In an emotional conversation, Abiola addressed openly about his background, his struggles, and how he has managed to cope with the pressure that comes with blogging.
Can you tell me about yourself and your blog?
I’m Mabinuori Abiola Peter by name, a Graduate of Banking and Finance with 6-years of Blogging Experience. I currently owned and manage Livescore27.com a website which exclusively focus on Football Real-time and News.
How did the idea of starting a blog come about?
I came across a blogger friend who asked me to write for him on his Celebrity’s niche base website back in 2016. We became partners with an agreement of being his writer. We became friends overtime and then I found Blogging interesting.
A few months later I did some search on google on how difficult and profitable owning a blog can be. I read many articles via google and watched some videos on YouTube as well before stepping forward to create my first ever blog then.
What is blogging for you?
I can say blogging for me is a way of creating meaningful contents with writing or photography representation, that can be published on the internet.
What was your key driving force to becoming a blogger?
To make a living and be relevant in the Internet/blogging world.
What is your key motivation?
A need for achievement, success and also the need to be relevant in the internet world.
What is your process for maintaining your blog?
I hosted my website with one of the most reliable hosting companies and I keep everything active to ensure my users/visitors have the best experience. I have a team of 5 people. We ensure we put everything in order and also update the blog on a daily basis.
I keep everything up-to-date and try as much to provide our users with the best experience when they land on the Site. Also, the site is not just a Real-time Live score and News, my site also functions as a “News Aggregator” website where other football website owners contact us to fix their RSS link on my news Page.
How do you measure the success of your blog?
As a blogger, success can only be measured by the level of one’s consistency, volume of traffic and the level of social media awareness of the blog. I measure my success as a blogger with these three criteria above.
What are your biggest constraints?
Not able to divert to other sub-sport niche due to the primary nature of my site.
Blog monetization is a way of making a living via one’s blog. This can be through affiliates or using any of the online Ad companies. We have many of them on the internet but on my website I am using Google AdSense, HBAgency, Paid Guest Post and some Sports Betting affiliates as a way of monetizing my blog.
To me, I don’t think blogging will be easy for any blog without monetization as this is the only way we can measure the performance and success of a blog.
Can you describe your typical day?
Oh!! This is a serious question. I do wake up as early as 5:30am and I spend my first 2hrs on Facebook trying to moderate some of my Facebook groups. As a football website administrator, it’s required to have a very active appearance on social media like Facebook.
So I have 70 to 80 football groups with over 200k members in 50 groups. So, you can see managing all these won’t be an easy task.
By 9am, I login to my website to check if my writers have begun their daily task and also to check if I have any administrative email to attend to. I will stay on my website for as long as I can. Also, I do spend 2 to 3’hrs working out on my Blog SEO on a regular working day.
I attend to a lot of stuff on my blog daily, checking all my RSS feed pages to make sure we don’t have any corrupted or broken pages. If I login to my blog by 9am, then i don’t logout again till 1am (midnight) when I am about to sleep. In one word; I spend 98% of my hours on my blog daily.
Do you think there is some sort of pattern to becoming a successful blogger?
Yes, sure. To be successful in this blogging industry one needs to put certain things in place. Although every other pattern comes after consistency.
Every blogger needs an effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization), publicity (Social Media Appearance) and a profitable monetization method.
What is your favourite aspect of being a blogger?
Writing and Publishing Football Contents.
What is your opinion in choosing your niche?
Choosing a niche has to do with the interest and area of specialization of the blogger. I opted to go into Sport Niche all because I am a football lover and my interest revolves around sports.
I would have failed as a blogger if I had opted into a niche as Entertainment, crime or Music because I only have little knowledge and interest about them.
When writing a blog post, do you prefer to follow a set structure or just let your thoughts flow naturally?
Yes I have a structure that I follow and I also implemented the same for my writers. The first thing before constructing my post is to identify the keywords to be featured in my content.
I always used the ‘H3 or H2 Heading’ for ALL my first Paragraph. And I make sure to keep all my paragraphs very short, 4 to 5 lines per each. It’s a must for me to link every new post to my old post and vice versa, we call the process “Inter-linking.”
Due to the volume of my blog traffic I don’t usually add images/pictures inside my post, I only prefer adding images as featured images only to keep my site performance (speed) in good health for my users/visitors. I also link-out my post to other websites when it’s necessary for me to do so (mostly when I need to refer to sources).
What do you think is the most important aspect of SEO for a blog?
I will say Keyword research + On-Page SEO. Most off-page SEO requires expertise but if one can keep the keywords and on-Page SEO healthy, it’s very certain that Off-Page SEO will be inherited naturally.
What do you do in your spare time?
For now, I don’t really have spare time unless I am off to bed at night. My Data is always on, I will either be on my website or moderating my Facebook fan groups. Very soon I will have enough time to refer to it as “Spare time.”
What would you have done differently if you were to start all over again?
Maybe I would love to build my social communities and SEO as soon as I kick off again.
Is blogging your profession or just a hobby?
Blogging is my Profession. I’m a full-time Blogger.
A lot of people think that blogging is an easy way to make money online. Do you have some tips for those people who are interested in making money from blogging?
I do laugh in my dialect each time I hear this. The truth is that there’s money in blogging, I mean huge money but the secret is that blogging is not as easy as some people might claim it to be. Blogging requires time, hard-work, consistency and dedication if we really want to make real money.
But like everything else, there are some shortcuts to make money very fast in blogging now without waiting too long or putting in serious effort, but one needs to know that the money that comes from such a route won’t be long and also the shortcut won’t last long.
What advice will you give to an individual who is about to choose the blogging path?
Just be patient, consistent, hard-working and try as much as possible to be accurate in the information you’re providing. Also I will advise to never rely on only Organic traffic or social traffic, combination of the two is the best and the perfect way to keep your blog relevant.
