My Story: From Broke To Battling With Location Mess – To Online Success!

My name is Ngoka Christopher (Khris Steven) and this is my blog. I mean, my very first site.

I run a web publishing business/compnay – KhrisDigital Marketing.

I hope my story does nothing more than inspire you.

I’m just a normal guy who was born and raised up somewhere in West Africa, Nigeria, Lagos.

My journey in the online marketing world started as a result of the passion I developed (on my quest for financial freedom) to help businesses succeed in acquiring more customers and making sales.

Sadly, that didn’t play out easily the way I envisioned.

As I was dead-broke and had no one to help me get there. I just graduated from college (Polytechnic precisely) with an HND in computer science, and things weren’t so easy in this part of the world.

Especially for those who desired to make a living online.

Paying for just a $47 course or material was a lot back then!

So, I embarked on the slow-harder path to see what the internet could bring for me. I literally devoured every FREE online marketing material I come in contact with online.

I literally dabbled into dozens of kinds of stuff.

It was hella-Crazzzzy!

Learning here and there:

Blog posts
YouTube videos
Podcasts
Free courses
Hundreds of hours spent learning in Facebook groups

I followed Neil Patel (mostly), Backlinko, Larry Kim, Rand Fishkin (Moz), SocialmediaExaminer, SearchEngineJournal, Ahrefs, plus uncountable marketing blogs and devoured each and every one of their contents.

As much as my brain could carry.

I read blog posts mostly because watching videos would consume most of my data.

You can tell how terrible things were lol.

Starting Khrisdigital Blog

In my home country (Nigeria) there is what we call NYSC which stands for National Youth Service Corp. This is just like a scheme set up by the government to involve graduates in Nigeria to help in building and developing the country.

Every graduate must go through this one-year service to be called a full graduate.

One of the major aims of this program is to develop common ties among Nigerian youths and promote national unity and integration.

This is (skinny) me during the swearing-in ceremony to become a full corp member during our 3 weeks camping:

Before we would all be posted to our primary place of assignment. This was June 2017.

The last time I checked you can’t be offered a job in Nigeria as a Nigerian without going through this 1-year exercise to serve your father’s land. At least for a common man without connections and all that.

“Where am I driving with this?”

Alright,

It was during the one-year service I saved up to create this blog (Khrisdigital.com) my first blog out of my 4 current active blogs.

“Khris, did you say saved up?”

Oh yes, because then our monthly allowance as a Youth Corp was 19k (in Naira). That’s about $50/mo lol. Nothing more or less ha.

After pondering on several domain names, I settled for Khrisdigital, as I wanted to build a personal-branded site like that of Neil Patel.

(Neil was a HUGE inspiration back in days!)

Then I got on a 6months hosting package from Hostgator.

Took me several weeks to learn my way around WordPress, and doing some initial site setup was tedious.

I had no idea what to blog about nor the type of content to produce.

I just came up with random online marketing topics, researched, and put up a blog post that wouldn’t bring in any traffic.

In fact, my very first 5-7 posts on this blog never brought single search traffic.

I already deleted a few of them months ago.

All I would do then is go into several Facebook groups to spam my post links in order to get traffic. In the worst cases, I would get booted out. That’s in the well-moderated groups.

I only survived in the spammy ones.

Poor me ☹

Going forward…

Through the motivation and encouragement of a fellow Corp member (now a close friend and partner), who was also into blogging and then making little cents from his eCommerce focused blog – I decided to test the waters of affiliate marketing.

But that didn’t bring forth any fruit, until the fifth month as a blogger and third month as an affiliate. I made my first dollar online.

It was $4.95 from post-auto-dripping software called MissingLettr (affiliate link). Which I no longer promote seriously.

It was the sixth month and my hosting package was about to expire.

I hadn’t even made up-to $10 nor enough to cover for my web hosting subscription. Of course, I had no money, I just passed out from the Youth Corp with a nice-looking certificate. This was 2018.

And a computer science degree.

I had already submitted over 50 job applications!

All futile.

The only hope I had was growing my tiny blog. To make a living online.

“Now, that is about to be taking away from me if I don’t renew my hosting”

To cut the story short, I had to borrow money from a friend to renew my hosting for another six months, after being let down by many.

This was when I knew that – I really need to make THIS work within the next 6 months.

No one was coming to rescue nor do my pushups for me. I know.

By this time, I had started improving on copywriting, keyword research, and testing a few SEO strategies to make my site rank.

After 2 months of renewing my hosting, I got to know about the One Funnel Away Challenge by Russell Brunson, took it and applied a little of what I learned, and made about $500 in a week by leveraging other people’s Facebook group.

Not from this blog though.

I was like:

Something is working right. Nothing feels more fulfilling than this haha. Imagine that JOY when you hit your first breakthrough online.

This was when I decided to change my 6 years old MSI 1632 1gb RAM laptop my parents bought me during my second year in college.

Did I forget to tell you how frustrating it was operating a laptop without its battery? which I had already replaced twice.

I bought a fairly used HP ProBook 640core i5 from my very first online marketing breakthrough.

I also invested in a few tools and went crazy on producing content and connecting more with people on Facebook. Contents and building relationship has been the greatest contributing factor to my progress online.

Progress Moving Forward?

Ever since I’ve experienced numerous breakthroughs: $1k days $2k days and even $5k per week in earnings. Connected with great marketers in this space. And personally, coached and helped hundreds of people.

Around June to September 2019 – was when things started falling in place and I decided to launch my second and third blog in a very targeted health niche.

Then not quite long ago, I started an experimental blog (for testing stuff) and also partnered with a close friend on a HUGE marketing project. Plus creating our first SaaS product.

All coming along pretty well.

Apart from discovering niches and doing SEO and stuff…

I’m also deep into the world of sales funnels right now. This is a concept I really love and continually study and implement on my projects.

Sales funnel can dramatically do wonders for anyone who understands how to use them in their business.

I discovered it all through Russell Brunson and have been die-hard followers of his teachings for a very long time.

His book Dotcom Secrets gave me a modern perspective in marketing and sales. I still go through Dotcom Secrets every now and then.

Getting exposed to ClickFunnels and sales funnel as a whole changed my entire online business to the extent of making a big part of Khrisdigital blog focused on Sales funnel tools, strategies, and resources.

Researching and writing on things like these keep me educated and informed in marketing. And opening new doors for me altogether.

Along the process – recommending and helping people set up their first sales funnel in different niches.

I’ve written a lot of posts regarding funnels and reviewed some pretty good ones which I’m currently using in some parts of my business.

ClickFunnels and Kartra especially.

This is one of the reasons why I’ve had some pretty encouraging commission from ClickFunnels affiliate program:

At the moment, I’m averaging about 5 figures per month online. Still in my early 5fig days. Yeah, it feels amazing to be in the process. But we’re not there quite yet.

Things I Have Tried and Failed At

Literally, it was and has been a VERY VERY rough road for me.

It’s the price we pay:

To be different and live life on my own terms
Break free from the norm
Prove to the world that it is possible to make it happen from this side

My hunger for success was (and is still) a deadly one. To be quite frank.

This was me (in 2018) working 12 hours a day on my MSI 1632. Even though then, my journey wasn’t too clear. (Had no idea where I was headed)

Now in 2020, I still work roughly 10 hours/day but with a much clearer path and on more revenue-generating tasks.

It’s funny to me sometimes because I find it difficult to explain to people how I ended up as a marketer. No, it wasn’t a mistake.

I think it’s more like trying stuff got me here.

Like:

Casual worker as QA/QC (Quality assurance/Quality control) personnel at a pharmaceutical company
Worked as a machine operator at a plastic production company
Worked as a lotto salesman for an anonymous body. (Didn’t end up well)
Was involved in various Network marketing opportunities
Got involved in various Ponzi schemes that ruined me
Sold seafood during my NYSC days. Lost some money and stopped the business
Worked in a supermarket and got fired after a few weeks
Tried setting up a digital marketing agency

I’m very much in my early days on this journey, having a very long road ahead. However, those were a few awkward kinds of stuff I dabbled into before finally found my route.

Like – I had always hustled a lot NOT because I wanted to make just money, No. My dream has always been to serve and make an impact on lives.

At the highest possible level.

Desired freedom to live life on my own terms, make my parents and everyone around me happy.

As someone from an average home whose environment never understood the power of the internet that much. Limited power supply, data, crazy economy, etc.

Deep down I knew living an average life with a paying job isn’t going to get me to where I desired to be in life.

I understood that in order to make it largely – it’s definitely a must to make a large impact. I saw the internet as a medium to make it a reality.

Just like what I learned from the Millionaire Fastlane book about the Law of Effection:

The more lives you affect in any entity you control, in scale and/or magnitude, the richer you will become.

Meaning:

You just have to impact millions to make millions.

It was after realizing this I had to take the content publishing business seriously. The more eyes I get on my sites and contents, with great connections I make – the more problems elevated and lives touched.

The money follows indefinitely.

This is just a PURE rule in the internet marketing and business world. It’s the old clichéd value giving and nothing complicated.

It never changes as far as human needs must be met.

No Matter Where You Are From In The World – Believe Me, You Can Do This!

Seriously, if someone like me from a part of the world where making money and having success online is always nightmare despite the INSANE limitations in power, data, economy, and limited resources – trust me you CAN DO IT.

It doesn’t matter the number of blog posts you’ve read, nor the YouTube videos you consume, definitely the NOT the number of courses you’ve taken.

And no, not the mentor/coach you hired.

What really matters is the IMPLEMENTATION.

That’s the key 🔑

Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly okay to seek knowledge and development BUT acquiring knowledge without ACTION is NOTHING.

Everything still remains the same until you DO something, as what we do will directly determine what we learn.

Thank You Thank You!

Finally, if you made it this far to this part about me – from the bottom of my heart I sincerely appreciate you took your precious time to read this.

I know my story is a bit boring. Bear with me 😊

I really do hope you get the best help and resources and having the problem that brought you here solved. I’m always here for you as your marketing resource guide and friend.

I read and reply to every single of my emails, comments. Also do feel free to add and connect with me on Twitter here and LinkedIn here.

Thank you for reading.

Wishing you all the best that life has to offer on your journey to make an impact on lives, serve, and make money to attain the freedom desired.

Stay happy and blessed!

KHRIS STEVEN