How A Young Entrepreneur From Nigeria Started A Profitable Blog
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
My parents told me that my name is Emenike Emmanuel. I’m the CEO of Entrepreneur Business Blog. In 2018, I was recognized as one of the top 100 social media marketing influencer to follow in 2019.
Entrepreneur Business Blog is a subsidiary of Ebusinessroom Ventures - a topnotch digital marketing agency based in Lagos, Nigeria. My business blog is focused on creating helpful content that can help people start, grow and manage their business using digital marketing strategies.
While they are a couple of other services I offer through the digital marketing agency of my business like, online business setup for small businesses, Facebook and PPC advertising, business coaching and hosting of seminars, my major way of monetizing this blog include; sales of advertising space, sponsored post, and sales of information product - example, Blogging Business Masterclass.
I get sponsored post requests from top companies in the U.S., Canada, Australia, UK, South Africa, UAE, etc. Funny enough, I have never published a sponsored post for any company in my home country. This is solely because my interest when I started the blog has always been to reach tier-1 countries (Tier 1 countries are the wealthiest countries of the world with a high income per person, high advertising budget and better regulations to protect intellectual properties).
Currently, EntrepreneurBusinessBlog.com generates a monthly revenue of $1,500+ from those income sources I listed above.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I live in a country with an unemployment rate of about 38%. When I was about graduating from the Polytechnic where I had gone to study Physics/Electronics for 5 years, I made up my mind that I was never going to be counted among the statistics of those who are either unemployed or underemployed.
I don’t have a wealthy family background, so my chances of having a mouthwatering job offer through recommendations were already dashed. It was either I figured my way out, or I head back to my village on graduation.
When your back is against the wall, you will do everything to survive. Personally, I chose to survive it and I did through the power of blogging.
While surfing the internet, I read stories of how Jon Morrow, Pat Flynn, Linda Ikeji and many other bloggers were making millions of dollars annually from their blogs, so I decided I was going to try this thing out.
Unlike many bloggers, I didn’t start blogging just because I had a passion for writing, I chose to blog because I wanted to build a profitable business out of it. I focused on the business niche because I love sharing business advice that worked for me.
Instead of waiting to see the worse happen, I decided to take the bull by the horn to launch Entrepreneur Business Blog when I went for my compulsory one year service to the government called, National Youth Service Corps.
Right there in the remote village where I was posted, I launched my dream blog. At the time, it was the best I could do to monetize my writing passion.
Taking off was hell but each time I look at the future, I encouraged myself to keep fighting for my dream.
Aside from the fact that I could compose good inspirational articles then, I didn’t have any sort of background closely related to blogging.
Although I had this inner peace that I was on the right path, reading stories of other successful bloggers motivated me to stay on the game each time I felt like quitting.
When I started my blog, I was earning less than $300 per month from my freelance writing services and monthly allowance I received from the government. For one year, I spent $90/mo to transport myself to the nearby city where I could access a fast internet connection.
It was hell for me. At that time, I had not fully recovered from the stomach ulcer I was suffering so each time I skipped my breakfast or lunch in order to save some money, the pains came rushing back. But do I have an alternative? No!
When your back is against the wall, you will do everything to survive. Personally, I chose to survive it and I did through the power of blogging.
Take us through the process of getting started and launching.
The first thing I did when I finalized I was going to launch my blog, Entrepreneur Business Blog was to come up with a unique domain name.
Seeing that I had no money to pump into advertising, I decided to choose a domain name that will be easier for me to rank for. This was necessary because millions of people were already searching for either, “Entrepreneur,” “Business” or “Blog” so combining the three made a great choice I have never regretted till date.
I didn’t have the resource to hire a professional web designer, so I turned to YouTub vidoes like this and other blogs (specifically, WPBeginner - but I didn’t use their recommended Bluehost - I used Siteground instead) to learn how to set up a self-hosted WordPress blog.
A couple of things went wrong like the permalink I chose and duplication of my blog using another subdomain because I was an amateur in the game and I had no one to turn to.
Twitter growth challenge
Ahead of launching the blog, I did a 14 days Twitter growth challenge where I got 1500 Twitter followers.
In this challenge, the first thing I did was to choose my desired Twitter handle and set up my Twitter account, @ebusinessroom.
Using hashtags that were related to my niche, (e.g. #startup, #entrepreneur, #business, #growthhacking, etc.) daily sharing of images and quotes, constant appreciation of Twitter handles that followed me in batches, crafting of tweets on trending hashtags and by retweeting of viral tweets, I was able to attract as much as 100 new followers every day. I even went ahead to create a FREE eBook detailing how I did it. You can download it here for free.
My audience was eagerly waiting for the blog to go live so that they can start talking about it.
The moment the blog went live I already had a waiting audience who were ready to listen to me. I started engaging other bloggers in the comments section of their blog so that they can take notice of me.
Guest post pitches
I also sent out guest post pitches to other bloggers. Some of them accepted and published my articles, while others ignored me. I didn’t take it personally.
For two reasons, I considered guest posting on other blogs:
- To get more people to know about my awesomeness in crafting jaw-dropping business articles.
- To get backlinks to my blog and boost my domain authority (this is the ranking of your blog on a scale of 0 - 100).
If you are just starting out here’s my best guest posting pitch you can learn from. Tweak it so that it looks natural.
My guest post template
Hello [Editor’s or Blogger’s name],
My name is [your name], founder of [name of your blog] - a blog where I share my in-depth knowledge in the area of __, __ and __ [name the things you discuss on your blog].
For the past __ [mention how long you’ve been reading their blog - don’t lie] I have been following your blog [mention the URL of their blog], I have learned quite a number of things and have also retweeted some of them that are most relevant to my audience from your handle, [mention their Twitter handle].
Seeing that we share a common niche, I’d love to contribute a unique guest post that your readers will enjoy.
After going through your previously published articles for the past, [mention how many months or years of previous articles you researched on their blog] I came up with this article:
- [Mention the title of the article you wrote]
In this article, (attached below) I discussed __, __, ___, and __ [you can place this in bullet points].
This article is purely search engine optimized, free of spammy links (you are at liberty to remove or replace any link you consider unnecessary) and focused on your blog niche.
To have an idea of how my articles perform, take a look at my previously published guest posts on:
- [Name of the blog - Title of your guest post with its hyperlink]
- [Name of the blog - Title of your guest post with its hyperlink]
- [Name of the blog - Title of your guest post with its hyperlink]
If given the privileged to be published on your blog, I will share it on social media and to my email list. I will be here to respond to all the comments from your readers.
In case you prefer that I write on another topic different from this, do not hesitate to let me. [If you did proper research this won’t be necessary]
I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you.
[Your name]
[Your blog name]
Note: Send your guest post request using your custom email address if you have a website already.
It cost me less than $150 to get the blog running. This amount was invested in purchasing the domain name, web hosting and blog theme. I was actually using a free theme until after 3 months.
For the first one year, I didn’t make money directly from the blog, save for those that reached me and requested that I offer freelance writing services. At this time, my blog became a credibility booster to help me charge more fees.
If I were to start a blog again from scratch without prior knowledge of how things work, I would save up to hire a coach who will help me navigate the rough road.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
In today’s world of blogging, to stand out, you must choose a niche and focus on it squarely.
Several times I was tempted to write about a lot of things that came to my mind but I was quick to understand that this was not about what I want but what the audience I’m trying to reach want.
The biggest mistake I made which I still regret till date was failing to start building an email list immediately the blog was launched. As a result of this, it was difficult to reach people who had visited the blog in the past.
I focused on creating content for people with a higher purchasing power than the level where I was. As the snowball effect trickled, people began to accept my articles; I began to receive pingbacks showing that other blogs are already linking to mine and from there, I took it to a whole new level on Facebook by building a Facebook community called The Excellent Entrepreneurs’ Network where I attract and engage with readers of my blog and those who are interested in the world of entrepreneurship.
Two years later after we launched, precisely on May 22, 2018, I was invited to join Facebook Community Leadership Circles. This became a booster to my blogging business both in terms of income, impact, and influence.
For the first year, I was barely managing to survive because it was becoming more and more expensive to fund a blog that wasn’t making direct income. As a result, I didn’t use any form of paid advertising. Instead, I focused on creating highly search engine optimized articles.
The biggest mistake I made which I still regret till date was failing to start building an email list immediately the blog was launched. As a result of this, it was difficult to reach people who had visited the blog in the past. But after the first year, I set out to build our Email and Messenger bot lists.
To bring back customers who have visited my blog in the past, I use the following: email marketing, messenger bot broadcast, Facebook ads (retargeting) and Google ads.
Email marketing
Email marketing is a form of permission marketing where your target audience explicitly agrees in advance to receive marketing information from me.
When people come to my blog and sign up to receive my free eBook like SELL MORE IN LESS TIME or weekly roundup posts, they get added to my email list. From my MailChimp dashboard, I send out emails (known as campaigns) to them from time to time.
To ensure I have a good open rate, I try to give valuable piece of email while reminding them of a product I’m promoting at the same time.
Messenger bot broadcast
Messenger bot broadcast is very hot right now. I use Chatfuel and it’s free for the first 5,000 subscribers. When you generate your messenger bot URL from your Facebook page, it will look like this, m.me/ebusinessroom where “ebusinessroom” will be your unique page username.
You can install it on your blog so that your blog readers can connect with you directly.
One of the most interesting features is the ability to schedule broadcast and they will be sent out as scheduled. Using this feature, you can always have returning readers from time to time.
Facebook ads
Facebook advertising is rocking now. The sweetest part is the retargeting power and the ability to target audience of a specific demographic with a higher purchasing power. It’s also a great platform for creating awareness for your brand.
Google ads
Many people have thought that Google ads is dead but the truth is, it is very much alive. If you are in a niche that is very competitive, the best you can do is to support your search engine optimization strategies with paid ads from Google so that you will stand a chance of being seen on search engines.
Often times, I also send out emails to those that sponsored a post on my blog in the past to know if they have more articles they might want to promote on my blog. This has proven to be an effective strategy.
What’s the business model and how you do make money?
Our major focus is on creating helpful business and marketing content. We are working tirelessly to see that at least 90% of our income comes organically through Google AdSense, sales of our digital products and affiliate marketing.
Currently, we are generating an average revenue of $1,500 from sales of advertising space, sales of our digital products, sponsored posts and affiliate marketing.
Each day, it’s either we are creating a new blog post, improving on existing posts or we are promoting existing articles.
Our plan for the year is to create a digital marketing course for a teeming population of our audience who are requesting for it.
Our goal for this year is to double our revenue for Entrepreneur Business Blog and bring our sister blog, My Top Insurance Blogs to the limelight of also generating 4 figures income.
I look forward to a future where we would have diversified into Real Estate, Agriculture and Aviation with the revenue we built up from this blog. At that time, Entrepreneur Business Blog will be the media body that will be promoting all other businesses that we operate.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Over the past few years since I started, I have made a bunch of mistakes.
First was that I failed to build my email list in time. Next mistake was that I didn’t utilize other blog monetization options like affiliate marketing and product launches because I was waiting for Google AdSense to approve my blog.
Had I known, I would have started making money from my blog almost immediately through affiliate marketing.
Same way I made a bunch of mistakes, I also made amazing good decisions that have helped to position me well. Some of them include going the extra mile to learn to copywrite so that I could utilize it in getting people to click on my articles when they see it on search engines.
Sometime in 2017, I partnered with my friend, Patrick Enyum to launch his email copywriting software to our local audience and the result was amazing. In 2018 when he launched his software, EmailRamp on JVZoo, I partnered with him again as an affiliate in his coaching program and we made some money together.
Not just that, I still have an active partnership with Godswill Igbokwe in promoting his Mini Importation Video Course.
Moving to Lagos in May 2017 on the words of Royal T. Anderson, John Obidi, Ronald Nzimora, and Solomon Alo was one of the smartest decisions I took that launched me to a world of possibilities.
Instead of crediting anything to luck, I’d rather credit it to Grace. God’s grace has been my biggest support since I started this blog.
It will be barely impossible to run a profitable blog if you don’t possess other valuable skills. Personally, I have a lot of skills but the ones that contributed to my success immensely were my analytical skills, writing skills, communication skills, and marketing skills.
I have this unusual ability to spot money-making opportunities literally from everything I set my mind to think on. This would have made me unfocused because many people with similar ability are always running after shiny objects but I had to subdue my mind to follow one course until I’m successful at it.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
The platforms I use include:
- I use my Facebook pages, (2) timeline and a Facebook community of over 7,000 members.
- Twitter: I have 2 Twitter accounts.
- Instagram: I have 2 Instagram accounts
- Email marketing: I use MailChimp
- Social media tools: Statusbrew for managing my social media activities across platforms.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
The most influential books I have come across include:
- Cashvertising by Drew Eric Whitman
- Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
- 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- The Psychology of Persuasion by Kevin Hogan
These books are all available on Amazon.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Starting a blog with the aim of running it as a full-time business is going to be hard but the obvious thing is that you will surely scale though if you don’t give up.
You don’t have to bootstrap like me if you can afford to sign up for a coaching class so that an expert will teach you how to make money from blogging.
Where can we go to learn more?
- Website: https://www.entrepreneurbusinessblog.com
- Best blog post of the week: How to Make More Money and Expand Your Business
- Facebook Entrepreneur Business Blog
- Twitter: @ebusinessroom
- Email: [email protected]
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
Thanks Pat for having me here.
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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