Why Nigerian bloggers earn little from Google Adsense

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Posted by Felix Okoli on Wednesday March 26, 2014 at 18:4:52:

This month of March in 2014 would probably be the last month most Nigerian bloggers would receive Adsense payments by means of cheque since any right thinking blogger would go for the bank wire option. Are you a Nigerian blogger and still making little money from Google Adsense? Well, it's time to grow your income. The power is in your hands.

There are a lot of Nigerians getting into the business of blogging nowadays with the main purpose of making money. It's not a bad thing to start blogging for money but it can be frustrating if you are actually still making little money despite your efforts.

I guess this is one of the reasons why many Nigerian blogs would not last up to the next 10 years. When the money stops coming in, there might not be sufficient motivation to keep blogging.

Some newbie Nigerian bloggers might have probably read online stories of how professional bloggers are making a full time income from blogging and others were also probably inspired that people like John Chow can make $40,000 a month from blogging alone. Yes, in the USA some bloggers even earn as much as $10,000 and get a special cheque delivery by UPS which makes that group be called Adsense UPS club members. Are there any Nigerians actually making up to $10,000 per month from their blogs? Well I doubt that and even more-so now that a growing number of renown Nigerian blogs and websites are no longer using Adsense but migrated to selling Direct advertising. Few have been successful at it and they have a large followership.

For most Nigerian bloggers who rely on search engine traffic, the easiest way of making money from their business is by monetizing it using Google Adsense. Google Adsense is a smart publishing platform that allows website owners to make money from their content by renting advertising space to Google. By renting out their website space, Google advertises on their sites and pay them a commission for doing so based on clicks and impressions. The money earned byGoogle Adsense publishers in Nigeria comes mainly from Google Adwords - A powerful online advertising platform owned by Google.

Many bloggers in Nigeria start up blogs with little or no idea of what to focus on or on which niche pays better and infact many start up blogs on general niches that don't really make money when they are high paying niches like in the finance, real estate and aviation sector. Some bloggers don't even set up blogs with a long term plan and in the end, when they see little or no reward for their efforts, they give up the chase for Adsense millions. I've seen a Nigerian blog that paid for their domain name up to 10 years in advance and this goes to show that they do have a long term plan.

There are a growing number of Adsense publishers in Nigeria who run blogs that make little or no money even though they've published over 1000 blog posts and yet there are also those who make over $1000 per month even though they have only 200 blog posts. At times it just pays to choose the right part which pays more.

One thing about being a successful blogger in Nigeria is that one has to at least focus on the right keywords. What Google probably never told you is that some keywords pay much better than others. I've seen some situations where a click earned someone as much as $10 while 10 clicks earned another person just $1. The former had high paying kewords in the mix and the click was probably made by a potential customer.

The truth is that that earning good money from Google Adsense has a lot to do with keeping potential customers satisfied by linking them to the advertisers that they are looking for. This can easiliy by ahieved by creating and publishing useful content that informs customers. There are many major companies in Nigeria who spend millions annually on online advertising platforms like Google and because Google doesn't really have a monopoly of web content yet, she can afford to pay website owners to create and publish such content that would be useful to potential customers and hence link them to Google's advertisers.

Many Nigerian bloggers tend to blog about things like "how to make money blogging" or "How to make money online" rather than "Things to consider when buying a laptop" or "Booking a vacation online in Nigeria". The latter phrases are examples of topics containint keywords that already have advertisers who spend money on Adwords and including content like that on your blog could earn you more pay per click.

Nigerians who are likely to visit your site and earn you some good Credit for Google Adsense are actually the ones who are potential buying customers and not the needy people looking for how to make money. People looking for things like how to make money blogging or from article writing or from selling ebooks are less likely to click on Google adverts than the buying customers.

So one way to increase your Google adsense income is to create content that would be useful to Nigerians who are rich enough to spend money online and so you need to knowledgeable about things like hotel bookings, restaurants, air travel, shopping, gadgets and so on. Nowadays, more Nigerians are smart enough to set up blogs related to food, hotels, travel and shopping because there are already a lot of advertisers in that niche.

Your blog also has to be unique and original if you want to earn more from Adsense. If you are earning just $1 a day from Adsense and want to increase it to $5, then you need produce a lot of content(with a factor of 5) and ensure it is original and not copied from that of another blogger.

Content also matters and the more content your blog has the more likely it would be able to make money from Adsense. I remember many years ago when I got my Adsense account, it was relatively easy but I did have at least 200 published posts and had some traffic. Nowadays, it is getting harder to get an approved Adsense account in Nigeria and this is mainly because the competition is growing and there are a lot of blogers. You just need to produce more content first and I recommend at least 500 useful blog posts if you really want to grow your income. It works like this, if you are currently making $1 a day from 100 blog posts, you can increase it to $5 a day by increasing that number to 500 blog posts. So, the number of content you have published has a direct relationship to the amount of money you can make from Google Adsense.

What other reasons do you think Nigerian bloggers earn little from Google Adsense? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Comments:

Comments:
Re: Why Nigerian bloggers earn little from Google Adsense Posted by Chidi on Wednesday April 2, 2014 at 11:46:48:

Nice work. An eye opener for sure.

Re: Why Nigerian bloggers earn little from Google Adsense Posted by Prosper B. Wealth on Monday April 28, 2014 at 14:54:18:

Well written article. It's been so informing.

Once in a while, I search out for new updates on Adsense that bias Nigerian bloggers.

After reading this post, I had to ask me-self "how come I never figured out the directly proportional relationship between blog posts and big G's ads?"

Fresh perspective. I really enjoyed my time learning from your angle. Well done Felix!

Re: Why Nigerian bloggers earn little from Google Adsense Posted by Felix Okoli on Monday April 28, 2014 at 14:54:18:

Thanks for the comment Prosper.