Linda Ikeji | Nigeria’s unsung Internet Titan.

So one of my favourite tech blogger’s Bankole wrote an amazing post on Linda Ikeji’s Blog (LIB) which nicely illustrates her 6 year ‘overnight’ rise to Nigerian internet celebrity stardom. Now I check LIB several times daily to catch me 5 mins of some Nigerian gossip and have done so since I was sent a link about 18 months ago. Wherever possible I have argued LIB should be held up as not only a blogging icon but a true 1.0 Nigerian internet legend. Why?

* She focuses on monetization like nothing else I have seen online in Nigeria. I counted 28 $-generating adverts on her website. She is easily making 6 figures annually in advertising revenue. And a big chunk of that is native

* iROKOtv Nigerian monetization pales in comparison to LIB and we have pitched directly to pretty much every agency / buyer in Nigeria. My team target is simple; month on month I need you to beat LIB. That’s it. But at the moment she is most definitely kicking our ass. When we talk to the agencies, they talk about LIB.

* She doesn’t even bother with technical guff. Her site is hosted straight from blogspot and the interesting thing this is it’s super SEO optimised for different locales, as I see .co.uk whilst in UK, .com whilst in US and .fr when I was in France a few months ago.

* Her mobile game is awesome. Desktop / mobile. Doesn’t matter LI brings the fire and it works perfectly fine on even the worst phones.

* It took her 6 years to get there. That’s tenacity, she could have stopped, rejigged things around, rebuilt, re-branded etc but she didn’t. She focused on content, because that, after all, is king. LIB trades in content which she usually breaks exclusively. And now? she is straight killing everyone in the space, I looked at her Sitemeter reading and she averages 70–100,000 visits per day. Not to mention thousands of comments daily.

* I have seen at least 10 different LIB clones. Literally down to the colour and ad placement. Imitation is the best form of flattery after all.

* She has developed significant social and political capital. Within Nigeria and the Diaspora. Her zeitgeist has ignited feelings in others which very few online can achieve.

* Finally, when LIB mentioned little me on her blog mid last year, my recognition amongst regular Nigerians exploded. It was very surprising the far reaching impact this had. Very surprising indeed.

So, Internet kin of Nigeria, all hail Linda Ikeji and her blog because until you hit her traction levels = $revenue + visitors, she is our queen. No matter how much you hate yourself to admit it.

Because guess what? Start-ups are about traction. No one cares about your awesome hippy app with its 10 users.