For the internet entrepreneur, this was the last piece of the puzzle to his multi-million dollar empire. So instead of just a rating site, he decided to build a forum that all Nigerians at home and abroad would care about and use.
According to Osewa, the goal was to gain enough traffic to be able to turn a profit through advertising. What happened, however, surprised him.
“I didn’t expect it to become the most visited Nigerian/African website and hold that position for many years,” .“That was a pleasant surprise.”
Monetisation challenges
Making lots of money via ads wasn’t that easy for Osewa.
“Initially, monetising the forum was very easy,”. “I had some previous experience with the best online advertising network available at the time, so I knew that they could convert traffic into money reliably.”
“It wasn’t entirely cost-free, of course: we were required to censor our content to make sure that nothing they didn’t approve of would appear on any page of Nairaland. Some of our members didn’t like this censorship — nobody likes to be censored — but we thought it was a small price and didn’t really have any choice, anyway.”
But censorship wasn’t the only problem that the platform had to find a way around — it was also becoming a victim of its own success.
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