“I am Onibalusi Bamidele a 17 year old Nigerian entrepreneur. I make a living online by blogging. I think what sets me apart is my motivation and passion for my blog and online business. I’m always ready to give it “whatever” it takes to succeed. For example: last year alone, I wrote over 300 guest posts promoting my blog while at the same time making sure my blog is constantly updated. As long as you set your goal, and you’re strongly determined about achieving it, there is nothing that can stop you.”

Onibalusi Bamidele and YoungPrePro are the subject of this week’s “10 Q’s With…”; our question and answer series that’s aimed at offering insight to our readers who are interested in the ‘Adventure’ of becoming: The Boss.

Q. What inspired you take the steps to becoming your own boss? Is this your first/only business?

“What actually inspired me was the story of Bill Gates. People so much admire him in my country (because he has a great story and ground as far as computing is concerned). I started researching how he makes money online and from there I learnt about making money online. It was in my quest to make money online that I learned about blogging. And yes, this is my only business and my first serious business. I actually had a blog before this one and after working on it for 4 months I was able to build it to a stage where it has a Google Pagerank of 4 and it gets an average of 80-100 visitors a day. After taking a look at its future and how risky it would be to my reputation to continue with it I made a quick (and obviously wise) decision to change…I’ve never looked back since then.”

Q. Now how do you find the time to write over 300 guest posts and still write on your blog? Were some of them the same content just posted over 300 times? Can you elaborate on that for our readers?

“Nope. Every single one of them was written differently by me. While some of the post ideas were the same they were uniquely written in a different dimension (without even looking at the former ones).”

“I actually think its all about discipline. I made it a duty to write as much guest posts as I can and one of my goals was to be the highest guest poster in 2010 (more on what I said about setting your heart at something) so it wasn’t even difficult to achieve that.”

Q. How much planning was involved prior to the start-up of your blog? Can you offer some insight into that process?

“Nothing aside choosing the name. I was a complete “noob” then but what made me different is setting goals from the beginning and having the determination to succeed. Actually, I have read a lot about blogging and make money online so I love the niche and I was young…that was why I started a blog about young entrepreneurship.”

Q. In terms of running your business, what does a typical day look like for you; or is every day different? Living in Africa, how many people do you know that run a blog ? Is this common where you are?

“Blogging is totally unconventional in Africa/Nigeria and they’re just catching up. To be sincere, it is really difficult here in Nigeria and the costs are high since a lot of things are not perfect; for example, no electricity, bad internet access, lots of big online companies (like paypal and clickbanks) are not supporting Nigerians and there is nothing our government wants to do about it. It was different for me because one of my most determined statements is that My country won’t be an excuse for my failure.”

Q. Can you give us a few examples of how you’ve overcome those objections?

“I overcame the problem of electricity and Internet access by partnering with a cafe owner in my country (eventually there were some difficulties with the owner and I had to leave – it goes further to prove that it doesn’t matter how much of another person’s thing you have, it isn’t and it can never be yours). I overcame that of paypal and online payments by partnering with a friend who has an account (he helps me pay for goods and services online) and as God would have it, the company I’m workin with now are very cooperative and they now pay to my bank account.”

Q. Now I noticed you have quite a few guest posts on your blog, can you give the readers some insight on how you were able to get people to participate and post on your blog?

“In fact, I now have about 8 guest posts waiting for approval and I will only publish 3 this month…my reason for publishing very few guest posts this month is because traffic wasn’t good last month because the whole month was only guest posts and I only posted 2 posts of mine last month (I was very busy) and from my experience I noticed that you get more subscribers, comments, emails and interview requests if you truly give value to your readers instead of publishing guest posts always.”

“To the question, the guest posts come naturally. My blog is visited by almost 10,000 people every month and that is an impressive number to make people want to visit your blog. Focus on building a community, giving the best of your content and taking care of your community…and with time, the traffic and guest posts will come.”

Q. What are some tools/equipment that you use and what can you not live without?

“Wow! I can’t live without a laptop and an internet connection and some of my great tools are my:
1. email (I recommend and use Gmail)
2. Mailing list software (I recommend but don’t use Aweber – the one I use is self-hosted and somewhat expesnive..around $800)”

Q. What has been the most challenging part of your entrepreneurial adventure?

“I think the most difficult aspect is adjusting. I don’t have problems with money…I believe I don’t need money for personal things (I’m a kind of guy who don’t care – even when people told me to start buying shoes, clothes etc. for myself I told them what matters most was my knowledge because that’s what brings power…and now, I’m glad I was right).”

“I mean I’m usually always confused when things are not going fwell so I struggle with making a lot of decisions, I sometimes have to make some changes to how I present my content.”

Q. Besides the obvious of being your own boss, what is the most rewarding part about being an independent business owner?

“It’s the fun…it’s just my passion. And the freedom. While I’m quite a workaholic I can decide to start watching videos for the day and nothing will happen – at least I’ve done it once or twice. Oh and the freedom of course.”

Q. What motivates you? What keeps you going each day?

“My goals. I have a lot of great goals and anytime I want to quit or I’m demotivated I will remember my goals and refire (if I may use the word).”

Q. What’s next for Youngprepro.com? What are your long term and short term goals?

“Make money online and start a company. I also plan to do a lot of offline investment that will keep on bringing in money until I pass – I’m sorry but some people put all their eggs in one basket. Have you ever thought about what will happen if the Internet were to die (a mini version of that is already happening in Egypt…no one knows what can happen next)?”

“Short Term :
Building the most popular young entrepreneur blog before 2013, making a minimum of $20,000 online every month, building a mailing list of over 20,000 subscribers and getting a lot of press/media coverage in 2011.”

“Long Term :
Starting a fortune 500 company ”

Q. What advice do you have to those reading www.bossstart.com that you feel is valuable?

“Focus on your passion, get started, be determined and always have the future in mind. As for starting a blog or online business; Just get started. I get a lot of emails, offline discussions with people giving a lot of excuses like it is just too difficult. I believe you should just get started and every other thing will take off from there.”

“Side Note :

It’s always cool to hear that and I have more plans to impact people’s lives more than ever in the nearest future – there is no amount of money I can have, it is all vanity, but I can change people’s lives and have happiness…which is all that matters.”

To learn more about Onibalusi Bamidele of YoungPrePre.com, please visit:

Website: www.youngprepro.com

Twitter: Twitter.com/youngprepro