Hi, I’m Abdulrahman Bonire
Thanks for wanting to know more about me and my work. Your being here means the world to me.
I launched this blog to document my journey on how to use a blog to grow a consistent side income to 6 figures a year while working my full-time job with Oxygenmat.
As of the time of writing this (29 July 2019), I’m starting from 0 and aiming for the $10,000 a month mark within my first year.
Now, you may be wondering if I am doing this for money. Right?
Well, here’s the thing. Money is an important part of our day-to-day existence, and nothing much happens without it. But that is not my drive primarily.
The freedom and life choices the money can afford me, my friends and family, and the causes I care about is the drive behind this project (a mentor once said, “you can only help the poor by not becoming one of them”). And I’m hoping that by sharing this with you as I navigate my way from 0 – $10,000 a month, you’d be able to learn a thing or two that will help you too or at least, kick your butt to get something started for yourself.
The main weapons in my arsenal are content marketing and SEO.
From Holy sh*t to Aha! I’m learning a lot and so will you.
But first, before else, I think it is only appropriate to get to know each other better. I go first and do a proper intro would be fine, right?
Well, I think it would be nice to tell you about my story instead. That would make us connect on a deeper level.
You’ve probably heard it more than a 1000 times, “don’t wash your dirty linen in public”. Pardon me, because that is exactly what I’m about to do.
It is the usual norm to see writers, bloggers, and online business owners to paint themselves white like an angel in the public domain. Today, I’m doing the exact opposite.
I’d be pulling back the curtain on the good, the bad and the ugly of my story. And I promise not to make it boring.
I’m doing this so that you’d get to know who Abdulrahman Bonire really is and possibly learn a thing or two that would be of benefit to you.
Early life
I’m originally from a small town of Aiyegunle Gbede, Kogi state, Nigeria.
Growing up was partly fun and tough. It was fun up until around age 7 or thereabout. But when my state Kogi, was carved out of the old Kawara state in 1991, that was when we began to feel the unsmiling effect of the ruling of the military government of the late General Sani Abacha.
My dad was a plumber with the state government and I remembered him telling us of how many months that have gone by without being paid his salary.
In order to fend for the family, daddy took to farming, freelance plumbing and use his then Nissan panel van to run local taxi trips morning and evening in Lokoja.
With our farming efforts, we were able to produce almost all the basic foodstuff we needed as a family. And since we originated from a farming community, it didn’t take long before we started producing more food than we could consume as a family. So, we sell off some of the surpluses for cash.
Some weekdays, we would have to leave for the farm as early as some minutes to 6 in the morning to either remove our cassava from the river where we’ve soaked them for days so that we can spread them on rock surfaces, higher than the reach of cattle and also go to get the dry cassava also early in the morning before school or late in the evening after school.
Back in those days, when I am not in school, I’d either be on the farm, processing cassava into cassava flour or flakes “garri”, or helping out my father with his plumbing projects.
I now remember with fond memories, how much fun my friends and I had hunting several African bush and giant rats as a child. I also enjoyed the pleasure of successfully hunting a few other animals like a Common duiker, squirrel, few snakes, birds and anything in between. And I also fish for tilapia and catfish occasionally. And sometimes when fishing becomes unsuccessful, we resort to digging around for crabs.
My dad once threw away my share of the fish my friend and I shared after a lofty fishing day and I couldn’t help but look as the hens and dogs in the neighborhood happily pick their shares and walked away. It took a while before I could come to terms with why he did that (we’d lost a few of our neighbors to the same river we fished in).
School Life
I started elementary school in the old Kwara state and attended two others after the creation and relocation to our new state Kogi, in 1992.
From there, I proceeded to junior high and high school both in Lokoja, Kogi state capital.
I proceeded to study Remote Sensing Application as an option of Applied Geography at the Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State, Nigeria.
Now, looking back, I’m more than grateful for how hard my parents strived to make sure we hard quality education. A farmer and plumber guy wouldn’t have been able to write and run a blog like this otherwise. Thank you, daddy and mummy, for all the sacrifices.
But since the last 7 years, formal education has really become boring and I have been better consumed by financial, business and self-education. And I’m happy to share everything I’m learning with you.
Work-Life
The first money I ever made was in plumbing. I made that money from one late Major Muhammed of the Nigerian Army when I helped him fix a few wash hand basins and WCs in his Lokoja residence. And that money was spent on buying myself a beautiful school sandal. ***Smiles
For many years, I was the project manager for my father’s plumbing business. I’d help with getting and transporting our plumbing materials to construction sites. And also helped a great deal with plumbing installations and managing other team members whenever daddy is in the office. So, plumbing was my first job.
As a child, I always wanted to be a soldier and after graduating high school, I gave the military 2 attempts and 1 more after college but I was never shortlisted for intake into the Nigerian military.
Poor boy.
So, I continued with the only business I know how to do best (plumbing), while I was hoping to get “a white-collar job”.
I landed a job with an insurance company in Lagos and a first-generation bank in Ilorin in quick successions and I quickly realized that the corporate lifestyle wasn’t for me. I dislike the idea of coming to work every day, confined to a cubicle and doing the same thing all my life (I think this was partly because the plumbing I have been used to always move me around to or from one city to the other). Everything quickly became too monotonous for my liking and I resigned my banking job and went back to plumbing.
I mean no disrespect for the corporate guys and girls, please.
At this point, I’d gotten to know what blogging is and how it works and the lifestyle blogging can afford seemed to be the life I’d always prayed for. So, I fell in love with blogging wholeheartedly
Journey to blogging
My first use of a computer system was in the year 2007 when my eldest sister enrolled me in a diploma course in computer processing. Before then, I’d only been privileged to touch the computer a few times when I accompanied Alfred, my high school friend to the first cybercafe we had in town. And I also remember going to the second cybercafe that came along then to browse the internet. I bought a 30 minute unit of browsing time and the cafe attendant helped me log the unit in and all I could do was stare at the computer screen.
When I was gradually becoming the center of attention to others browsing in the cyber cafe, I shamefully stood up and walked away. I couldn’t even log out my remaining unit as I was too scared I would damage the keyboard or mouse if I tried.
Things were that bad, back then. Thanks, big sis. for coming to my rescue.
Not long after commencing my computer training in 2007, I stumbled on a piece of information online that Canadian and Australian governments are giving Nigerian nurses work permit in both countries (my immediate elder sister happened to be a nurse), I thought I should help her apply. All my efforts proved abortive, though.
Fast-forward to 2014, while I was busy attempting several of those applications, I started coming across several promises of ways to make money online. Luckily, one of such promises was from a fellow countryman. I reach out to him and he said he was going to help me package an info product (eBook) I can sell for profit.
He promised to do 99% of the work and all I had to do is the remaining 1% and I can start smiling to the bank. Curious to know how people make money out of thin air, I paid him the $72.727 (#12,000) and he delivered the ebook as promised and taught me a quick way of running paid ads to the sales page delivered alongside the ebook.
I never sold a copy of the said ebook. I can’t even remember what the ebook was about exactly. But I still remember discovering some fake promises in the ebook and decided never to promote such to the public just for the sake of making money.
In the same year of 2014, in my quest for how to legitimately and ethically learn how to make money online, I stumbled upon NaijaWritersCoach.com. The first blog by my current employer Abdullahi Muhammed had.
I read a couple of his articles and fell in love with his style and quality of writing and I was forced to head over to his about page to know more about him.
Back then he has some incredible blogging courses, both paid and free and he also has two amazing books both paid and free. And I made sure I took all his courses and read all of his books. Before completely consuming all those materials, I was able to start my first blog.
Where I’m today
Fast forward to today, I have 5+ years of blogging experience, 3+ years of those as the project manager of Oxygenmat, a content marketing agency.
In this capacity, I have enjoyed the privilege of learning a great deal and have had the pleasure of working alongside Abdullahi our team leaders and others on the content marketing campaigns of companies like GetResponse, Hostgator, Shopify, Gumtree and Arvixe.
Starting my Blog
I have learned an awful lot about blogging and content marketing while doing my full-time job. Before this job, I have learned and run affiliate marketing on my former blog. After putting off starting this blog for so long, I have finally decided to give it a go.
I’m running this blog as an experiment to determine what it takes to start and run a successful blog in 2019 and beyond. And I’ll be documenting my journey here on this blog. A lot of top bloggers, writers, and influencers started well over 5 years ago. And not all that works then still work now, the exact same way. In reality, the advice by some of the most successful bloggers is no longer actionable. They already have the following to make things work. And almost everything they touch turns to gold.
Let me show you what works in 2019 so that you can forget everything else and just cut through the noise. From Holy crab to Aha! I’ll be sharing everything. I’m learning a lot and so will you.
This is my story. Now, it’s your turn. Use the form above to reach out and tell me your story via email. I await your message.
Thanks for reading this far and being part of this journey.