SABTrends at it again, it is my aim to help young folks to achieve their goals or objectives. For the past months now, we brought you top bloggers in Nigeria, entrepreneurs, online marketers and social marketers in the person of Mazino Oyolo Kigho, MaverickExcel and others. This month I could remember, SABTrends storms the Nollywood industry where we interviewed top Yoruba Actors and Actresses in the most anticipated movie that will soon be released called 'Lamidi Badoo'.
You can't also afford to miss this interesting interview with this top blogger: Mazino Oyolo Kigho the owner of Mazinoweb
Ikoi Abode Ikenna is the founder of AbodeBusinessOnline . He created the blog to dedicate to all Entrepreneurs in Nigeria, Africa and all over the world. He is dedicated to help young entrepreneurs, potential businessman, both home and abroad to make their voice heard in a noisy world. However, don't let me take much of your time because the billionaire Ikoi Abode Ikenna l has a lot to give you and you will surely learn, gain immensely from the interview.
SABTrends team uses this medium to appreciate and thank Ikoi Abode Ikenna for taking our interview. Kindly share this link with other bloggers, entrepreneurs or friends to also benefits from this interview.
Today, I am pleased to introduce our next interesting interview with another intelligent and online businessman and also an entrepreneur Ikoi Abode Ikenna, The Billionaire entrepreneur & CEO of Eucarl Global Resources.
1. Can you please tell our readers about yourself and your blog?
Answer: Firstly, my name is Ikoi Abode Ikenna, Am a billionaire entrepreneur (not money quantified), a Ceo/md of Eucarl Global Resources. Am form Cross River State Nigeria, a prospective pharmacist and business and entrepreneurship blogger. Am currently the owner and editor of Abode Business@ www.abodebusinessonline.com where we talk about business and entrepreneurship, business ideas, business plans, business startup tips, business registration and licensing etc.
2. Tell us when did you start blogging professionally ?
Answer: I first heard aof blogging in the year 2010 after secondary school education, I gained interest and started reading up articles on how to start a blog, blogging platforms and everything related to blogging. However I started blogging professional on November 12, 2012 between the hours of 10pm and 12am.
3. Is blogging your profession or just a hobby?
Answer: I will say it’s both to me. My hobby in entrepreneurship based and my blogging about entrepreneurship is professional J. On a more serious note it’s combination, when people talk about hobby, I talk about blogging and when am being asked what’s my profession I still include blogging.
4. Please kindly tell us about your blogging journey so far?
Answer: My blogging journey is simply a journey from novice to expert, from Newbie to webmaster ( and still in the process). Like I have I have mentioned above I started blogging in the year 2012, then the knowledge of blogging was not as announced as it is now. I started of on foot, knowing so little , I even knew just a fraction of blogspot.com which is my blogger platform. It was really a journey from newbie to professional. I started www.abodebusinessonline.com with the blog spot domain, my writing skills was good but narrow, and I had liitle resources to base my research. Aside all this I was determined, the joy I drive from having people read my article kept me going. On daily basis I strive to learn one new thing that will improve my blog, step by step I picked up my pase, I staeted running and now am driving and soon I will be flying.
5. Did you really have any expectations (short term, long term, financially) when you started blogging ? If yes, what were those expectations ?
Answer: Yes, I had lots of expectation when I started; it took me two years to start my first blog after I heard of blogging in 2010. I read about blogging as much as I could, I read testimonies and success stories. So when I started I had lots of expectations both short term and long term. Now I achieved huge percent of it and have lots of testimonies.
6. How did you choose the niche(s) that you have chosen to blog in ?
Answer: I don’t want to sound like a genius, but I would say entrepreneurship and business was inherent. I never knew about niches when I started, I had little or no knowledge of keyword research . all I knew was I want to start a blog and blog about my passion ( as that was what all the article I read on blogging back then said) and my passion was entrepreneurship and business. I have always wanted to be addressed as an entrepreneur, I have always wanted to start up a business, I had lots of business ideas, so I choose this niche based on passion just like I was advised to- “ blog about your passion”
7. Did you receive any professional assistance or did you created your blog yourself?
Answer: The only professional assistance I got when I started was the one I gave myself. I started blogging on my own, I created www.abodebusinessonline and all other of my blogs all by myself with no assistance whatsoever.
But, in the early stage of Abode Business growth, Don Caprio of www.geek.ng reviewed my blog and pointed out areas I need improve.
8. Do you have other blogs that you run and if yes, what are they and what they are all about ?
Answer: Yes I do. I have other two blogs – NaijaSphere ( www.naijasphere.com) and Money Fast Ideas ( www.moneyfastideas.com) . the former is a general Niche blog I created In January this year and its been doing great both in ranking and traffic, it gets loads of traffic per day, it’s a blog to look out for. The later Money Fast Idea is another of my blog that is in the same Niche as Abode Business.
9.Give us the latest statistics of your blog (Visitors, daily page views, earning and other stats that you want to share)?
Answer: My blog Abode Business (www.abodebusinessonline.com) is 3 years and 112 days as of today 26 July 2016. We get loads of daily visitors from across different countries. We have a minimum of 4000 page views per day. My earnings come from different channels such as sales of E-books, Adsense, sponsored post and ads placement. Permit me not to bother you with the figures.
10. How do you manage time to run your blog efficiently?
Answer: Like the saying goes, planning precedes success. In other to manage my blog efficiently I simply plan.
11. How much time do you really spend on blogging?
Answer: Well I spend as much time as i can per day, sometimes I spend half of the night or the whole day. Am in on more demanding Niche, so it takes time to research and put together goog content.
12. What do you think is the best strategy you use to get more traffic to your blog?
Answer: Social media marketing. The power of social media and the positive influence it can effect on a blog can’t be over emphasized
13. What do you really think is the best social media strategy for getting more traffics to a blog?
Answer: A great percent of all my blog visitor comes from facebook making facebook very important to my blogs and should be to other bloggers. I have come to realize that posts I share to facebook gets more pageviews than those not shared.
14. How important is Facebook to you in blog promotion efforts and do you think it is important for a blogger to have a Facebook group or page ?
Answer: For a blogger to have a facebook group or fanpage is also very important. Facebook group/page increase the connection between you and your audience, it makes communication easier. Also in the SEO phase, facebook ranks higher than 99.9% of all blogs and have the tendency to appear on search results for a particular keyword than most, so sharing your post to facebook also increase your search engine visibility.
15. How many social media channels do you think a blogger should have accounts on ?
Answer: Personally I recommended all if attainable, I don’t see channels as a way to get traffic to my site only; I see it as a way to reach out to someone with a problem which my content can solve. So I try as much as I can to get all platform (As much as possible.), I have believe in my contents and their ability to solve problems for individuals, cooperate organization and even government establishment. So I try as much as I can to get on all social media channel because you can never tell where your content is mostly needed.
16. Images for blog posts is very essential. Do you normally create your own images or do you get them from the Google or websites and give credit back to the original source ?
Answer: Knowing how demanding blogging is and how tedious it can be to come up with good original and problem solving article, it’s definitely more challenging to create images. But images are so vital, image can speak better that letter, often at times people get drawn to an article due to image embed in it. Irrespective of all this I don’t go about lifting image anywhere possible as plagiarism is a serious offense in the internet world even in the case of images. I simply take images or create images by myself. But most predominately I source for royalty free images which I use for my posts.
17. Bounce rate is one of Google’s algorithm signals that tells them whether people are engaged on a blog. What do you do to keep your bounce rate very low?
Answer: It’s simple. I keep my article interesting and straight to the point. My niche- entrepreneurship and business unlike other niches, enjoys some attention every now and then. People search Google and come to my blog; they are interested in gaining something so I simply cash in through providing article that solve their problem or give them that information they seek. I also achieve low bounce rate through writing longer articles, I ensure none of my article is lesser than 500 words.
18. It is often hard to get new contents for blogger. How do you find new source of contents for your blog?
Answer: Writing is one of the greatest challenges in blogging, writing just anything can be easy, but writing good and converting article is demanding. For me, I write as much as I can and as fast as I can. It’s not easy but having a good writing skill gives me an advantage. Don’t get me wrong- smiles, am not a pro. I simply leverage on the pre-writing, writing, editing, re-editing, and advantage.
21. What was the most challenging moment in your blogging journey so far?
Answer: Blogging generally is challenging, every bit of it is challenging. But the most challenging moment was getting Adsense approval and getting it verified. I took me nearly three years to get Google Adsense, approval for my blog.
22. Can you name some of your favourite bloggers and explain why they are your favourites?
Answer: Hmmm, all blogs in Nigeria is my favourite (both the ones I don’t know). Well, all blogs in Nigeria and abroad have its peculiarity and I tend to see this and know how to get the best from them. However, as we know there are big players in this came so I tend to favourite them to help me learn.
23. How do you motivate yourself to keep the blog running?
Answer: Well, my motivation comes from different sources. But most of it comes from reading and seeing what others are doing. I surf the net, read success stories and often I will say to myself wow, I need to do more and believe I can make it too.
24. What do you find the most frustrating aspect of blogging?
Answer: The most frustrating aspect of my blogging is getting google adsense approval. You know how it feels to work and work on you blog but only to submit your blog for adsense approval and you got the NO email, it really frustrating. And in My case I got lots of it as it took me nearly 3 years to get approve. But not matter how frustrating it only makes me more creative.
25. Have you met any famous or interesting personnel on your blogging journey?
Answer: Yes I have, lots of them, business owners, aspiring business owners both male and female. All my clients are interesting and aspiring.
28. When do you really feel is the right time to monetize a blog ?
Answer: The answer to this question will vary with every webmaster, however to me there is no better time to monetize your blog than at kick of.
29. How do you monetize your blog?
Answer: Aside Adsense I sell ebooks and offer business services. See my services here (http://www.abodebusinessonline.com/p/blog-page.html)
30. If a blogger were to monetize their blog by providing direct services, kindly suggest some direct services that you would recommend experience and new bloggers reading this interview?
Answer: Writing, seo, creation of blog, web design, the list goes on and on. The one to start boils down to the skill of the blogger.
31. How would you rate your own blog on a scale of 1 to 10 and why would you rate it that way ?
Answer: Lol, telling me to rate my blog is asking me to mark myself, you know I wont fail anything. However, considering how we started, how long we have came(3 years) what we have achieved and what we are yet to achieve I will rank Abode Business 6.
32. How would you rate SABTrends Blog on a scale of 1 to 10 and why would you rate it that way?
Answer: I will rate you guys 5. It takes effort to do what you guys are doing, I must say, you guys are doing a great job here,
33. What do you suggest for SABTrends team to grow the Blog?
Answer: I will suggest firstly you keep to the plan, every blog have a plan and goal to achieve so I will suggest you remain you, avoid imitation and work towards the goal.
Note: You can add your questions if you want to share more with us.
You can't also afford to miss this interesting interview with this top blogger: Mazino Oyolo Kigho the owner of Mazinoweb
I hope we all learn and gain a lot from the interview. The sole purpose of having top bloggers here on SABTrends is to help other bloggers, entrepreneurs, online or social marketers, influences and other individuals to gain one or two things from knowledge and experience of the interviewees. Nobody is an island of knowledge. We learn everyday.
We urge all our readers and visitors to kindly visit AbodeBusinessOnline to have more insight on blogging, business ideas, marketing and Entrepreneurship. We thereby wish our guest of today the billionaire himself more success in the blogging sphere.
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