₦airaland Forum

Hi SpyJulius,

Your best bet is to sign up for a great hosting company that offers free domains! In such circumstance, your bucks gets you two amazing things at once: an awesome hosting plan and a free domain name for life!

Such a domain, you must remember, is free for life and as long as you renew your hosting plan, you also automatically renew the domain name!!

Online, my dear Op, the essence of everything all boils down to conversion...getting the reader/visitor to do that which you desire him/her to do...

Since Linda's site is already converting (by making her serious money), I maintain that whether her design is horribly or extremely beautiful is of no consequence.

...What truly matters online is the impact and the bucks.

I wonder if you understand?

The dashes, the dashes!

Several affiliate marketing programs have been around for sometime, giving Nigerians the unique opportunity to make money online. However, most of these affiliate marketing programs are a cheap scam – and the few genuine ones either do not expressly admit Nigerians or give Nigerians serious headache when it comes to converting banners and clicks to sales and affiliate commissions. The situation has degenerated to a level that many persons who engage in business online have doubted the viability of this superior model of making money online in Nigeria (and elsewhere) legally.

If you are amongst those (Nigerian online businessmen/women) who are currently exploring the affiliate model of doing business online, casually considering it or more importantly, making little to no commissions from the plethora of banners plastered all over your site, this post is for you. If you succeed in reading only this entry at the end of the day, believe me, you’ll still have a fulfilled and great day…

Let the game begin!

The Concept of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is quite simple…so simple that my 3 year old boy can comfortably do it What it entails is quite simple and basic:

1. Identify a great product you wish to promote as an affiliate.
2. Sign up with the provider of the great product (you’ve identified) as an affiliate and get your unique links and special banners to enable you get credit for sales you refer.
3. Promote the offer by promoting the heck out of the banners and links.
4. Drive sales and wait for your commissions.

It’s really as simple as that – nothing complex and technical. So, you see, when I said that my little boy could do it, I was really serious. Damn serious. However, doing 1 – 4 above will hardly make you any money (unless you are damn lucky). Instead, it will waste your time, energy, bandwidth and severely try your patience and trust in affiliate marketing as a model and online business as a concept.

There has to be another way though…the way of success and power. Read on.

Why Nigerians Get Affiliate Marketing Wrong (The Grand Illusion)


Years ago, it was possible (really) just to plaster affiliate offers on a site, website or in emails and still made grand bucks…that was a time when internet users were ‘click hungry’ and many persons were not into the business of promoting the numerous offers available. Times have changed since.

…unfortunately, the average Nigerian online hasn’t yet changed the mentality that was obtainable in the years of yore. A huge percentage are simply pasting banners on their blogs (some as many as 10), sending links via email spam and without shame, sharing all the links they can garner on Facebook, GooglePlus and Twitter.

Sorry – that’s the grand illusion. Pasting links in such a manner simply does not work again. Sorry. Accordingly, if you are simply pasting banners or sharing links, it’s time to STOP and reconsider your strategy…and that’s where I come in to help!

Continue at the blog: http://notopoverty.com/make-money-with--in-nigeria/

Not guilty (did some serious research before my very first installation way back).

To add to the list:


8. Downloading and installing crappy, poorly coded themes (hurts SEO and general site navigation like hell)

9. Changing themes and leaving the unused ones hanging in the background (this slows down overall site speed).

10. Working on a live site and letting the whole world see where your WP customization skills are weakest (heck, there are a million plugins for that...by the way, a 'coming soon' note doesn't hurt)...

11. Failing to check broken links (heck, this slows down a site, reduces rankings and impairs user friendliness!)

There are at least 10 more...however, these are the most recurrent challenges.

soldierdollar:
I just checked . Seems it doesn't accept Nigerian MasterCard . Tried two but rejected all

Sorry about that bit (I personally use a Payoneer card).

To clear your challenge, why don't you link the Naira debit cards to Paypal and proceed? Paypal is quite universal...

donsheddy1:
My brother, Lagos favour you. I pray u don't scam Nigerians. I'm still looking forward to see your name tag on nairaland.

Strong words, Shadrack. Strong words.

But, if you were a little patient to take a look at my offer, you'll discover that while the design is completely free, I still monetize my efforts. Essentially thus, the hosting company pays the bills, not my clients. And they never fail to pay!

You may reconsider your words...SCAMMING IS ONE THING I'M DEAD CERTAIN I'LL NEVER HAVE TIME FOR!

BTW, I have no business with Lagos - at least for the moment...

GreenWhiteGreen:
Typical Nigerian - These days, it's very hard to find a trusted IT marketer. 99.9 don't even practise what they sell. They too buy it, study and reword it (not practise), then sell it to masses. They are all thieves.

So true - except the bolded part that completes your statement.

I'm a writer and internet marketer who makes money online in Nigeria legally and consistently (and in fact, have no day job).

Why don't you (and any other person here who believes ALL internet marketers in Nigeria are thieves) download the FREE 175 paged guild on making money online in Nigeria?

I offer this manual for FREE - so, no obligations...And mind you, I bought real trashy materials of 20 - 30 pages for a whooping N5000!

Hi Omar0001!

While you may have a budget for this, be kindly informed that I can handle your project for you completely free of charge.

Kindly find the terms and conditions here and get back (if you decide to): http://notopoverty.com/free-website-design/.

I sincerely wish you the best!

onyengbu:
Your sense of humor is out of this world ...

I completely agree...impressive features for a fat fee - 10k!

The real question/isseue is between developing a site from scratch or simply using the Wordpress CMS.

My experience is that computer scientists and web developers are in the habit of labeling WP as insecure, hack-prone etc. The reasons are best known to them...or maybe, it's simply because they've got business interests to protect.

In summary, WP (or CMS powered sites) are as secure as the skill of the person behind their existence - so are sites built from the scratch. What is important is that you know what you are doing...

Simple.

stbaby:
Blogging is all about expressing yourself over certain issues or niche, but much more than that, it is about expressing your knowledge and understanding over a particular topic. No one blogs for himself, every blogger blog for others to read; therefore, you must blog for the audience.

The main reason for blogging is to provide solutions by sharing your knowledge, views and ideas in a blog post.

By blogging for the audience I mean, creating a vibrant blog on the internet will attract multitudes every day and night.

When no one reads your blog then you are not blogging, real blogging means you setting up a blog on any of the blog platform providers : WordPress, Blogger or Joomla, write articles (posts) on it and get people (traffic, audience) to read and possible make their comment and you respond.

But there are ways you can do your blogging and your blog will not attract traffic, I mean nobody will want to visit your blog after coming for the first time.

Below are the 6 reasons your blog will not attract visitors:

1. When you fill your pages with commercial banners.
It is very good to monetize your blog because you are not blogging for just the fun of it; you need to make some bucks at the end of the day.

But stuffing your sidebars, below post title and below post body with so many messy ads or banners is a very bad habit; I use to do it in time past thinking it will make me much more money, but I was very wrong.

In most cases this could jam your pages in a way it wouldn't open at all or open so slowly in a way that can tell e visitor to click away

2. When you do not add fun.
In as much as you must be very serious with your blogging career, blog that will attract old and new readers regularly must be garnished with some kind of funs. I mean you must be humorous at some point in your writing.

Don’t make your topics and post body boring or use as much difficult words as possible that will require your visitor to use a dictionary when he comes to your blog. Also, the use of translating or re-writing programs can create so much more obscure text from sentences that one can imagine.

3. When your blog loads sluggishly
In other to make your blog attract more new and returning readers in these days of very high competition in the blogosphere, you must format your blog in such a way that its loading time is brought to its barest minimum.

Web surfers have little or no patients nowadays that they cannot afford to spend their one minute waiting for your blog page to sluggishly load!

There are so many factors that contribute to a blog loading time staying on the increase. Factors like image size, poor template coding, heavily coded banners and many more.

4. When your images do not portray your post.
As a blogger, you must understand that images that portray the title and post of a blog perform wonders by attracting much more visitors far more than those that does not. In view of this, you must invest more time deciding on which image to be used in your various blog posts

It is also very important that you learn how to create your own images; this will afford you the opportunity to fully customize your images to suit your blog titles and posts. Read full report at: http://manywebtraffic.com/133/

Great points made, STBaby...I would however add: spamming (with a view of attracting non - TARGETTED visitors). This never pays and in the end, is a classical exercise in futility!!

jaylister:
'Jiffy' meanin what

Kindly use the dictionary SIR!

Samedoo:
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GOODLUCK!

And after the first month, how much does the monthly rental revert to?

jaylister:
Most of we Nigerian bloggers are still in the darkness after blogging for years, and some of us are in the light but are blind. why am i saying this?
we bloggers forgot about one major thing we should have not forget to make our blogs grow, in most cases; the bloggers take it as a pride that am better than the other, so therefore I think we should not mingle as bloggers, but I tell you that you are killing yourself and your blog. Why am I saying this? For instance you can see linda ikeji the No1 of all of bloggers in Nigeria and to be precisely in West Africa and also the most searched Nigerian blogger of 2014. With all her powers and fame in the world of blog-sphere she listed blogs like 360nobs in her blog and others, so as they listed her blog in theirs too.

Why are this top bloggers doing this? They wanted to boost their blog traffic and also increase their blog linkedin sites in alexa which will probably increase their blog in ranking.
Personal Experience: I have two blogs, this one Aprokoblog and my official joke blog, www.Jokebase.info which I listed both in the other, do you know that since after doing that I see a great difference in blog traffic and blog growth. Here is the simple tip to list blogs but before that; bear in mind that you can also list others blog and not only yours. I think by so doing blogs can also list yours too provided you have great contents and good traffic that attract readers.

we can help our self now by dropping our blog for others to view and list them in theirs, lets in change blogs now. mine is WWW.AprokoBlog.com

read full article here: http://www.aprokoblog.com/2015/01/how-blog-listing-helps-linda-ikeji.html

Basically a great idea you have here...However, I'll tell you that many Nigerian bloggers would rather view their competitors as threats to be 'handled' immediately - forgetting that much can be achieved by cooperation!

To succeed in Nigeria, I believe, one has to first do away with the 'Nigerian Mentality'.

I'll be over to your blog in a jiffy!

sMayor:
Bloggers are busy folks! If you want to catch their attention, raise a topic or create a thread they'll be interested in. for instance: "Another way to monetize your blog traffic". I don't think any of them will want to be part of the "present" crew.

Seconded...Let's hear you - other very important things call.

Just like the poster before me, I figured this a long time ago and accordingly switched. It seems something is terribly wrong with that network! For me, they simply only credited only 450MB when I had purchased 1GB. And even this 450 MB burned really fast!

Can you imagine?

PenSoftCorp:
reason be say if i have to update, i have to backup first to be on a safe side and the backup file will be like 500mb, omo to download 500mb with my internet speed will take days

Not Necesarily...I always update without immediately backing up and I always wind up fine (though I make certain that my weekly backups are standby).

As an aside, why don't you forget about hiding your login URL and instead use a strong security plugin that is updated as/when due. I stopped using the numerous plugins that hid my login URL when I discovered that:

1. They don't work well with my caching system.

2. Being basically free, most of them (if not all) are hardly updated on time leaving my site vulnerable - the very reason I sought them out!

My advice? Install The Free Version of Wordfence and set it in such a way that once the user name or password entered is wrong (twice), the intruder will be locked out - for say, a whole day. If you go premium, you'll have 2 factor authentication...believe me, your site will be more secured than a medieval fortress!

And the good thing? This plugin is actively maintained and frequently updated!

doggskull:
Clap for urself "timemaster". U took UR time 2read n then write 'UR' own rubbish. So question is who is not serious?

So you understand in reverse?

brownlord:
Just car, and you started a blog, what will dangote, adenuga and the likes of Ovia do now? they start a cyber space, oga park well there,

Well parked, dude. Now, what do you intend to do? Reverse the decision of the state? Get used to it...life's not fair - but be certain it favors you!

Prezzo1:
ℓ̊ already told Y̶̲̥̅̊o̶̲̥̅̊и̣̣̣̣̥ A̶̲̥̅♏ into amazon associate programe C∕̴Ɩn∂ you are asking •̸Ϟε̲̣̣̣̥ to check it out..
Listen, Ɣε̲̣̣̣̥§ you can display there products on your site C∕̴Ɩn∂ get paid like 4% of every product you sell,the percenatage increases along with †ђξ number of slaes you ♏aƙε̲̣ a week..
Let •̸Ϟε̲̣̣̣̥ now clear you,how can you ♏aƙε̲̣ sales where as amazon don't ship to Nigeria...Who will now buy from youthey only pay you when you sell so where as they don't ship to Nigeria how can you ♏aƙε̲̣ sells
ℓ̊ will be glad if you answer •̸Ϟε̲̣̣̣̥..You just hv the knowledge but. You lack the experience...A̶̲̥̅♏ sorry if A̶̲̥̅♏ sounding harsh..

You do not sound harsh...I perfectly understand you're simply airing out your views...

So, to answer you: Amazon ships to Nigeria, if you know how! Personally, I use a mail forwarder based in Florida and initially ship all my Amazon orders there. From thence, DHL delivers my order in just 4 days at my door post!

Then again, who says only Nigerians will buy your products? What has happened to the millions of Americans, Europeans and Canadians online?

Any other questions??

kingthreat:
Yeah but Nigerian hosts save costs. $20 annual costs compared to $100 for foreign webhosts is a great deal.

$20 per year? Quite cheap. But is it really worth it? Arvixe charges me just $48 for a whole 12 months and I sleep well at night. Sometimes, you simply have to pay (higher) to enjoy the very best!

ZinoFego:
I think the 1. below is off point.

Nigerians don't have servers, we ONLY resell! So the power issue is inconsiderable.

Customer service is a relative issue, some of those foreign coys also have worse customer service. I've had my fair share of Naija and foreign host before I started my own hosting firm http://SpringWebHost.com.

@Youngzedd: if you're a newbie, pls use a local firm, you'll gain a whole lot of experience because you can reach our local firms on phone or go to their offices unlike the foreign ones where you need to drop a ticket that may take up to 48hrs to be responded to. Some of our local guys are very experienced and are willing to help.

Hi Zino,

It is my understanding that for Nigerian hosting providers to provide the much needed support, they'll need computers powered by electricity, right? Now, what exactly happens when PHCN has declined power for a week and there isn't money for diesel?

I get your point however...you have an interest to protect

Okijajuju1:
How do you rate a musician? What makes a Musician Daft?!

When he/she provides daft music

braivheart:
is being a pilot a skill or a profession, and will u learn to fly a plane from books n videos alone? What Will u practice with? Try n understand something before u make a comment.

English could sometimes be a challenge...I understand.

But, enlighten me: isn't the act of flying a skill and the fact of being a pilot a profession?