A Marketing Story
I’m not sure if I’ve got this right, but the author is Nigerian—from a pretty poor region. To promote national integration, graduates there are required to complete an additional year of national service after finishing school. It’s kind of like a country-wide camping-style program where young people help with infrastructure projects across the nation. I’m grateful that Qin Shi Huang pushed for unification so early; otherwise, maybe Chinese people today would also be subject to forced labor for the sake of ethnic cohesion. During that service year, he made about $50 a month—just enough to rent a server and build a blog. Of course, he also spent money on courses to learn various marketing techniques.
Even though he paid for marketing training, he still didn’t know what kind of traffic-driving content to create, so he ended up promoting in Facebook groups and got banned. Through a coworker, he learned about affiliate marketing (CPS), but that didn’t make him much money either—barely enough to cover his server costs. That was over six months ago.
After finishing his service and graduating, he couldn’t find a job, so he borrowed money to start another blog. This time, he was determined to focus on affiliate marketing—mainly by integrating his previous marketing knowledge to promote relevant tools through a sales funnel, along with his own course and membership products.
And he made money.
Now I see it: this is packaging (most of it is probably true). A story designed to resonate emotionally, subtly telling readers through his own success case that “if you buy X, you’ll make money just like me.” That’s content marketing.