The journey to monetisation was a little trickier for the new community. The task for Osewa was figuring out how to make money out of the growing traffic. Learning about ad networks and how they could help him circumvent having to sell ad space directly to clients was key.
Seu said, he read a blog post titled “blogging for dollars” where a blogger described how he made thousands of dollars monthly by just joining the biggest advertising network,” . “This was essential, because using an ad network allowed him to focus on growing Nairaland’s traffic knowing that if he could make Nairaland popular, he would automatically make a lot of money. It allowed him to be focused on traffic.”
It was only years later that Osewa began to introduce the idea of forums to the site as mobile telephony became popular in Nigeria. At the time, Osewa said that
“the government had just allowed private telecom companies to build GSM networks”.
I noticed that the forum had something no other Nigerian forum had at the time — it was focused on issues that Nigerians at home cared about. Other Nigerian forums online focused on issues only Nigerians living outside cared about, like racism and US politics, but on that little forum, we discussed truly Nigerian issues.”
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