Blogging in Nigeria -and by extension, Africa was relatively unknown until there was a game changer. In fact, most people who called themselves ‘bloggers’ in the past, only saw blogging as a way to satisfy their passion but never saw it as a gold mine. This game changer is none other than the self-made Nigerian billionaire, Linda Ikeji.
Linda Ifeoma Ikeji is a popular Nigerian Blogger, Entrepreneur, Content writer and ex Model. She was born on the 19th of September, 1980 in Nkwere Local Government Area, Imo State in the Southeastern part of Nigeria. Linda Ikeji grew up in a Catholic family, and is the second daughter among six girls and a boy.
She had the passion for writing at a very young age and by the time she was 10 years old, she had already been writing fictional stories. This passion for writing led to an interest in passing meaningful information to the public, and doing this meant she needed to study Mass Communication in the university after finishing secondary school at age 17. Life does not give you everything you want, and Linda Ikeji definitely did not get everything she wanted. She could not study Mass Communication; meaning she had to settle for a degree in English, from the University of Lagos.
Like the average Nigerian undergraduate, Linda Ikeji had financial struggles during her days in the University of Lagos. To support herself and her parents, she took to part time jobs including modelling, ushering and was even a bartender at a point in time. Linda Ikeji never saw her undergraduate struggles as a setback, but she pushed harder and graduated from the university in 2004.
With the degree in the bag, Linda Ikeji still had her passion to pursue. After her graduation, she went fully into modelling but did not quite make it as much as she would have loved. Modelling was not the only venture she failed in, and even though ‘failed’ might be very harsh, the success to come was enough to for her to look at these past ventures, and realize she had quite a rough journey to the top. In 2006, she started a magazine named FM&B, but she stopped when she realized how much time and money, she put into it without gaining much.
The passion for writing and passing information was still inside her, but in her days, you couldn’t quite satisfy that kind of passion without a degree in mass communication. What would the passionate Linda Ikeji do? This may have been the question she asked herself and its answer gave birth to today’s form of information dissemination.
Linda Ikeji started blogging in 2006. The internet was not as prominent as it is right now, and most Nigerians even only knew it as being useful for internet fraudsters, also known as ‘yahoo yahoo boys’. Unlike today when even the smallest children have access to a personal computer or smartphone, most people did not have personal computers and smartphones never existed. Even those people who had personal computers did not have access to the internet, and had to do what Linda Ikeji and every other person did, which was to work from a cybercafé.
Though she started in 2006, she was not known as an active blogger until 2007. Her blogging journey started on Google’s free blogging platform blogger.com, under the domain name lindaikeji.blogspot.com. She later obtained the domain www.lindaikejisblog.com, which she is widely known for these days.
There were other bloggers who started even before Linda Ikeji, but what made her stand out was not only passion but consistency. Even though she was not making a living out of blogging as a starter, she consistently gave out reliable information to her growing blog visitors. To succeed as a blogger, you must be able to reach out to a lot of people through your blog, and Linda Ikeji began to gain recognition around 2010 when the internet started becoming part of the daily lives of Nigerians. Her blog not only attracted more people interested in news, but also top brands who needed to advertise and politicians who needed to boost their political campaigns. These advertisements and political campaigns made a lot of money for the young blogger, even till today because of the massive traffic on her blog.
Linda Ikeji is not your typical full-time blogger. She has shown her versatility by venturing into other different forms of media, instead of focusing only on blogging as a medium of satisfying her passion for news. In November 2016, she started LindaIkeji Social with the domain name lindaikejisocial.com. LindaIkeji Social served as a way of diversifying her blog, with the use of social media and it became very popular soon after it was released.
The young entrepreneur also started LindaIkeji TV, in June 2018. LindaIkeji TV (also known as LiTV), is a paid TV channel that features numerous talk shows, movies, TV series and reality shows. The media mogul also owns an online radio broadcast station, and some shows from these radio stations are broadcast live on LindaIkeji TV. Her music recording label LindaIkeji Music, was launched in November 2016 but it did not quite hit the heights of her other ventures.
Linda Ikeji’s reward for her successes has been huge, and she is known to be one of the richest women in Nigeria with a net worth of over USD 40 million. This fortune, however, has not only come from blogging or media alone. Linda Ikeji is known to have investment in real estate and other businesses. She also has properties including an NGN 500 million house in Lagos that has a jaw-dropping garage.
She constantly shows her human side by donating hugely to charity. She runs a non-profit project themed “I’d rather be self-made; No thanks”, in which she helps young ladies aged 16 to 25 with wonderful business ideas that would help them achieve their dreams. In the first phase of this project, she gave out NGN 10 million to these young female entrepreneurs and she promises that there will be more in forthcoming phases of the project.
Her success and services to humanity have not gone unnoticed. In the August 2012 issue of Forbes Africa, she was one of two young Nigerian women that featured on the list of Africa’s 20 Most Prominent Women. In August 2018, Linda Ikeji and other top personalities were conferred with an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Trinity International University, Georgia.
Awards won by Linda Ikeji include Nigerian Broadcasters Merit Award (Website/Blog of the Year) in 2013, Nigeria Blog Awards (Best Entertainment Blog) in 2013 and United Nations Global Leadership Awards in 2018. I
