How To Start Internet Business In Nigeria

In this post, I will teach you how to start internet business in Nigeria. See how to start internet business in Nigeria to make good money from it.

Internet business in Nigeria is a very big and lucrative one. With an increasing rate of unemployment in Nigeria and a dire need for people to have at least one alternative source of income, the online business space is getting more attention than ever.

The ease of growing a business online without a physical office has made it more affordable and lucrative to new and existing entrepreneurs.

Read Also: 5 Steps to Start internet business from the scratch

In today’s world, there are lots of information available online. But the real work is to separate the chaff from the millet in other to get the right information. Today, I bring to you undiluted information on  How to Start Online Business in Nigeria  and be successful in it.

But before that, let us know the meaning of the salient words in our title.

Online : According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, online means anything connected to, served by, or available through a system and especially a computer or telecommunications system (such as the Internet).

Business : Also, according to Merriam Webster Dictionary, business means a usually commercial or mercantile activity engaged in as a means of livelihood.

How to Start Internet Business in Nigeria

Truth be told, internet business, just like every other legitimate business doesn’t promise the ‘get rick quick’ benefit some bloggers paint it to be.

Internet business involves you possessing some qualities to succeed. I have outlined some must have qualities before venturing in internet business:

Hard work

Yes, hard work is the first quality you must possess for you to succeed. You must be willing to go extra miles, sacrifice extra things (materially, financially or otherwise) for you to make it online.

Dedication

Of course, you must be dedicated to your work and also determined that you will make it, you must not feel less concerned about your business.

Read Also: 10 Reasons Why Your Business Must Have An Internet Presence

Consistency

Like I mentioned earlier, internet business is not a “get rich quick” business. This means that you must be patient with the process until you start getting results.

But trust me, with consistency, you will see yourself amassing great wealth from internet business. Remember, Never Give Up.

Be Passion-driven

You must have that passion for what you are doing. For you to succeed in the long run, you must show interest, love for your work.

“The happiest and most successful people I know don’t just love what they do, they’re obsessed with solving an important problem, something that matters to them,” Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston said during the 2013 MIT commencement address.

Be Ready to Learn

You should find someone to teach you some practical aspects of online business/ internet marketing depending on the niche you decide to go to and be ready to pay them if they ask you to do so. Remember, they say ‘Knowledge is costly’ and also you must ‘learn before you earn’.

Possess a Business Mindset

Yes, you are venturing into a business, so you must possess that business mindset. Having a business mindset means you must have entrepreneurial qualities and skills too. This means you must be ready to invest in your online business.

Honesty and Trustworthiness

The quickest way to loose your clients is to show them that you are dishonest and not trustworthy. But if you want to gain their trust, then the reverse has to be the case.

The only way to achieve this level of trust is to be totally transparent. The more transparent you are, the more you will be trusted by your customers.

Be willing to share what you learn, give customers unrestricted access to their campaign data, actively request feedback, and tell your clients the truth even good or bad.

Having these personal qualities outlined above, you can now tell that you have passed the first requirements for a successful online business.

What you need to Start Internet Business in Nigeria

Let us look at what you will need to put in place before you embark on your journey of making it online.

Read Also: 10 Reasons Why A Corporate Website For Your Small Scale Business Is Necessary

Steps to Start an Online Business in Nigeria

Outlined below are the steps required to start an online business in Nigeria:

1. Proffer a Solution to a Problem

First things first, ask yourself, what are you passionate about? Next, what does society need? Ask yourself what are the problems people are facing?

What problem does your business solve? What distinguishes you from your competitors? Who is your target audience or prospective client or customer?

Identify a problem people face everyday and find creative ways to fill the needs. As long as consumers have problems, they will always search for solutions.

People will always look for better, faster and smarter ways to accomplish everyday tasks. And fortunately for entrepreneurs, there are still lots of rooms for improvements in existing products.

That said, the biggest issue for most founders is finding these painful problems and matching them with the best solutions possible.

It could be that people find it difficult viewing and comparing thousands of hotel rooms and prices, viewing and comparing thousands of event centres at a go, buying items online from the comfort of their homes instead of the troubles of a market, searching for information on the internet, and lots more. One of the most common (and deadly) mistakes in business is creating a solution before identifying the problem.

Tips

Solve real painful problems. Google made search better. Amazon simplified online buying and selling. Netflix solved on-demand streaming media.

Uber is trying to make on-demand car service better. OLX, Jiji, MoboFree created a market place where tens of thousands of buyers and sellers meet and transact online eliminating the location barriers.

Tips  are some of the biggest necessities coming up in the world today: clean energy, robotics, cybersecurity, transportation and artificial intelligence. You can proffer your solutions by blogging on issues in some of these fields.

2. Develop a Business Plan

After you must have chosen a problem from the Venn diagram set up of things you want to solve, it is now time to write a business plan.

Many internet businesses are operating without a business plan. Forgetting that online businesses should be managed like offline businesses.

The way you wake and you are meant to go to work everyday is the same way you should spend time on your online business.

You can get someone hired to write it on your behalf but it will be best for you to write your business plan yourself. Your internet based-business plan is a blueprint of your business which helps you to stay organized and focused at all times.

Writing a business plan will help keep you within a niche as well as obey the rules of webmasters. Don’t make the mistake of starting an internet business without a business plan.

These are some questions to ask yourself when preparing your business plan: Here are a product? Where are your audience located? What is your budget? What tools do you need? Financial forecast?

Tips

Remember that you’ll also need to keep records of all your business transactions and processes online for accounting and tracking purposes respectively.

Microsoft’s Excel program is very good for keeping records of this nature, but don’t forget to keep a back-up of your files, just in case.

Read Also: 21 Essential Digital Marketing Tips For Small & Amp; Medium Businesses

3. Get an Online Presence

Online presence here refers to either a landing page/website/blog . They all have their pros and cons, so you decide which you go for.

The essence of the online presence is to have a housing for your online products. Since communication and conversation is done online, customers need where they can get more information concerning the product or service you are offering.

Tips:  Register a domain name and get a hosting plan : Note: Your domain name must reflect the business or service you are offering online.

Take for instance; you are offering paid courses online, your domain name can look like this: youronlinetutoring.com, buycoursesonline.com, paidcourses.biz, etc.  You can use FindDigitalTools.com for your hosting or any other hosting company that will provide the following:

a. Unlimited bandwidth

b. Email accounts

c. Support (very important)

Note: You should have a ‘Subscription Form’ on your website. This allows you to know the people interested in your product or service. You should also endeavour to send weekly or monthly newsletters to your subscribers.

4. Create your Social Media Platforms

After creating your website/blog/landing page, you will need to create your social media channels because it brings you closer to your fans and helps you build a better relationship when you are not trying to sell anything to them. You can create an accounts with the following platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google plus, etc.

5. Promote your Online Presence

This is the most important aspect in setting up an internet business. Remember that your online presence may be your business website, your blog or your landing page. You are to device your own channel of promotion. There are paid and free channels.

The free channels : 1. Facebook page and groups 2. Twitter 3. Instagram 4. Google+

Nigeria forums (Nairaland.com, etc) 6. Google search engine (You must be proficient with SEO). Paid channels : 1. Running Adverts on Search Engines and Social Media. If handled properly, it can generate a good amount of profit for you, even as a beginner. 2. Using Influencers (People with good number of followers to help you with promotions).

Tip : You should employ the services of experts to handle this part for you.

6. Create Problem-solving Contents to Engage your Audience

Your contents play a major role in your internet business. It is the contents on your blog that will keep your readers glued to you. You need to create problem-solving and value-adding contents on your blog.

Tip: If you are good at teaching, you can create tutoring tips online to engage your audience. Contents that are engaging are worth sharing and that is what your audience will do to help you get your word out and give you exposure.

7. Create Problem-solving Products to Solve the Problems you have Identified

Develop product(s) that takle(s) the problems you have resolved to solve online. These products you have developed will then be sold out to your audience.

Tips : 1. Talk about the product and how it benefits the user when creating your contents. 2. Make an offer. 3. Create urgency. 4. And you can even ask for the sale.

When creating contents around your product(s), you need to focus on how your product(s) or service(s) is uniquely able to solve people’s problems or make their lives better.

Read Also: Functions of the Nigerian Internet Registration Association

8. Get Traffic to Your Online Presence

Yes, you should also focus on getting organic traffic on your blog/website/landing page. Remember, no traffic = no business. You can get this traffic through social media platforms or search engines which narrows down to free and paid traffic.

9. Set up an Online Marketing Strategies to Make Money

This requires thorough knowledge of digital marketing. Online marketing strategies are efforts you put in other to get your business to the right audience for them to buy your product or service.

Online marketers, apart from doing other things, sell online to make money and this involves marketing what they are selling — of course, there is a difference between selling and marketing. The difference is in the knowledge of digital marketing which is a required skill for online business even in Nigeria.

When the above steps are followed dully, you will see that your journey to internet business will be fun and rewarding as well.

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