There is no doubt that you have spent tens of thousands of Naira on your blog. You have also spent so much energy and resources to make your blog profitable. And you have advanced it from an online space for posting daily journals to a niche-focused business platform. But you are not making any money several months after launching your professional blog.

There are reasons why. In fact, there are myriads of reasons why your blog is not generating any revenues. If you make less than $3,000 (or N300,000) every month from your website, then chances are you are among the 95% of bloggers that fail to make money with their blogs. A decent monthly income that funds your desired lifestyle is the true measurement of your blog’s performance.

This article covers the 7 ultimate reasons why bloggers in Nigeria (and elsewhere around the world) are losing money – and what they can do to remedy the situation. So if you are not making enough money with your blog or you desire in-depth insights into taking your website to the next level, then sit back to learn how to fully monetize your blog to profitability.

Ultimate Reasons Why Bloggers in Nigeria Lose Money

1. Your Blog Niche Is Too Generic

Let’s make something perfectly clear here: blogging is no longer a web log practice where you post personal diaries in an online journal. It is now a professional career where you give people the expertise they want and make a decent living in the process. To this end, you cannot afford to run a personal blog that people are not interested in following.

So you are losing money on your blog because it is too generic and not focused on a single niche. Even after choosing a niche, it might be best to further limit your blog to a sub-niche that meets the needs of a hungry market. A niche market is products, facilities, interests, and services that appeal to a relatively small and specific group of people – who are willing to pay for offerings in the market.

Your blog is generic if it covers business, technology, entertainment, politics, health, science, and education on one platform. It is better to focus only on niches such as technology, health, or business. Even at that, it is best to narrow down the technology niche to sub-niches such as smartwatches, gaming, smartphones, automotive; and the health niche to sub-niches such as keto diet, weight loss, aging, or exercise and fitness.

What You Must Do

If you have been running an existing blog for a few months, you can restructure the entire blog and repurpose the existing content to reflect your new sub-niche. If this cannot be done, then you must start a new blog that reflects your new vision.

2. You Are Not Treating Your Blog Like A Serious Business

Blogging should go beyond passion to becoming the business it actually is.

If you are indifferent to your blog or too lazy to write content and promote your products, you will not make any money in years. Do not be deceived by misleading claims that you can make money while you sleep in blogging, or that you can even quit your 8-5 job to rake in millions through blogging!

While it is possible to make money while you sleep or even quit your day job for blogging on full-time, you must have treated blogging as a real business over many years to get to this point. You can never get to the point of earning N300,000 passively on a weekly basis if you post 1-2 articles per week on your website. Laziness or procrastination is not option in blogging.

What You Must Do

Start treating your blog like a real, physical business. If possible, put in long hours night and day just the way you would do if you were an employee of a major corporation. Invest time and money, and hire skilled experts to manage aspects of the blogging business. Make a schedule to write and post up to 10 informative articles weekly, and be sure to monetize the blog effectively.

3. You Do Not Have A Lead Generation Strategy

Most bloggers create interesting content and then sit back, hoping that readers would find them. Given that hundreds of content similar to yours can be found online, the chances of any worthy reader stumbling on your content are less than 1%. If you have been leaving it to people to locate your website or come across your content, then you have been doing yourself a great disservice.

You must create a lead generation strategy with every content that goes on your blog. Don’t forget that your blog is a business, and you need to help people to locate it. Publishing the best content on your website is useless if no one finds it; you must develop a sustainable strategy for leading people to your website and sucking them into your content. Say traffic.

What You Must Do

To build traffic for your blog, you must invest into the following on a sustainable basis:

• Craft terrific content that resonates with your audience.
• Learn and apply SEO techniques so that search engines can bring you traffic.
• Use email marketing to acquire and reach thousands of potential customers.
• Post shareable content that users can further share on social media.
• Feature notable bloggers or social media influencers to grow your audience.
• Run relevant ads on social media, search engines, and notable blogs.

You can also invest in other resources to build and retain traffic.

4. You Are Not Converting Visitors To Customers

It is not enough to attract visitors to your blog or website, you must get them to pay for the value you offer one way or another. If visitors leave your website immediately they arrive (a high bounce rate), then you are not doing something correctly and invariably losing money in the process. You sure don’t want to be one of the bloggers who lose money.

If you do not convert visitors into customers, then this ultimate reasons why bloggers in Nigeria lose money is for you. You can’t afford to leave money on the table, and you can’t leave potential customers with money in their hands hanging. To turn errant visitors into loyal customers, you have to follow these short steps:

What You Must Do

• Create awareness of what your blog is about to acquire visitors.
• Create interest in what you offer when the visitors come around.
• Get the visitors to make a decision to buy what you offer.
• Get the visitors to take actionable steps of purchasing from you.
• Get the visitors to come back for more purchases or to refer other customers.

Once you can do the above with significant success, then you can begin to make sustainable income from your blog.

See Also: Selecting The Right Online Business

5. You Are Not Monetizing Your Blog Effectively

People will not come to your blog and then give a tip for a great experience. And they will not buy you a coffee because you put so much thought into developing your blog. You must find a way to get them to give you money without appearing to do so. You must help them to want to offer you money based on the great experience you have set up on your blog.

What You Must Do

While various blogs must be monetized differently based on various analytics, below are general monetization methods that you can implement to earn from your digital platform:

• Google Adsense and other ad networks.
• Sell ad spaces.
• Affiliate marketing.
• Sell digital products – ebooks, email courses, etc.
• Sponsored posts or paid reviews.
• Offer direct service that customers can hire you for.
• Make subscription site with premium content behind a paywall.

You are free to try other marketing or monetization methods not listed above. But be warned that monetization should not be the primary motive for setting up a blog, sharing your expertise should.

6. Spending Money On The Wrong Things

Failure to spend money on necessary web resources is the same as spending on the wrong things. Although it is possible to start a free blog and even use a free hosting, this cannot take you far if you intend to earn from your endeavours. There is no way you can make serious money from blogging if you refuse to spend money on domain, hosting, plugins, email providers, themes, freelancers, and other core aspects of the business.

Although you might be scared of spending money on a venture you don’t know its end – going ahead to invest will give you the motivation needed to treat it as a worthy business. You can start out by using the free version of some digital tools, but it is best to convert to paid versions once you have the means.

What You Must Do

Do not think you can do everything alone or succeed entirely with free tools. It is best to invest in paid tools to be able to unlock premium benefits. Themes, plugins, and other digital tools are best paid for to unlock the best values for making more money. It is also advisable to invest in quality writers, content editors, social media managers, graphic designers, SEO experts, and other professionals that job can be outsourced to – instead of trying to do everything by yourself.

7. You Give Up Too Easily

One of the major problems with internet bloggers in Nigeria and around the world is that they give up too easily. If you are thinking of selling off your blog or website after only six months, then you are giving up way too early. If you are considering venturing into another niche because you have not made a dime after three months, then you are giving up way too early.

Some bloggers have launched sites on news, tech reviews, affiliate marketing, gaming, and even plumbing among others in as little as two years. Some try to sell their blog or just allow the domain and hosting to expire if they make no money within 12 months. Then they go into other niches without success too!

What You Must Do

Don’t be deceived by wild online claims that a particular blogger earns $10,000 monthly on autopilot from their blogs; or that they make $5,000 every month from their sites while they sleep. Blogging is not a get-rich-quick-scheme; it requires hard work, dedication, patience, and significant investment.

Consider your blog a business that must be nurtured through infancy to adolescence and then adulthood. Before you start out, understand that you must invest at least two years of sustained efforts in your blog before you can determine it’s not succeeding. Just like a normal brick-and-wall business, your blog needs 2+ years to gain traction and generate money on a passive basis.

 

Conclusion:

Having considered the 7 ultimate reasons why bloggers in Nigeria lose money, it is time to review your blogging and marketing strategies to determine if you have been doing things correctly. You need the right mentality, premium resources, expert freelance team, marketing/promotional techniques, hungry market, and a bit of luck to earn a consistent income from blogging.

If you are a successful blogger by whatever criteria, please share your tips and experiences with us in the comments section below. If you are also a struggling blogger who thinks things are not working out fast enough or as expected, please share your experiences with us in the comments section below. You can also ask questions on your journey so far, and we can all learn together as we set out to become successful internet entrepreneurs.