Oluwaseun Temitope Osewe is the founder of Nairaland, a popular internet forum launched in March 2005.
The Founder of Nairaland started his internet career in the year 2003 after going into the web hosting business. He had attempted to start a web hosting business, but after 3 months he could only boast of one customer, so he ran out of capital and the business died. It would probably have succeeded if he had managed his capital more wisely or raised more money as he got many hosting requests he couldn’t satisfy later that year. After that first failure, he was encouraged to get certifications and a regular job, but he couldn’t go back to that kind of path after tasting creative freedom, so he kept researching business ideas and presenting them to friends and family, but no capital was forthcoming to carry any of them out. He did this for less than 2 years.
Seun started his experiment for Nairaland between 2004 and 2005 when he created three forums, one of them was meant for students of higher educational institutions, the second one was for IT discussions, and the third one, Mobile Nigeria, was meant to cover the GSM industry that was emerging in Nigeria then. The latter turned out to be Nairaland the biggest forum in Africa.
Nairaland success did not come easy, as Seun had to wade off spammers and trolls on the forum on a daily basis. Eventually in 2014, Nairaland suffered a malicious hacker attack, which disabled the site for several days and deleted all the data. In 2012, he also lost Google Adsense revenue due to sexual topics discussed on Nairaland and ever since he has been selling ads space on its forum.
To Seun, the inspiring force behind Nairaland was to create a site for sending SMS messages. Eventually, he decided to start a web forum, because it was the only idea that required no additional capital: he already had Internet access and a $15 per month VPS graciously paid for by a family friend. He created 3 forums in November 2003 (one for higher institution students, one for IT discussions, and one to cover the emerging GSM industry; the Mobile Nigeria Forum at MobileNigeria.com).
The Mobile Nigeria Forum took off, so he relaunched it in February 2005 with the assistance of Mr. John Sagai Adams, who posted a link to the forum on his mailing list and participated enthusiastically in those early days. Other mobile enthusiasts like Mr. Yomi Adegboye pitched in to make the site a success. In a month or so, the forum had about 300 members, but the growth potential didn’t satisfy him.
However, when he noticed two odd things about MobileNigeria:
(1) Despite its narrow focus, it was the only Nigerian community that gave a voice to Nigerians at home. Most other Nigerian sites were owned and dominated by Nigerians in the US or UK. They covered only issues of interests to Nigerians abroad.
(2) The off topic section of the forum, covering topics outside telecoms, like romance and jokes, was becoming more vibrant than the Mobile Nigeria Forum itself, suggesting the need for a more general-purpose Nigerian forum.
This gave him the confidence to take forums like Naijaryders and Talknaija head on by starting a general purpose discussion forum with a strong bias towards issues of interest to Nigerians at home. He felt that such a site could attract enough traffic to make enough money from Google adverts. That’s why he started the Nairaland Forum.
Osewa has made it big with his internet forum, projected by Forbes to be the largest online African forum. Nairaland has a huge following both in Africa and around the world, competing in the same league with top global platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Wikipedia, among others.Ranking among the top 1,000 most viewed sites in the world, Nairaland attracts over 1 million views each day, which has made Osewa a successful African internet sensation.
The forum currently has almost two million registered members and still counting. In 2015, he was listed among the Top 10 Most Influential Nigerian Online Entrepreneurs by T.I.N. Magazine. With all this said there are numerous benefits you can get from using the platform. The benefits ranges from making money, getting a job and also promoting your content Nairaland is a top beneficial website.
Nairaland is the biggest forum in Africa and currently third in the world. With over 1.9million registered members and a whopping 10 million unique visitor every month, the owner, Seun Osewa net worth is sure to be in millions of dollars.
