How Google Adsense made me a Nigerian millionaire

I think it's only fitting to write about this and testify of the Lord's goodness since I became a Google adsense publisher in Nigeria.

It basically began with Multidox, my first website which I began while I was still an undergraduate. I actually started multidox.org as a sub domain with netfirms until I later bought the domain but still used a free web hosting service from netfirms. It was in those days when many web hosting providers normally offered free web hosting to people as long as they accept the third party ads enabled on their sites. My aim them was not really to make money with Google adsense or pay per click ads since adsense wasn't existing then but my focus was to drive traffic to Clickbank and earn money as an affiliate after having read about Googlecash from Chris carpenter. I read about Googlecash on a daily edition of the Guardian newspaper.

As a student, I had become used to computers and the internet and already had skills in web design and flash animations. I had a desire then to just simply make money from the internet without having to wait for web design contracts which don't come all the time. I was not really a computer guru or programmmer then but simply studying Mechanical Engineering and got to know about computers through my brother who was studying Computer science at school.

While I still had the focus of graduating one day and be able to make money as an Engineer, I still used my leisure time to browse the web in those days, cybercafes ate up most of my allowance. Well, I hoped that one day, the internet would actually be paying me rather than me paying for using it. I dreamt that one day, I would be paid for uploading content to the web rather than paying for downloading content.

So, I basically started my first website after having tried driving affiliate traffic with Google adwords to Clickbank and made just $30. Imagine earning just a little over $30 from Clickbank after having spent over $90 on Google adwords. In those days, there were no Visa or Mastercard products in Nigeria so I had to buy a VCC from local providers at a higher fee to the dollar. I later figured that using paid advertising such as Google adwords to attract traffic to my affiliate page was not working well and so needed a new strategy.

I had to Google the internet and found out that there were other ways to drive traffic to my Clickbank affiliate page without Google adwords. I found out that having a content site could actually be a cheaper and more effective way of bringing conversions and for that, I needed a website. Publishing platforms like Wordpress, blogger were not popular then but just basic websites and I just figured I needed to create a website that I could add content on it on a frequent basis and that's when I found a wwwboard script powered with Perl and used it to create a simple wwwboard for posting content on Multidox.

A few years later, I started having more traffic to my website and luckliy, particularly from MSN search and later on I also found out about Google adsense and how people are making a lot of money from it. I had to sell most of my stocks in other to pay for my own web hosting service with McReal in those days. I remember spending over N10k per year on just web hosting for a single site even though I wasn't earning money from adsense yet. However, to have an adsense account, you really needed to make use of paid hosting account.

I signed up for Google adsense and within a few minutes, I was given the ads to be pasted on my site. Well, since I was still in school, I could hardly add content on my site on a frequent basis and so, it did not grow fast enough until I actually graduated and was in the job market.

While I was looking for a job and working part time with my parents, I started getting more serious with Google adsense by simply adding more content to my site. After about 4 months, I noiced that my adsense earnings had accumulated to over $100 and I was about to get paid. I noticed my first adsense cheque was about $150. I received a pin mailer for address confirmation which I confirmed and later on, my cheque was sent through DHL. I opted for that DHL payment since I knew that the postal mail system in Nigeria was something you can hardly wait for or trust for a delivery. So DHL, delivered my first Google adsense cheque within 7 working days in Lagos and this really inspired me.

From a mere first time payment of under $150, my Google adsense earnings have grown to more than $1000 on certain months since I also had a growing network of niche sites.

I started making real money online with Google adsense on Multidox but soon setup other niche sites which paid even better than my first site. I discovered that there were many keywords and niche blogs I could start that could make money money than my general content site and these gave me more regular income since I had more visitors from the USA, Canada and the UK on those sites.

Within a particular year of publishing with Google adsense effectively and on my niche sites, my earnings have accumulated to over $7000 and if you convert this to the Nigerian Naira, I think that's over N1m.

I've tried out other ways to make money online such as forex trading and affiliate marketing but Google adsense is actually the one that made me the first million. It would have been forex trading but after I turned $600 to $6000 in six months but didn't withdraw my money, I later lost it all due to greedy trading. As for Google adsense, you can hardly lose the money you've already made and that's why I think being an adsense publisher in Nigeria is not really a bad business.

I've tried out other pay per click companies but none of them pay as good as adsense since they don't have that many advertisers and adverts are not really displayed based on keywords visitors use in getting to your site.

What do I do with the income I made from adsense? Well, I try to reinvest it back into the business of publishing content and creating niche content sites that would remain relevant and profitable for the long term. I do hope that even when Google adsense is no longer the in-thing, my websites would still be able to make money on their own on auto-pilot.

It may take quite a while to make my first $1m from Google adsense(Like IrokoTV did) but getting over N1m from an internet business in Nigeria is something that I'm thankful for but it wasn't easy getting there.