Tony Ademiluyi, Co-Founder of The Vent Republic Media – www.theventrepublic.com and a freelance writer, shares his media entrepreneurship experience offers advice for aspiring publishers.
Slightly over a decade ago when I finished the mandatory National Youths Service Corps, I was confident that I would conquer the media world. My dream was to work for any of the foreign news media houses and literarily see the world as I listed travelling as one of my numerous hobbies.
As was the fate of many Nigerians ‘Nigeria happened to me’ is a local cliché for the exact opposite of what one had earlier planned happening to an individual. I managed to work for a few media houses with its characteristic parsimonious salaries without any benefits and the straw broke the camel’s back when the last one – a national newspaper failed to pay my backlog of salaries. I had no choice but to take a walk.
I decided to become a media entrepreneur and had new ambitions of becoming a mogul despite the slews of disappointments and heartbreaks as an employee. I wouldn’t say I jumped on the bandwagon of owning a general-interest online newspaper as is the norm among ‘retired journalists’. I wasn’t trying to do what everyone else was doing but my choice was informed by the fact that all the newspapers I had worked for were general interest and so it was a terrain I was used to. A friend counselled on having a niche newspaper or platform but I felt I lacked the expertise and financial resources to effectively run it.
One reason why I think many journalists and even ‘wannabe’ bloggers choose the general interest news websites niche is its ease of operations. You simply wait for the major newspapers to break the news and then all you do is simply rewrite it to avoid plagiarism. You don’t need correspondents all over the country and you keep your overheads very low. You don’t need to subscribe to any of the news agencies. With an in-depth knowledge of online distribution strategies, you can build a media empire from your bedroom.
It is a well-known fact that the popular Linda Ikeji built a media empire by bare news curating. Her website was even taken down once for plagiarism by Google. At the time of her becoming a behemoth, she had no members of staff and her blog had more visits than many of the mainstream newspapers. It is only fairly recently she had an office in Lekki and hired some members of staff who she doesn’t give the privilege of having their bylines as they all write in her name. At the moment I only have one member of staff and a partner based in Abuja. For now, we focus on news curation and a few times when we have a bit of resource, we do some investigative journalism and a few interviews.
The challenges are legion. For starters, we are greatly hampered by the lack of financial resources as we would have loved to be like proper online newspapers that operate with correspondents like the traditional media. Some examples that come readily to mind are Premium Times, The Cable, Sahara Reporters etc. We are highly dissatisfied at merely curating the news which is far from the exciting world of news gathering and cultivating sources. Another challenge is that of very low traffic. We have minuscule resources to invest in our social media handles and so in the cutthroat world of the new media, we have very few first time and returning visitors which has badly affected our Alexa Ranking.
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Another challenge is that of monetization. Our content is free and we hope to make money from advertising, sponsored posts and partnerships with brands. Most brands prefer to advertise in well-known brands or directly on Google and Facebook or make use of either celebrity as brand ambassadors or social media influencers. We literarily stand no chance as we don’t have the huge contacts and network base to unlock sustainable adverts. We sustain our overhead costs from our private pockets rather than from the website which is highly unsustainable. Another challenge is that even when a brand wants to give you a chance, they offer peanuts to you as they know you have numerous competitors and so you would have no choice but to accept it.
We have tinkered with the idea of bringing investors on board but our bid has been largely unsuccessful as the media is seen as a high-risk investment with little prospects of financial rewards. A particular one told me of the abrupt ban of Twitter by the Nigerian Government which made him develop cold feet at the 11th hour. We noticed that some politicians treat the media as a charity and we tried to exploit our contacts to get one or two to give us funds but our lack of a national name threw the spanner in the works of that bid. We noticed that most online newspapers or blogs have a very high mortality rate as most collapse within six months as it is capital intensive and has a long gestation period.
Another challenge is that celebrities and newsmakers don’t grant us interviews no matter how much we pester and even beg them for it. We reckon that they only prefer to give their precious time to well-known news platforms.
To keep the platform running, my partner and I had to take a plethora of freelance jobs to pay the bills and it is our joint love for the media that is keeping us going. We honestly don’t know when we will start making money from the website or whether that day will ever come at all. We just keep trudging on in blind faith as we don’t want to conclude that our joint venture is a labour of love. We still have the sturdy belief that the media is a business, like others and one can still live a decent life from it as a media entrepreneur.
We still have grand dreams of becoming the African version of Rupert Murdoch, Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst e.t.c. and are still optimistic that our dreams of travelling around the world will soon materialize even though we have our moments of despair when we just want to shut it down and move on. The last piece of advice for aspiring media entrepreneurs who want to float news websites is to have a genuine love for the media as there will be times of trials and the raw pangs of hunger may force them to immediately want to quit. Nothing good comes easy and the media which is naturally a tough business is no exception.
Aspiring media owners should read the stories of those who have gone ahead of them especially in the Nigerian and African space to get a feel of how they surmounted the odds and triumphed.
If I am to give honest advice, I will advise media entrepreneurs to go into niche journalism. Identify a niche and stick with it as the competition is far less there. You could also monetize through donations and grants which is becoming a popular business model now even in the west as advertising revenue is drying up everywhere.
Cheers to your success!
Tony Ademiluyi is the Co-Founder of The Vent Republic Media – www.theventrepublic.com
