World richest bloggers
Alexa ranking for website traffic, statistics and analytics indicate that the Huffington Post, which was launched in 2005 by millionaire socialite, Arianna Huffington, and later transformed to HuffPost, used to rake in over $18 million monthly at its infancy. That is roughly N6.570 billion.
The company was bought by AOL, a web portal and online service provider based in New York. It is a brand marketed by Oath, a subsidiary of Verizon Communications,for $315 million in 2001. Today, HuffPost is estimated at $1 billion or N365 billion.
Another blog that has high-income ranking on Alexa is Engadget. It has a monthly income of $5.5 million. Owner of the blog, Peter Rojas, was coaxed over to Weblog Inc. in 2004 after cutting his teeth on popular tech blog, Gizmodo.
Today, Engadget is a blogging franchise covering different aspects of consumer technology in several different languages. Respected for its gadget reviews and advice columns as well as its industry news, Engadget also makes its fortune from advertising. It was also sold to AOL for $25 million in 2005.
Others on the top ten list of richest bloggers in the world, according to Alexa ranking, include TechCrunch, owned by Michael Arrington ($800,000); Mashable, owned by Pete Cashmore ($600,000), Mario Lavanderia (PerezHilton, $400,000), Vitaly Friedman ($190,000), Timothy Sykes ($180,000), Jake Dobki ($110,000), Collis Ta’eed ($110,000), Gina Trapani ($110,000), Matt Marshall ($100,000), and Ewdison Then ($60,000). The earnings are captured monthly.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Linda Ikeji, who is dubbed ‘Queen of Bloggers,’ is ranked 2,531on Alexa. But a critical look at the ranking reveals that the “Queen” may not have been fairly ranked, if monthly incomes are used as basis of ranking. (this is your own opinion. Is this a compliant from Linda? We must write stories not opinions)
For example, the last two bloggers mentioned above are Ewdison Then and Matt Marshall. Ewdison Then is ranked 8,440 on Alexa and he earns about $60,000 a month; Matt Marshall’s Alexa ranking is 2,088 and he makes $100,000. And both have made the list of top ten earners. Clearly, Linda Ikeji’s Alexa ranking of 2,531is higher than that of Ewdison Then, who has 8,440.
Based on the ranking, Linda is earning over $100,000 a month, or $1.2 million a year; that is about N4.380 billion based on the current exchange rate. ( did you to Linda)
She earns this huge sum a year with just a laptop and a modem. But, of course, the 37-year-old has a dogged attitude to her blogging, such as is uncommon and not easy to imbibe by anyone lazy.
Talk of content, Linda’s blog has 99 per cent of celebrity gossips, entertainment gist, fashion, news and events.
Coming from a very humble beginning to stardom as the highest-paid Nigerian blogger, Linda tried herself in many trades to support herself in school and her family – from working as a waitress to ushering, then to modeling – before discovering blogging, where her passion and zeal have earned her the glory she enjoys.
She once (History. Not good enough. We need currency.) said: “I never even thought that I would make money from blogging. I didn’t start blogging with the mindset that one day, I would make money from it. I didn’t even think that was a possibility, it never even crossed my mind. I didn’t say to myself that ‘Okay, let me blog now and maybe in five years’ time, I will make money from it’.
“I never imagined that it would ever happen. In fact, in 2008 and 2009, I was putting free ads on my blog, I was telling my blog readers, please give me your ads and I will put them for free. But then in 2010, people started asking me for my advert rates and I was like ‘really?’ I didn’t even know what it was until I now asked a few people and they gave me their own advert rates, so that is how it started”, the Nigerian blog ‘queen’ added.
Clearly, she has achieved so much from a little beginning, but her dogged, relentless and humble attitude appears to have helped in changing her life story.
Learning from an expert
In Nigeria, next to Linda is Fabmimi’s Blog, owned by Mimi Juliet Atedze, who has also got a share of Google’s $12.6 billion in addition to other sources of revenue through her blog.
Mimi told BUSINESS EYE that there were several ways of earning money from blogging. She currently boasts of over a 6-digit income per month. She says “I can’t give you a figure, but blogging is very lucrative.”
And she makes this money majorly through Google Ad sense, a web-based application run by Google that allows publishers in the Google Network of content sites to serve automatic text, image, video, or interactive media advertisements, that are targeted to site content and audiences.
How does the money come through Ad sense? Mimi explains: “Instead of waiting to generate 1million page views daily (like Linda Ikeji’s Blog), I decided to earn through Ad sense, and building my earnings around the services I offer, like charging clients for freelancing, public relations, advertising and marketing.
“This has helped a great deal in making me generate six-figure earnings. I also help upcoming and aspiring bloggers open news blogs; this is also usually paid for. But I make my money from Ad sense, Ad banners and pay per post,” she added.
Today, Mimi can’t think of a more powerful tool in her life than blogging. Apart from earning thousands of dollars monthly, she also makes new connections from around the world and gains new valuable skills.
Like other bloggers, Mimi has the zeal meshed with passion for blogging. She also taps inspiration from renowned bloggers, not Jorn Barger or Arianna Huffington, but fellow Nigerian bloggers such as Niyi Tabiti, Linda Ikeji and Bella Naija, among others.
At first, it wasn’t rosy, Mimi explained. She had to get used to sitting for several hours, making sure her electronic gadgets were functional, having robust internet connection and, most importantly, getting content that could drive traffic to her blog.
As a wife and mother, she admitted that balancing between her blogging activities and her matrimonial commitment – taking care of her kids and attending to her husband, whom she gives credit for being fully supportive – has been demanding
More overwhelming is the fact that she is also a civil servant at the National Human Rights Commission. She says having to drag all her responsibilities with equal energy hasn’t been easy..
Like every humble beginner, Mimi started from documenting her daily activities – parties she attended, places she visited, fashion tales, weddings, among others. Later, Fabmimi became a potpourri of politics, entertainment, fashion, lifestyle and events portal. She also embellishes her blog with gossips, scandals and breaking news.
According to her, money didn’t come from the very start. Fabmimi was launched in 2010, and two years after she said money didn’t come in until she was mentored by an already-established blogger, Niyi Tabiti.
“The first few years were hell. I heard about people making money, but I never had that opportunity until Niyi Tabiti mentored me and introduced me to Ad sense. That was how I joined the act of making money as a blogger,” Mimi reminisced.
She projected to double her earnings in the next five years by “adding new stuff” to her blog, away from the conventional postings. And she is going to do more videos, interviews, movies and documentaries.
In addition to blogging, Mimi currently has a Youtube channel, FabmimiTv, which has only few videos. She speaks about her vision: “I want to be the next person on Forbes Magazine Women in Media.”
Your blog at risk
But while she currently boasts of earning fantastic incomes from her blog, Mimi explains that this fortune hasn’t been without some challenges. For instance, she claimed to have lost her job with the Benue Sate Civil Service when she was accused of defaming a former governor of Benue State, Gabriel Suswam.
“Aaaah…I marked Former Governor Suswam’s Government closely. I reported all activities of the government, and they sacked me unlawfully,” she alleged.
According to her, her public service predicament started when she was appointed the Personal Assistant Media and Protocol to the first female Speaker of Benue State House of Assembly at the return of democracy when George Akume was elected Governor in 1999. That was just after her youth service and first professional experience as a journalist at Pavilion Newspaper.
She has even received several threats from thugs. She relates “Last year, I published a story on a Nigerian guy who scams women in the name of marriage. He called me out, threatened to sue me, but I didn’t pull down the post. I receive trolls from people on Social Media too, but I’m not bothered…..”
Mimi’s experience is akin to other bloggers whom you haven’t got the opportunity to hear. It tells you that blogging is a golden egg being guarded by the most vicious snakes and crocks. So while you nurse the idea of blogging, do not just consider the money you are going to earn; also consider the risks and the rigour of making it attractive for the money to start coming.
There is also the risk of getting your fingers burnt online by some mischievous ‘masquerades’ who hide to defame people with fake news content; that’s why Mimi strongly calls on government to initiate policies such that would require all bloggers to register with the Corporate Affairs Commission, so as to monitor activities such unguarded bloggers.
“By registering blogs with the CAC, those who post fake and hate news will be fished out. Some anonymous blogs are the ones causing these problems. The integrity of bloggers is very important, we all try in our different ways to avoid libelous articles that can send one to jail,” she said.
The Guild of Professional Bloggers of Nigeria, which Mimi and other popular bloggers such as Linda Ikeji, Bella Naija, and many others belong to, is dubbed ‘Nigeria’s premier bloggers group’. But, apparently, the group is handicapped as to how it would control what goes online.
In reaction to this, Taiwo explains Google’s Publisher Policies thus: “We review thousands of sites for violations every day, and we removed over 100,000 publishers from AdSense in 2016. Since 2012, Google has blacklisted more than 91,000 sites from AdSense for violating our policies against copyright infringement, the vast majority caught by AdSense’s own proactive screens.
“Our new Policy Center in AdSense is a one-stop shop for everything a publisher needs to know about policy actions affecting their sites and pages. In 2016, we removed 1.7 billion bad ads from publisher sites in our ad network,” the Google’s spokesperson added.
A cursory reflection on the experiences of the world’s top bloggers, especially the Nigerians, shows that some lessons could be learnt from them. These are that, it helps if you blog on a certain topic. Technology, personal finance, online entrepreneurial advice, beauty and fashion, food, lifestyle and, of course, how to get rich off blogging seem to be the best routes to making a fortune.
Nothing comes easy. Analysts agree that a lot of the income streams associated with blogging are indirect – it isn’t like a salaried position where you get paid for what you write.
According to them, the actual writing earns next to nothing, as a blogger is just simply using the content to create a platform from which to launch other money-spinning ventures. Doing great, in the views of industry experts, takes a lot of extra hard work, as well as an understanding of how online marketing works. Mentoring, as the experience of Mimi shows, can also be helpful to a new blogging space entrant.
Socio-economic impact of bloggers in Nigeria
Going by the ranking of local bloggers on Alexa, in terms of social impact to the Nigerian society, here are top ten blogs that pull crowds in numbers based on category and rank:
| Blog NameNairalandLinda IkejiNaij.comBella NaijaJobbermanNotjustOkThenet.ng360nobsYnaija.comStella Dimokokorkus | CategoryGeneralGossipNewsGossipCareerMusicEntertainmentEntertainmentPolitics/OpinionGossip | Daily Visits397, 219184, 332137, 17476, 26366, 95745, 45545, 30643, 93246, 70041, 650 | Ranking7th (Nig.)10th (Nig.)21st (Nig.)27th (Nig.)21st (Nig.)44th (Nig.)48th (Nig.)74th (Nig.)84th (Nig.)112th (Nig.) |
Although the financial worth of these blogs is not readily available, but considering the status of Alexa on the worth of Linda Ikeji and what Mimi told this magazine, a six-figure earning in hard currency like USD 100, 000 is equivalent to N36.5 million (far more than the average salary package in Nigeria pegged at N14 million per annum).
Don’t be amazed that one is individual earns this huge sum sitting down with his/her laptop and internet stick.
If you are inspired, the first step is making a serious effort to climb the ladder like Tosin Oyetade, a new entrant in blogging. She told this magazine that she would like to see herself among the top earners with her blog – tosin.life – in the near future.
The must-know about future of blogging
There are countless reasons to start a blog, but for some people, the biggest obstacle they face is how to prove that blogging is not only perfect for small businesses and personal sites, but larger companies as well.
If you are one of those, consider that some amazing statistics prove that the future of blogging is very bright. Worldometers confirmed in December 2017 that 81per cent of U.S. online users trust information and advice received from blogs.
It also indicated that blogs have 97 per cent of in-bound businesses links, and 92 per cent of companies that blog have acquired more customers from their blog, and they have 434 per cent more indexed pages.
The Internet is a powerful tool where billions are being spent on daily basis for all kinds of commodities in the world. It’s also a place where you can start a blog and forge a place for yourself, your business, or anything in between.
What it takes to earn income from blogging
In terms of the techniques, the bloggers mentioned above used to make their blogs generate income. There are over 101 businesses your blog can attract, but the most common form of direct income generated by bloggers, as Taiwo puts it, is creating premium digital content to sell through sites.
Popular examples are courses, eBooks, and tutorials, which are particularly well-suited to advice blogs. Digital products require no space or shipping. You can create yours for sale or look out for those that want to sell through your platform.
Efforts to learn more from the Head of eBusiness, Glo Nigeria Plc, Benjamin Akinteye, hit the rock, as he declined talking to this magazine except on permission from his company.
But, are there other lessons to learn from blogging business? Yes. The next time someone tells you that s/he is a blogger, do not hesitate to respect them, because blogging entails creative sagacity. You might be oblivious of how much efforts they put in, and how that translates to millions in the long run, the fact is: blogging is intellectually tasking and time consuming. But then, it pays off , in terms of what comes as rewards for savvy adventurers!
Quotes
“Available statistics on Wordometers’ website indicate that total number of blog posts published every day in the world runs over 10 million. This, according to Wordometers, is based on data obtained from over 440 million blogs on Tumblr, Squarespace, Blogger and WordPress.”
“Google helps publishers make money via our search and advertising platforms. In 2017, we shared more than $12.6 billion with our publisher partners. This was up from $11billion in 2016.”
“I never even thought that I would make money from blogging. I didn’t start blogging with the mindset that one day I would make money from it. I didn’t even think that was a possibility, it never even crossed my mind.”
“There are over 101 businesses your blog can attract, but the most common form of direct income generated by bloggers, as Taiwo puts it, is creating premium digital content to sell through site.”
