Long before Linda Ikeji’s Blog became a household name, Linda Ifeoma Ikeji was a girl from a struggling family in Nkwerre, Imo State, trying to work out how her education would ever be paid for. She was born on September 19, 1980, the second of seven children, and even then she had a flair for writing. She started writing at 10, and she dreamed of becoming a journalist, of meeting people, interviewing them and telling their stories. That dream eventually took her to the University of Lagos, where she studied English Language and graduated in 2004.
Getting there, however, was a struggle, because money was a problem the whole way through. At 17, she was already working as an usher, a model and a waitress, doing whatever paid so that she could support herself and her family and stay in school. Her modelling career had begun even earlier, in 1998, before she turned 18, which means she had to support herself while most people her age were still being looked after.
Her completing her education did not also end her struggle, because the business she built after it kept demanding more than it gave. In 2004, at 23, she started Blackdove Communications, a modelling agency and events company, and for almost three years she ran it from a cramped two-room office in Jibowu, Yaba. She also organised an annual fashion show called Style Night, which she kept going from 2004 to 2010, and she tried to launch two television ideas: a reality show called Nigeria’s Top Model Search with Linda Ikeji, and a TV show called Catwalk with Linda. Neither found a single sponsor, so neither went anywhere.
So in 2006, with her ventures going nowhere, she turned to the one thing she had always loved and started blogging as a hobby. The timing was against her, since internet access in Nigeria at that time was limited and blogging was not seen as a serious career. She had to go to cybercafes just to post her content, and she has said there were days she had to beg for ₦100 to pay for browsing time. In the end, all that effort earned her nothing for four years.
Then, finally, after those four unpaid years, companies began asking for her advertising rates and started paying for her work. She created her ad rate card in early 2011, and from there the blog grew into one of the most profitable in Africa. She went on to expand into Linda Ikeji TV and film production, including the film Dark October. Looking back, she has said she was determined to fight poverty in her life, and that the work it took was harder than she ever thought possible.
