Copyright (c) 2006 Oluwaseun Osewa. All Right Reserved.
Article written for Mr. Shina Adegoke of Technology Times
My name is Seun Osewa. I’m the 23 year old webmaster who runs Nairaland.com - the Nigerian forum with 17,000 members. I may be the first Nigerian to make enough from a website to justify running it full-time, because from my site alone I earn more than some graduates working in top banks.
I started out in April 2003 by moving to Abeokuta to take advantage of free Internet access offered by a family friend who managed an ISP. I wanted to be a web host(1), but after 3 months I ran out capital ran out because I could get only one customer. After this, I researched so many business opportunities but nobody was willing to provide an untested young man like me with enough capital to execute any of them.
Towards the end of 2003, I stumbled on the idea of web publishing - I would create a site that would attract many Nigerians and then sell advertising the space on the website. So I started a blog, but I I couldn’t serve my target audience well because I lacked interest in popular topics that Nigerians are crazy about, such as celebrities and showbiz. So I kept learning and searching for more lucrative opportunities on the net.
By the end of 2004, I realized that the only hope for me lied in web publishing, because no capital was forthcoming for all my other ideas, so I decided to try again with Forums. Forums are wonderful because they can cover topics that even the website owner has no interest in. Thanks to the support of a GSM Ezine publisher (John Sagai Adams) and another entrepreneur (Yomi Adegboye) my first forum (2) grew to several hundred members in a few months (3). But the traffic was still not enough to attract advertising to even cover my Internet costs.
So during March 2005, I started work on a new Forum called “Nairaland, the Nigerian Forum” where Nigerians can discuss absolutely anything. In April, I opened it to the public and directed all members of my old forum to the new one at www.Nairaland.com ! Since then, our rate of growth has increased gradually from 10 new members a day to 30 to 100 or more today! By th end of 2005, we had more than 5000 visitors a day and I was making enough to justify the employment of an additional employee (though I haven’t done that)!
Right now, I am experimenting with new websites and business ideas and I hope to diversify my income. I’ve bought valuable domain names (they are cheap). I’ve launched Naijarita News, a fake news website that mocks everybody. And I’ve offered to help some people sell their products over the Internet. Nairaland.com, hovever, has proven to be infinitely more popular than these other ones, because we cover everything: romance, business, politics, games, and of course technology (4).
I’d like to urge fellow young people in technology to think of themselves as entrepreneurs and not as job-seekers. Look for problems that people are having, solve them, and make your money. In an under-developed economy like ours you do not even have to be innovative to make it. You just have to be focussed on solving the real problems that people are experiencing in life or business.
Seun Osewa’s email address is seun@nairaland.com, and his website is www.nairaland.com
1) http://web.archive.org/web/20030824032734/http://www.seunosewa.com/
2) http://web.archive.org/web/20041022113854/http://www.mobilenigeria.com/
Copyright (c) 2006 Oluwaseun Osewa. All Right Reserved.