"Some of the attackers who have been looting the property of people who had provided the public address system now surrounded me and tried to take my phone away from me on the suspicion that I was actually calling reinforcement to come pick them up. So in the scuffle, I got stabbed in the neck" he said
When Linda Ikeji
started blogging in 2006, she never envisioned the amount of success it
would become, neither had she the slightest hint that she will become a
role model entrepreneur to a teaming amount of unemployed Nigerian
youths. “I started blogging out of passion. Something I never thought I
could make money from.” Linda has over the years, managed to carve a
niche for herself as a blogger extraordinaire, and also enlightened
Nigerians to the business of blogging. What started as a hobby for her
is today valued to be worth N1.1Billion.
Having been a model for eight years, Linda attempted a career in
journalism, but this did little for her livelihood. Linda developed an
interest for, and started blogging after reading a story of herself on
BellaNaija, one of Nigeria’s most popular blogs. Like most start-up
entrepreneurs, Linda faced common challenges in the birth of a business;
her blog, www.lindaikeji.blogspot.com, didn’t garner attention or
profit until August 2010, when someone sent her a mail requesting for
her advert rate.
“I started blogging 2006, and I didn’t start getting that many readers
until 2007. I ran the blog for like four years without making money, but
August 2010, someone sent me a mail and said can I have your advert
rates? And I was like what does that mean? I had to call another friend
of mine who was a blogger and I asked him, what’s an advert rate?” she
said during an interview on The Juice.
Having acquired knowledge of what an advert rate is, Linda started off
charging paltry sums for adverts broadcast on her blog until a company
offered her a huge proposal for an advert. Then it dawned on her what
great business opportunity lay in her hobby – blogging. Now she charges
up to $8000 a month, for specific ad spaces on her blog, handling PR
services to the most premium brands in Nigeria and even for government
agencies. This is in recognition of the amount of followership her blog
commands, both within Nigeria and the Diaspora.
Linda ad rates
Linda’s blog has become a one-stop for many Nigerians to get first-hand
information, as well as a content provider for other blogs. Through her
Blog, she has become a voice for social change, making impact to the
lives of several Nigerians and Africans in General. In 2012, she
published a story of a 19-year-old girl, Blessing Effiong, who was
unlawfully detained for four years. Linda also went ahead to get Miss
Effiong out of prison, with the help of a few influential friends.
As an activist, Linda has consistently called for justice on the case of
the gruesome ‘ALUU4’ murder, a tragic case of the brutal killing of
four undergraduate students of the University of Port-Harcourt. The
young men were killed on the 5th of October 2012, by a mob of villagers
and local vigilante over an alleged theft case. On the 5th day of every
month, Linda puts up a reminder on her blog that Justice is yet to be
served for the death of those young men. Her latest post on the 5th of
February reads, “RIP to the sons, brothers and friends we lost on
October 5, 2012, in the Aluu community of Rivers state. Still no
justice! Still we wait!”
Linda is also involved in several philanthropic activities. Last year,
she donated the sum of N1Million at the Future Awards, to fight the
Ebola disease which ravaged some West-African countries for most of the
second half of last year. In her words, “I want to give back to the
society. I feel like I am 10 per cent done, I haven’t done 90 per cent.
That’s the way I feel. Hopefully in another 2 years, I will accomplish
another 40 to 60 per cent. Before I turn 40, ultimately I would have
accomplished 100 per cent,” she said in a recent interview. Kind and
generous, her spontaneous Linda Ikeji Blog (LIB) Giveaway, where she
doles out cash and other gift items to her teaming fans, is something
her visitors look forward to.
Linda is dubbed the ‘Queen of controversy’, since her business thrives
on the broadcast of controversial stories. She has had run-ins with
celebrities, and the law. Not too long ago, her blog was shut down by
Google on a report of Intellectual Property Theft and Plagiarism. When
contacted on the deletion of the blog, Google’s Communication and Public
Affairs Manager for Anglo-West Africa, Kola Ogunlade, released a
statement at the time, saying “Google is dedicated to offering users the
best possible experience across our products. We take violations of
policies very seriously as such activities diminish the experience for
our users. When we are notified of the existence of content that may
violate our Terms of Service, we act quickly to review it and determine
whether it actually violates our policies. If we determine that it does,
we remove it immediately.”
Though her blog has since been restored, the infamous shutdown served as
an indicator of how much influence Linda wields and how much her blog
meant to the average Nigerian and African. While it felt like good news
to her rivals who saw the incident as an opportunity to dethrone the
queen of Nigeria’s information cyberspace, she also had a large number
of supporters who stood solidly behind her through that trying time.
Linda got back on cyberspace, bigger and better. Learning from the
unfortunate incident, she has employed professional hands, owing to the
visible changes on how posts are updated on the blog. And the attention
paid to the authenticity of stories, as well as giving due credits to
outsourced information. Today her blog is number one news content blog
in Nigeria; it is ranked at the 13th position on Alexa.com.
Through a combination of hard-work, consistency, innovative thinking,
and creativity, Linda has over the years been able to prove that there
are viable business opportunities around us. She is a member of the
prestigious Future Awards Alumni. In 2012, she won the award for Young
Personality of the Year, and in 2014, she copped a double as Outstanding
Blogger of The Year and Best Gossip & Gist Blog at the Media Broad
Awards.
Read more at: http://www.ventures-africa.com/2015/02/meet-nigerias-n1billion-blogger/
Read more at: http://www.ventures-africa.com/2015/02/meet-nigerias-n1billion-blogger/
