Linda Ikeji is the most powerful blogger in entire Nigeria. There is no doubting that. Over the years she has come to be known as the most influential and most followed Nigerian blogger on the internet and continues to lead the trail.
Apart from being a blogger par excellence, Linda Ikeji is also known to be an adventurous businesswoman who always wants to venture into something new. This drive is probably what pushed her into coming up with the idea of Linda Ikeji Social.
Linda Ikeji Social
Having conquered blogging in Nigeria, Linda Ikeji wanted some more adventure, she wanted to begin something more thrilling and so she birthed “Linda Ikeji Social”.
Linda Ikeji Social was conceived to bring people together to interact, share ideas, read news from around the world and form a community where they can also earn money for themselves.
Introducing the business, Linda said the Linda Ikeji Social is “basically, Facebook meets Linda Ikeji Blog meets ebay.com! You can connect with friends on LIS, chat, get the latest breaking news, sell your eye witness stories to us and get paid. You can also buy and sell your goods and services from authentic buyers and sellers.”
The idea was grand, majestic; it sent her fanbase into euphoria. Everyone wanted to see how she would pull this off.
Linda Ikeji Social was introduced in late 2016 and quickly caused a stir around social media.
READ ALSO: What is VulkanRT And Should You Remove It From Your Computer?
A Lot Of Progress
In a little over 24 hours after the Linda Ikeji Social was launched, the site gained nearly 50, 000 users. That was incredible.
After six days, the site recorded over 86, 000 users. It was good to go, it was up and kicking.
Twitter was abuzz with the news of Linda Ikeji’s project. Instagram was on fire and Facebook had people talking on it about Linda Ikeji Social. It looked like the platform was going to be a big rival to Facebook and other social networking sites.
But the euphoria didn’t last long, the doubts about the site’s sustainability arose soon after it’s launch.
And Then The Problems Arose
In spite of all the earlier achievements recorded on the site, many people were skeptical of the sustainability of Linda Ikeji Social. They didn’t have to doubt too long though because the platform began to experience problems. Most of its problems arose because of the following issues:
– The site was designed to look like Facebook
This was a big problem. Facebook has already conquered the world of social networking and has more than 2 billions users globally. If you are going to rival it and become successful in that field, you can’t do the same thing Facebook has always done. You have to do better.
Because Linda Ikeji Social modeled its platform to look and function like Facebook, social media users who were already used to the idea of visiting Facebook for their everyday social interaction, were not quite interested. They were not be attracted to another platform which is modeled after what they already have become used to.
Linda Ikeji Social should have used another design, another mode of operation that was entirely different from Facebook. Maybe that would have sustained it.
– Linda bought many of the people
It has to be noted that Linda Ikeji started on the wrong note; by asking people to come to the site in exchange for some money. It is true that many people registered to use the Linda Ikeji Social immediately it was introduced but many of them may have been lured after Linda Ikeji promised them some money.
From inception, she announced huge giveaways which people can win if they come to the site. The plan worked because many people registered in their numbers but they wanted more and she kept announcing more giveaways to keep her users glued.
However, it was not long however before the giveaways stopped coming and the membership dwindled. Sustaining a site with giveaways was definitely not feasible. This plan was bound to fail.
– There Were Technical Issues
Linda Ikeji herself made reference to this when she granted an interview talking about the failure of the project.
She explained that she was turned off by the technical issues, According to her, at a point, she could not even load pictures on the site herself.
“I just had to stop because I couldn’t upload pictures,” she said in a chat with Business Insider “I couldn’t upload videos. What then was the essence? It just turned me off.” (sic: Business Insider)
Basically, the Linda Ikeji Social was not built by good hands hence the flop over time. If the owner of the site herself could not load things on the platform, then who else can?
– It Was Almost All About The Money
Linda Ikeji Social was very much built on the premise that people could make a lot of money on the site. She made it clear that people who use the site, can make large sums of money afterward.
She revealed that people could make money through these three ways:
1. LIS accepted people’s stories for money. Users who provide exclusive, authentic and original stories would be paid. Each story was usually bought for N1,000.
2. LIS Introduced what it called the ‘Influencer status’. This works in a unique way. When users get up to 50,000 followers on their pages, LIS would reward them by placing a banner on their homepage. The company will then pay them as much as 20% on whatever advertisers pay for each banner. Impressive
But the problem was that it was extremely difficult to achieve this. Even Linda Ikeji herself who built the platform struggled to have 8,000 followers.
3. There were also giveaways on the site.
In the end, however, as good as it seemed, this promises of money-making only worked only for a while because users discovered the process was not as smooth as it had been made to appear. Most people who registered never came back to use the platform.
The Site Packs Up
Linda Ikeji Social eventually packed up. At the moment, the site is not running. Unlike the Linda Ikeji blog which witnessed incredible growth and success over the years, the Linda Ikeji Social was a massive flop.
Linda Ikeji, talking about the failure of the project in her interview with Business Insider, explained that building Linda Ikeji Social was her dream but it failed because people did a poor job on the site and she was frustrated with it.
Here her: “I did something called LIS (Linda Ikeji Social) and it was a mess because people that made it did a poor job. They were mediocre.
“They promised me heaven and earth but could not deliver. If they had done better, LIS would have thrived. I completely stopped promoting it. If I had continued, people would have still come no matter how bad it was. But I just had to stop because I couldn’t upload pictures, I couldn’t upload videos. What then was the essence? It just turned me off. That was not my dream and I was struggling to accept it.
“I was always fighting with them to get it done. They would request for more money. After a while, I said, “You know what? Whatever.” (sic: Business Insider )
What Next For Linda Ikeji?
Linda Ikeji is a good businesswoman with a lot of business ideas and already has lots of other things planned out. Her empire spreads across TV and blogging and we are pretty sure that she will effectively do some more wonders with time like she did with the famous Linda Ikeji blog.