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Posted by Felix Okoli on Thursday October 9, 2014 at 9:26:49:
I recently did a visit to a popular Nigerian female blog at lindaikeji.blogspot.com and noticed that it's giving an error message saying "Blog has been removed".The title of the once popular blog read "Blog not found" while a header title read "Blog has been removed" and it went further to give details in the body saying "Sorry, the blog at lindaikeji.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs".Google runs a free blog hosting service called Blogger and it also provides account holders with free sub domain names hosted at blogspot.com. Linda Ikeji's blog was one of those blogs that was hosted on the platform but it so happens that Google is already pounding the hammer on her blog and this may make her have a rethink about the future of her business.What this basically means is that Google has suspended the blog as a result of suspected breach of the terms of Google Blogger service and perhaps, Linda Ikeji's blog posts have not been permanently deleted. The good thing is that if she can do some correction to her blog, then her blog could come back alive. If Google Blogger deems that the blog in it's entirely needs to be overhauled because there has been a massive breach of contract, then her blog would be permanently deleted.This is one of the reasons why I don't recommend any professional blogger to keep sticking with a Google blogger platform since it's not entirely owned by you and you don't want to restricted to a lot of rules if you intend using the platform for the long term.I remember advising that professional Nigerian bloggers who are already making money should avoid having to keep their sites hosted on any free blogging platform or free domain name and I even mentioned last year in onr of my blog posts that Linda Ikeji's free blog was a risky investment. Funny enough, it's less than a year after that and she is already having problems with Google's free blogging platform. You have to obey a lot of rules if you still want to keep enjoying a free blogspot domain name plus hosting. If you've grown big enough, it's high time to let old things to pass away.I have to admit, Google Blogger is a great platform to start your blogging journey but by the time someone goes professional and your blog actually starts making real money like that of Linda Ikeji's, it becomes high time you start using a custom domain name and hosting service. Linda Ikeji would have bought her domain name at lindaikeji.com while she was getting started and also used a custom blog hosting service like Bluehost or Netfirms. I'm not sure exactly why she did not do that in the early days because it gets harder when migrating an old blog to a new platform. Perhaps she was advice against it from an SEO point of view or she just didn't know how to do it or didn't have an effective webmaster to help her.What does Google gain by all this?=============
Does Google have anything to gain by permanently killing or suspending Linda Ikeji's blog? Well, I guess yes and in many ways. First of all, Linda Ikeji makes a lot of money from direct advertisers. She sells advert spaces directly on her blog, a practice which is making Google adwords lose money from online advertisers in Nigeria. Some of those advertisers who now use Linda's Ikeji's blog were former Google advertisers and so if Ikeji's blog were no more, they are more likely to switch back to using Google adwords. Although Google in Nigeria makes more money from advertisers than Linda Ikeji's blog does but her blog is becoming a competition that is not good for their business. With blog like hers in Nigeria out of the picture, Google adwords will gain more trust from Nigerian companies as a more reliable platform for advertising. So, if you run a popular Nigerian blog, don't think that Google Nigeria doesn't consider you as a competition. Reports have it that Google makes over 90% of its income from Adwords and they probably don't appreciate supporting blogs that make money directly from advertisers.Why didn't Linda Ikeji pay for her own domain name and web hosting
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Getting a domain name in Nigeria costs about N2000/year and a professional web hosting platform would cost about N10,000/year. I don't think Linda chose not to do that because of the money since she can easily afford it but it's probably because of other reasons. Perhaps she didn't have the technical skills required to acquire an independent blogging platform and Google's Blogger made it easy for her. It might also be because she didn't have a reliable webmaster in her crew or again she was advised against it for a variety of reasons. Of course, she might lose some traffic if she migrates her free domain name to a custom domain name but that can be easily minimized. I remember even when BellaNaija started, they were using the same free hosting service at bellanaija.blogspot.com but later migrated to a more independent platform and custom domain name at bellanaija.com. That was because they wanted to be more professional and take their blog as a real business. Linda should have also gone that way and make her blog look more professional but she didn't for one reason or another.What do her competitors stand to gain?
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There are many other entertainment and gossip blogs like that of Linda Ikeji too who are all competing for traffic and users. Some of them started before Linda did and some came afterwards. Not all are happy that she is in the lead and some see her as competition. The bottom line is that with her blog out of the way, it's going to give more room for her competition to replace her. There are other popular entertainment blogs mostly run by Nigerians females such as Bella Naija, Stella DimoKorkus, Ladun Liadi, Ngozika Nwiro, Miss Petite Nigeria, Laila Ikeji, Kemi Filani, Is this the end of Linda Ikeji's empire?
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Well, I don't think so since she has already achieved a lot and become a celebrity through blogging. She can always make money from a lot of other ways besides blogging or journalism. She could start her own reality tv show. She could go into Nollywood. She has earned some good income that she could invest into real estate and other businesses. This is probably just a temporary setback from Google Blogger and chances are that her blog will be reinstated and then people will say Linda Ikeji has resurrected. But even if her blog is not reinstated, she can always move her blog to a more independent platform like Wordpress and paid web hosting site. I recommend Bluehost or Netfirms for that.
My Advice
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She should go ahead and register a new domain name if she wants to avoid those other domains that cyber-squatters have already purchased and also avoid been embarrassed by Blogger. She could register a domain like lindaikejiwrites.com or lindaikejirules.com. In fact, any domain name that she chooses doesn't really matter since she still has access to her original content and she is already a success story. It's the content of her blog posts that matter and it would make any domain name a popular one. I just advice she buys ones that at least is a .com and not a sub domain name like.Chances are that Google Blogger might just issue here a warning and probably reinstate her blog but this is the best time for her to migrate to a more independent platform and web hosting service. Going Wordpress won't be a bad idea because it seems she has outgrown the free blogging service.Summary
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There has been other bloggers in Nigeria I noticed that use Google free Blogging platform and some of them have faced the same problems in the past but overcome it. I think Linda Ikeji will also be able to overcome hers but even if Google still rejects her blog, she can always migrate to a more professional blogging platform.
Comments:
Re: Linda Ikeji's Blog removed on Google Blogger service Posted by Prince on Thursday October 9, 2014 at 13:51:56: Her blog has been offline since yesterday. I hope this is not the end of something wonderful.
Re: Linda Ikeji's Blog removed on Google Blogger service Posted by Felix Okoli on Friday October 10, 2014 at 9:48:28: Update: Her blog has been reinstated by Google. It seems they temporarily suspended it after some complaints and investigation has been made but finally reactivated it. She's lucky but it's time she moves to her own custom domain.