and you\’re not filling it up anytime soon!

Tutorials are very accessible

You can get access to thousands of tutorials on YouTube and other blogs if you get stuck along the line. Everything on blogger was made to be self-explanatory and if you can use Facebook and Twitter, you can successfully run a blog on Blogger.

Very easy to manage

Like I said above, Blogger is very easy to manage and you can get access to thousands of tutorials online if you get stuck. From writing posts to uploading photos and even editing your template, you do not need to be a programmer to manage them.

Wide range of templates

There are a lot of very easily customizable templates to choose from and you\’ll be able to make world standard blogs. A lot of them are free for downloads and you can get the paid ones for anything from $15 to $100.
I have not really seen anyone that is more expensive than that.

What Else Do You Need To Start A Blog In Nigeria?

Assuming you\’ve heard about blogging and are about to start, then you\’ll be needing;

A good laptop with internet access

Some people blog with their mobile phones but it really doesn\’t work for me. Some things would need a large screen and the phones or tablets won\’t give you exactly what you want.

Your domain name

You can get a domain name for anything from $5 to even above $100, depending on their extensions and the nature of domain names.
If you\’re going for an expired domain name, you\’ll need to make a bigger budget.

Website hosting

If you\’re okay with Google\’s Blogger.com, then you\’re good to go with it. Otherwise you can purchase hosting from Namecheap, Bluehost, Godaddy and any other platforms.

You can consider hiring someone to create it if you don\’t know how to (you can contact us), or use the help of online tutorials.

Content

Blogging is nothing without content. Choose a niche, do your keyword researches and write or hire someone to write for you. I will be discussing this in subsequent articles, since this article is about starting.

How To Make Money From Blogging In Nigeria

There are several ways to make money as a Nigerian blogger and we\’d be seeing a few of them below:

Affiliate Marketing

You can make good money by referring customers to sellers of goods and services. There are many websites and platforms like Amazon, ShareASale, Rakuten Marketing, ClickBank and CJ Affiliate that make this possible.
All you need to do is refer people to buy a product, say wrist watch from Amazon if your audience would be interested in fashion products.

You will earn commissions on successful sales.

Ad Networks

Advertising networks are the easiest way of making money from your blog. You do not need anything special, just focus on supplying your audience contents and making money as they visit your website.
They do not need to buy anything or refer anyone, just visit your blog and click on ads.

Some examples of good ad networks include Google Adsense, MGID, Taboola and Mediavine.

Direct Advertisers

If you get some decent traffic, advertisers can reach out to you to place ads on your website. Direct advertisers target mainly niche websites or particular categories, since they have a product or service they\’re approaching you to sell to your audience.

You can place their banner ad on your website\’s sidebar or any other place you have space.

Sponsored posts

You can make good money publishing sponsored posts on your website. To achieve this, you need to work on your domain authority and of course, get decent traffic.
I will be discussing this in subsequent topics too, and you can be making anything above $100 from every post published on your website.

Information Marketing

If there\’s something you know that you feel others would want to know, you can sell it to them. All it takes is to package them into an ebook course, podcast, video or any other way and sell.
You can upload them to platforms like Amazon and Gumroad, or install Woocommerce and sell them on your website if you use WordPress. There are more than a thousand ways through which you can sell your course and people will pay with their cards, PayPal, etc and download it while you\’re sleeping.

Sales of your products and services

Let\’s say you run a fashion blog, you can advertise your shoes to your audience and sell them to them. Even if you don\’t have the products, you can go into dropshipping and order on demand.
The blog visitors are already interested in the services, so getting them to buy wouldn\’t be an issue at all.

Conclusion

There are so many ways to make money from your home in Nigeria and blogging is one of them. You can start a blog today and move to more expensive platforms later if the Blogger.com platform is lacking any features you need.
What do you think?