When I started out as a blogger all I wanted to do was write about the crazy and stupid things I had done in life and the many lessons I learned while doing them. That was it! But somewhere along the line I stumbled upon a thing called google analytics and google adsense. The former was a detailed measure of visits to a website and the latter was a money machine that rewarded bloggers financially for those site visits. I became instantly fascinated with the two tools and started reading and studying extensively on the both of them. My goal was to improve my site visits so that I could increase the number of people clicking my google adsense links. That was my primary focus! So I would write my blogs posts laced with the right type of keywords as prescribed in the numerous adsense manuals and laced with just the right amount of links that would optimize my blog clickability (not a real word…but me thinks it should be real!). After about 2 months of keywording my blogs I had made a grand total of less than $5! For the effort I had put in my reward was somewhat <insert your own word>. But I am glad it happened, because that period of adsense madness produced one of my most inauthentic writings. It was as if I had sold my writing soul to the devil google.
 

So one day I pulled off all the google adsense, keyword click searches and ridiculous apparatus I had rigged my site with and started blogging from my heart again. Over the years (but not overnight) my writing improved, my viewership increased and my listserv grew…today I see a lot of bloggers blogging. But their only reason for blogging is to make money or become the most googled blog in the world. So they write not in their own voice but in the voice of google.
 

If you are a blogger and you are fidgeting with the idea of google adsense and all that other stuff, there is nothing wrong with that, but if it detracts from the purity of your content…stop! Readers can smell fakeness and moreover it waters down your brand. Write from your heart on topics you truly care for, don’t write an entertainment blog post because that is what is popular. Instead, write on entertainment because you truly care about who Kanye West slapped yesterday night entertainment and your readers will feed off your passion.
 

Keep writing and stay awesome.
 

Wishing You Extreme Success,

Have a question for Ofili? Leave a comment below. Ofili strives to answer every question he is asked.

A lot of times I find myself in bed but unable to sleep because my mind is shuffling through a million and one ideas. Some of them are scary, some are crazy, some are exciting and I feel the urge to jump out of bed to begin implementing them. But I know I must work the next day so I go to sleep not by counting sheep but by counting the crazy ideas circulating my head.

You have a smart phone stop doing stupid ish with it, basically means that you have a smart phone so stop doing ish with it! Lot of people use their ultra cool blackberrys, iphones and Android phones to send senseless messages and texts all day long. While there is nothing wrong with having a little fun with your phone, what is wrong is making that the primary purpose of your device. Your device is way too powerful for stuff like “if you don’t send this to 7 people your blank will blank” or “Forward this to all your friends for a free blank-pad.” Your smart phones are smarter better than that and should be used for smart things, like creating draft entries to that blog post that you have always been meaning to write, tracking your business appointments and activities, computing business expenses or responding to emails from those important clients and lots more. Whatever you decide to do, just remember that you have a smart phone so stop doing stupid ish with ith it!

Wishing You Extreme Success,

Have a question for Ofili? Leave a comment below. Ofili strives to answer every question he is asked.

The most exciting moment of any young author’s life (actually of any author young or old) is seeing and touching the first copy of their book. I am sure it is the same joy that is felt when a baby is born but I can only verify that through movies and baby delivery documentaries. But yet that moment is magical, as months of hardwork, endless editing and critiquing are finally transformed into an actual physical book. That was the same joy I felt just last April when I was informed that the first copies of my second book How Laziness Saved My Life were waiting for me at home. I could barely contain my excitement as I viciously tore open the box with my car keys and hurriedly grabbed the first copy I could lay my hands on. I rapidly flipped through the book but rather than the joy I had anticipated for so long I felt [blank]! It is that kind of feeling that you get when you find out that you just got dumped. I should have been happy today but all I felt was sadness as the realization of what had happened began to sink in. The words in the book had come out all fuzzy and what should have been an awesome book instead looked like a bootlegged version of a bootlegged version. I was dumbfounded! Honestly, this would not have been an issue if it was just one box, but with 80 other boxes on a truck making their way to shipping dock it was catastrophic!

How did this happen and why! I felt stupid for not catching the error before it went to press and for printing so many books. Thus violating my very own self-publishing rules. As I went to bed that night, there were two burning thoughts in my head…“Save money and proceed with the books in their poor condition” or “scrap the entire package at a significant loss and reprint.” My financial side wanted to proceed with the books, but my crazy side, the side that had preached for hours on end about the importance of quality and integrity wanted me to scrap the books. As an entrepreneur I was stuck between a rock and a really hard place…it reminded me about an interesting coffee story.

In June of 2008 at the height of the US financial crisis, unemployment had jumper to 5.5 percent, gas prices were climbing aggressively and layoffs were happening everywhere as companies scrambled around searching for ways to reduce expenses…Starbucks was not spared. As the largest coffee retailer in the world, Starbucks was faced with several options to reduce cost. One of them had to do with coffee beans. Starbucks roasted up to four hundred million pounds of coffee a year and financial calculations showed that if they reduced the quality of their roasted coffee by just 5%, they could save a few million dollars. This would greatly increase their chance of recession survival and furthermore, market research revealed that less than 10% of its customers would be able to tell the difference between the standard high quality coffee and the newly proposed lower quality coffee. CEO Howard Schultz faced a dilenma…save money or honor the Starbucks mantra of quality. Schultz chose the latter, stating that “Starbucks would never sacrifice quality for the sake of saving costs.”

I loved telling that story to people, but as I lay in bed on the Friday April 27th I began to snore slowly began to realize that while story-telling was fun…the actual implementation of the lessons was difficult. With 4500 copies already printed and a well publicized release date of April 2012 the pressure to stick with the poor quality books was great. A compromise would have been to sell the books at a lower price to recuperate the initial printing cost, but again this would clash with my personal philosophy of quality quality quality. So I made what was easily one of the most painful financial decisions I had ever made in my life and opted to fix the error and re-print the book. And thus eating up the 80 boxes of books as a business loss…all because of Starbucks!

As businesses and entrepreneurs, we hope never to be in situations like this, but we cannot control everything sometimes stuff happens and we are pressured by money, delivery deadlines and others factors to get faulty products out. But the sign of a good business are the ones that are willing to take short-term losses to deliver long-term and high quality products for their customers. You might be sitting on something today that requires the same type of action. Your decision might seem financially illogical, but whatever you do, remember that quality might seems like a poor choice short-term but long-term it would go a long way in upholding your brand and image.

NOTE: The print error was actually caused by a PDF font embedment problem that I did not catch when I sent file to the printers. And the font fuzziness was not easy to detect during printing. Fortunately the printers have been willing to work with me on rectifiying the problems and further minimizing the losses by offering discounts on the re-prints. So watch out for the new May release date for the high Quality version of How Laziness Saved My Life Book and thanks for your support and patience as always.

Wishing You Extreme Success,

Have a question for Ofili? Leave a comment below. Ofili strives to answer every question he is asked.

So today is one of those days where everything just seemed to go wrong and everyone just seemed to annoy me…it was as if today was the Piss-Ofili-Off-National-Holiday except that I never got the memo.
 

My frustration came to a boiling point when I got back home and found out that the water leak that I had been complaining about for the past 2 months had evolved from a slow trickle to an all out gusher. I completely lost it! After typing up an email letter to the landlord to express my annoyance in not so nice words such as #@$$@@ and %#%#%…I slouched on the couch thinking to myself how terrible my day had been. And then it happened, it is one of the weird things that happens with such precise timing that it creeps you out. I stumbled upon the picture of a Canadian paralympic advert, which showed how a man that lost his leg in an accident evolve from rehabilitation to running on prosthetic limb. I was blown away by the creativity in the picture, but more importantly I was slapped into the reality of the triviality of my situation! There are way more crazy things out there than a leaking roof and sometimes it takes a little picture to get us back on track. Don’t let a bad day get you down, like it did to me. Happy holidays.
 

Wishing You Extreme Success,

Have a question for Ofili? Leave a comment below. Ofili strives to answer every question he is asked.

Unless you have been living under a rock or third-mainland Bridge for that matter, you would have definitely seen pictures of the 32 contestants for the Most Beautiful Girl In Nigeria. I would like to frame what I am about to say in a clean polite manner…but honestly all I can say is that the pictures were TERRRIBLE. Now I am not saying the girls are not beautiful or anything, because that is not what the contest is about (plus Ms.Kaduna and Ms.Imo were quite *cough *cough). However, the organizers, the photographer, the make up artist and anyone else involved in leaking releasing these pictures needs to be shot! But with rubber band o…no bokoharam in this joint.
 

On a serious note, this is why they have to be shot…the most beautiful girl in Nigeria is a NATIONAL contest not a local contest….I repeat NATIONAL contest…that said it is extremely inexcusable for the pictures to look like a drunk make-up artist prepped the girls only for a blind photographer to take the pictures and and then send them to a nursery school for photo editing! Especially when Nigeria has exceptional talents such as Lola Maja (Make-Up), Collins Metu (Photography) and Geofrey Olisa (Picture Editing) to name a few. I have no idea who organized the photoshoot, but I can take a stab and say that he did not get the job based on his/her talent. I mean we had girls wearing t-shirts and training bras for a National contest photo-shoot with weave tracks showings on their heads! #fml (Fufu Makes Me Laugh).
 

What kills me the most is that these pictures even as bad as they are could still have been rescued. Hello! We now have Instagram and numerous other simple and FREE photo editing software out there. I spent less than 10 minutes using this website http://pixlr.com/o-matic/ to edit 5 of the 32 contestant pictures. And while the clean-up does not necessarily fix the initial disastrous pictures…it helps make it a bit better. You can see the changes below and decide for yourself:
 

In conclusion, let us do what we can do to ensure that the MBGN organizers do not repeat this crime against humanity Nigeria again! And that we extend quality imagery in all facets of Nigerian life including books, magazines and especially NOLLYWOOD! Because contrary to popular belief, people do judge books by their covers and people judge countries by the quality of their images.
 

PS: I might sound like I am joking, but these pictures really made me sad. Nigeria can do better than this and it is the little details that would help us solve the big problems. As bloggers and based on National pride, we should demand better pictures or clean up the pictures before posting.
 

Wishing You Extreme Success,

Have a question for Ofili? Leave a comment below. Ofili strives to answer every question he is asked.

People ask me all the time what it takes to become a successful blogger. For years I struggled with that question, because there were so many different things that made one successful in blogging. But over the years, I have found one aspect of blogging that every successful blogger I know from Seth Godin to Linda Ikeji possessed early on when they started. It is an aspect that has made them as successful as they are now and it is one that every upcoming blogger needs to adhere to. It is it to me the best blogging advise of all time and it is this:

If you write a blog post and nobody comments on it, keep writing…
If you pour your heart and soul into a blog entry and nobody retweets it, keep writing…
If you craft the perfect blog post and nobody facebook likes it, keep writing…
If you write the best blog article ever and people tell you it is whack [Including your Mum], keep on writing…

Because success in blogging is not determined by the amount of comments, retweets or likes that you get, but rather by the passion you have for blogging. And provided you keep on writing…you passion will pull you through to success!

Wishing You Extreme Success,

Have a question for Ofili? Leave a comment below. Ofili strives to answer every question he is asked.

Copies of How Laziness have begun making their way across the universe…from the Angry birds planet to the Mushroom Kingdom everyone is getting their hands on a copy…ensure you pre-order your copy now before Laziness hits Earth! Pre-order your copy here http://amzn.to/getlazy

see more pictures here…but remember hurry