Nigerian Internet Startup advice and Tech News

We Welcome New Competition, Seriously!

2011-08-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

The time is exactly 9:15 in the morning. I didn't wake up early just to write this post, the truth is, I've been awake all through the night. I'm really finding it hard to hibernate the computer and go to sleep these days.

You can put it how you like, say, I'm losing sleep over competition.. Well, I'm not ashamed. Its a good thing, it has changed me and helped me see the bigger picture better than i did earlier.

The emergence of huge competition only last year like Nollywood Love has given us new determination. It has shown us a bigger market exists more than we anticipated or planned for.

Here is why you should welcome competition

1. Market validation
You can use either your competitors traffic or revenues to boost your own confidence and work harder or you can show the figures to investors to give them an idea of the market.

2. Show signs of a boom
If you see startups similar to yours springing up all over, like in the case of Groupon, then the market is experiencing a boom. Do what you can to grow as fast as possible.

The main issue is, AfricaMars Media is what I'd like to call "first generation of African video sites", together with a few early competitors.. We were ahead of our time and the was not much traction to be gained. We were ahead of our time.

With the new African TV services, the time is now and what matters is who's still here in the next 5 to even 10 years!

How African Artists could use new media to boost earnings

2011-07-18T04:49:00.004-07:00

This is a write-up a posted on a couple of african entertainment blogs some weeks back. They have generated a lot of buzz, some meaningful commenting and lots of Facebook shares.

After the whole noise has subsided, I figure I should bring the article to my readers after all, lately I've been distracted with some other work and I may have neglected this blog a bit.

Here goes the article;
There is a shift from the traditional means through which we consume entertainment to a more convenient and social medium. Since the new medium is more convenient and interesting than the traditional, in the future, it will replace what we know today as media consumption.

Mobile and digital entertainment technologies are gradually making their way into Africa and the artists and entertainers are quick to jump on the wagon in order to get their names and works out there. With convenience, consumers’ money will move from buying CDs (traditional consumption) to streaming from their mobile phones, the web and soon renting storage space on cloud services to store their entertainment and access it from their cars and other digital platforms.

This shift will definitely favor online marketing and promotion savvy entertainers and the best thing; the Global playing field would be leveled. Works by African artists would be accessible and easily sold globally due to ease and low cost of distribution of new media.

The main problem African artists and producers are facing is the problem of piracy. Illegal CD copies of their copyright materials are made and sold in huge quantities without any royalties being paid or even their consent. Even though p2p sharing and other pirate applications have given the web a bad name as far as music and movie studios are concerned, digital media and the web have a declining rate of piracy thanks to new Internet startups like Spotify and Pandora offering users music for free and making money off advertisement which they share with the record labels. This model and also paid music subscription models would decrease online piracy significantly in the very near future and digital will soon be the main money source for the music industry.

The bottom-line is, the money is in new media and the earlier African entertainers take advantage and make a name for themselves out there, the easier it would be for them to earn in the near future. The only problem is, African artists have to really focus on quality entertainment content in order to compete in the Global multi-billion dollar entertainment market share. I know we have what it takes here in Africa.

My Article Featured on Ghanaian Entertainment Blog AmeyawDebrah.com

2011-06-14T16:45:00.002-07:00

I haven't dropped any words on my blog's page for a while now, well, I have been both busy and lazy. I did some work and I am not really proud chilling most of the time. The truth is, whenever you overwork yourself for a long period of time, it reaches a stage when your brain loses steam and you run out of things to do, or at least ideas for things to do. So the best solution is map out a work plan early and when you really don't feel like working, have a rest.

Some of the works I had already mapped out and thought all through include a number of articles I wrote specifically for a few popular African entertainment and technology sites. One of the websites is AmeyawDebrah.com and the article was posted on 2 June 2011. From the comments and the request by a radio station to feature the story, I really felt humbled. It was just like when I was asked to speak at Sandton Convention Center in Johannesburg South Africa.

I truthfully believe that we are building something great at AfricaMars and we will try our best to realise the dream.

Read the post here titled "How African artists could earn more via new media".

WHAT DOES FACEBOOK’S MOVE TO MOVIES MEAN FOR MEDIA COMPANIES?

2011-03-16T16:42:00.000-07:00

Recently, Warner and Facebook announced that they will be offering the rental of the movie Dark Night on the social networking site.

I’m sure even if they wouldn’t want to accept it, this move by Facebook has given many new media startups and media incumbants sleepless nights. The announcement even sent Netflix’s stock down. The billion dollar question is, is this a real threat to media content distribution companies or just another move by an over-grown startup that is trying to own everything else online, of course apart from search which Google already owns.

If you have followed Internet companies for at least 6 to 7 years, you should know that every move facebook makes should be taken seriously.

If you look at their continuous iterations and for the fact that they have more than 600 million registered members, you will see the large distribution power they have over anything. If there is one thing they learned from creating a huge open platform, is that the money is not on the platform itself (facebook) but on ecommerce services third parties have shown them how to create, grow and monetize off their own platform. This is the best thing about creating an open platform and giving users and third parties control, you get to tap into their creativity and ultimately find monetization ways you wouldn’t have thought of. {This is a complete post on its own on how to get users to creatively show you how to monetize}.

So Facebook can definitely give media startups a run for their money and yes, we in the business should be worried. Even media companies and startups in Africa should be worried, this is why;

Facebook is good with taking things Global, advertisers may argue Facebook ads are not as effective as Google’s adwords but believe me, Facebook ads are more geo-targeted.

Facebook’s global strategy was one of the reasons they beat myspace. Facebook grew well with International markets and Myspace was still bigger than Facebook in America.

Big brands are all jumping on the Facebook ride. It’s completely debatable if this is going to last or not, afterall we’ve seen AOL. But personally I believe Facebook is different and could get even bigger than Google. Facebook taps into our behaviour to design how we interact and use the site, so unless human behaviour completely changes, Facebook is here to stay (I know this is a very bold prediction, still I’m ready and willing to make).

Social gaming is very succesful on Facebook, and social TV could even be more successful. Facebook can even make local social TV successful for their recorded success in scoring local advertising deals.

If Facebook could connect people based on their interest and location through movies and TV? Boom!! It would be the biggest media company. I’m not exagerating here...
So with all these, what do you do as a small video content startup?

1. Niche Distribution.

This is debatable because Facebook is divided into networks and that covers lots of niche markets. Still if you have a huge reach in a niche, lets say lovers of movies in a particular African language or setting, then you have a stay of execution.

2. Exclusive content.

Netflix is moving to create it’s own network quality TV content. You need exclusivity to differentiate and that exclusivity is going to be hard because the content owners will go to someone with bigger distribution to produce more revenue for their content.

3. User experience

This is the one that will actually determine if you’ll win or lose. User experience in media design is everything. Content of course is king, and once your technology doesn’t suck, the one with the best user experience wins. If you can beat the geeks in designing for viewing (social networking and watching a show or movie are active and passive things respectively) since the people at Facebook may not hit the nail on its head the first time, then you’ll get some much needed traction in time.

Even though the Netflix boss said “people don’t go to Facebook to watch movies”, we at AfricaMars media are taking nothing for granted.

Facebook is bigger than just a social network, its becoming a global community and in every community people live, eat, work and do so many other things. Same with Facebook, people mainly connect on facebook, but soon they will work on it, discover information and entertainment on it, may be even study and of course always go there to kill boredom (watching movies) ;)

The 2011 Forbes List (Tips another Bubble?)

2011-03-09T19:15:00.000-08:00

Just read a report and went through the new Forbes top richest people's list and well, it shows an unexpected or even shocking increase in global wealth accumulation. I dont want to go into the detail of the list, here is a link for your thorough investigations of the complete list Forbes 2011 Wealthiest.

What I wanna do is discuss why I see signs of another bubble forming and how people should be careful not to fall into another unanticipated financial melt-down.

First-off I wanna start by saying that I am not an economist in anyway, I have no economic authority to issue any harsh warnings, rather, I have experience. A decade of closely monitoring patterns from stock rises to rich lists and so on.

Here is a bit of superstition....

In 2007 prior to the economic downturn, number of billionaire in China around doubled, same with this years list. Also prior to the burst Russia had the most number of billionaires. Russia has also claimed the most billionaire in 2011.

We also have a record number both in terms of billionaires and also their combined wealth. But I can't come up with a theory based on superstition.. I need genuine logical proof. Here we go

The Bubble..

The cause of the last financial crisis was the housing bubble, the one before it was caused by the Internet bubble. So, what bubble do I see for ming now?

I think the bubble may not have formed yet, but its gathering momentum and getting ready to form, blow up and burst in the future.

Why do I see a bubble now?..

We are still in the road to recovery while we are see bloated valuations for companies, assets and net-worths. The truth is the Global economy hasn't fully covered, may be not even halfway but we are seeing record wealth and net-worths. By the time the economy fully recovers, we'll completely be in a bubble.

Internet assets..

Internet companies are being valued much higher than media companies, while the Internet companies can't earn half in revenue of what media companies earn given the same content.

Due to this, many TV shows are skeptic of forgoing Network dollars of streaming chicken change.

Africa..

There isn't a bubble forming here, Africa is actually undervalued and has lots of potential in the coming future. As economies improve and new development comes to Africa, we will see similar growth rates to what we have seen in India and China in the past decade.

Lessons Entrepreneurs should Learn from the Uprising in the Middle East

2011-03-05T15:09:00.000-08:00

The #1 lesson entrepreneurs could learn from the recent uprising in the Middle East is ...... No, not Social Media.... Guess again! Social media is surely one of the top lessons but the top-most lesson you can get out of the events in the Middle East isn't so obvious.

#1. Momentum in a trend is good.

I know most people won't agree with me because Social Media organized and spread the whole revolution so it should be number one on the list. The truth is, I disagree.. Without my number 1 lesson to be learned here, the revolution would have taken place in Tunisia alone or may be Egypt and wouldn't have spread protests and potential (as for now) regime changes in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and the minor demonstrations we are starting to see in Saudi Arabia and Iran. The momentum created a wave across the whole region, and now that the momentum is still building, it's really a crucial and fragile time for regimes in the region and elsewhere to hold on to power to survive the momentum's waves.

Increasing momentum convinces people in business, warfare, politics and so on (by building a growing hope for change or a certain event). When people see build of power, confidence or activity, they tend to believe in some sort of coming result and they follow.

With this strategy, entrepreneurs can learn to project confidence with investors, employees and even customers by constantly achieving milestones. You could stay silent for a while, but once you start, keep moving with a series of activities and coverage. Inconsistency kills (kills momentum and confidence).

I'm pretty sure the leaders whose regimes are facing these protests wouldn't want to see any more leaders step down due to pressure because that would build confidence in their own protesting oppositions and increase the whole Middle East uprisings momentum. I predict if one more regime should fall, then it wouldn't be the last ruler we'll see step down due to protests in 2011... The fall will make the protests spread more across the region and beyond. Also, if no leader should fall in the coming weeks or days, (Libya being a crucial point) then the momentum may begin to die down... Therefore, the fate of many other Middle Eastern regimes facing protests may lie in Tripoli. Just saying... ;)

#2 Social Media

The lesson #1 would be an entrepreneurs greatest take-away from the recent uprisings. Understanding this whole psychological concept of using momentum to project confidence would be a great asset to you. Lesson #2 is obviously everyone's favorite lesson from the happenings. It is SOCIAL MEDIA..

Social Media gave power to the people in these regions through mass real-time connection, spread and organiztion.. The campaigns that toppled decades long regimes started on the 2004 founded social network Facebook. Give people social media and they have freedom..

Also, engage your users on social media and they'll work for you through spreading your message. Especially if you can relate to a cause, social media sites like Facebook or Twitter can make your message go viral.

#3 Greed isn't good afterall.

Another take-away for entrepreneurs from the recent events is the fact that greed isn't good for anything you are doing in the long term. The toppled regimes have been accused by their followers of embezzling of billions and not providing necessities and jobs to their followers.

Therefore, what this means to entrepreneurs is, if you want to build the next big thing, don't be greedy towards your employees, investors and customers... Don't be too self focussed.. Stand up for them if you want your venture to go far.. Don't focus on yourself, focus on the company's interest.. Forget making a huge net-worth for yourself, rather, build a very valuable company. If you think in the long run and shun greed, you and your company will do more financial and the party will last much longer.

Lastly, if you believe there is more to be learned from the recent uprising in the Middle East both as business or life lessons, let us know in the comments below.

Does saying goodbye to user uploads put zoopy in direct competition with Africamars?

2011-03-02T05:26:00.000-08:00

I got an email in January from zoopy.com about the new change on the site. In the email, their CEO Jason Elk talked about a change in Zoopy’s strategy to focus more on Zoopy TV. The African online video streaming site will discontinue user uploads and focus more on the more popular Zoopy TV section of the site which delivers TV content like shows and other programs.

Well, Zoopy started a few years back and grew popular in Africa, I think mostly in Southern Africa. In startups, pivoting a product or service to focus on an area with more traction or revenue potential is very vital for long time success. The same happened with my own African video startup AfricaMars TV. We from the beginning did not want to host user videos, because we thought Google was doing that for everyone in the World with Youtube. What we wanted to do was provide live video streams from African TV stations online.

Our Initial idea had lots of setbacks both infrastructure wise and biz dev wise. Then, after all the setbacks, we were forced to re-think how we were going about the whole project, then it hit us.. Boom!!! "Users don't want live streams (with a few exceptions like sports programming) on the Net, they want convenience. TV Anytime, anywhere."

When you look at all the Live TV streaming and User generated video sites that popped up between 2007 and 2008 and see how many of them have grown or gained usage anything close to what Netflix and Hulu have, you'll find out that there are none.. Once upon a time, there was Jhoost, Zattoo. Where are they now? Overshadowed by Hulu and Netflix like how Youtube overshadowed anything else including Dailymotion and Vimeo.

With all these at the back of our mind, we decided to carve a niche which we were already targeting but to do it differently, cost effectively and more convenient for the users.

We decided to go for TV shows, drama, news clips and movie clip streams on-demand. A model similar to that of Hulu but for African TV content. We believe this model is the way to go in-order to really solve a problem in the African entertainment market and not to jump into a very competitive market for user generated content or even a service whose market rarely exists.

So by going this way, the big question is, are we really in direct competition with Zoopy another African online TV service?

I think only time would tell but some regional factors may carve each service's niche for it. By the way, Zoopy is gradually broadening to a Global entertainment site while AfricaMars will focus more on African entertainment.

Is your product just another product's feature in the future?..

2011-02-26T08:24:00.000-08:00

Recently, I read about location based services being just an added feature and not a full pledged product on itself in the very near future.. I believe we can say that about so many products, possibly many of Today's startups are just features in the not so far future.

With huge Internet monopolies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook, it's very easy for them to add a full product as just a feature iteration on their huge platforms. Also, most of the products that many startups are being built on these days are only features and once they get popular, they'll have to be integrated with larger platforms to gain any usage traction for them to become good business.

Apart from location based services, other startup/product types that could end up as features in other products in the future are collaboration tools. A good example is how Myspace swallowed Threadbox.

This list of products that are future's potential features goes on, including messaging services and so on...

So should you look into the glass ball to see if the product you have been killing yourself to bring to market will end up being copied and offered to millions of users as part of another product in the future? Well, this is really hard to say...

Whoever builds a startup is totally aware of the risks they are taking because whatever they are building is not guaranteed to bring results. With all the risk awareness, its still heart aching to see a big company take an idea that is genius and that you first developed to market just because they have more manpower and distribution to execute better and much faster than you and your small team.

This fact shouldn't stop you though from developing an innovative product even though it could possibly be taken from you. What you should do instead is work tirelessly and smartly to get the first mover advantage and once you gain traction, expand your product further by adding utility features and keeping your potential competitors on their toes. Also keep in mind there is always the pivot. If you are not doing well in a market, look at other potential use of the technology you've built and do a quick shift. The pivot also works when you build a product and find out your market doesn't exist or its too small.

Lastly, the ability of your product to be integrated into another product as a feature may be a blessing to you in disguise. Especially when you have competing big companies in that market space, it will turn out as a good thing for you because you'll most probably be approached and if you are lucky and your product is good you'll possibly get acquired by the big company.

From day one, you can put this in your exit plan or even start building a product just to be acquired and integrated as a feature into a larger company's product.

Social Media Marketing: Twitter "follow suggestion" best thing yet!

2010-08-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

I believe the only reason Twitter has not surpassed Facebook is due to its poor early user retention. (strictly my own personal opinion).

Well, another personal opinion too, in the long term, Twitter is by far more engaging than Facebook! So if Twitter will find a way to keep new users and keep them engaged so they come back more and more once they've signed up, then Twitter will be on its way to becoming bigger than Facebook.

The new suggestions for people to follow, which now twitter shows you has put the short messaging service on that road to becoming the next biggest web service, and guess what... If and when Twitter reaches the #1 status, its going to stay up there for long just for its nature and how engaging it can be to users in the long term.

So what's in it to gain for marketers and businesses as long as this new development is concerned?

Twitter is going to help Marketers engage consumers much more than Facebook. I believe the only reason users would leave Twitter is if they are not following the people they should follow. I mean the right people who reflect the users interest. Consumers will be engaged by twitters feature that allows users to quote, re-tweet and @replies. Brands that know what they are doing are already making great use of twitter.

By the new suggestion feature, if the site will be smart enough to suggest to users the right people to follow, then Twitter is going to grow more rapidly in the coming months. And as more of our friends from Facebook and in real life get on Twitter, we will begin to use the service more and stay longer.

Conclusively, Twitter is the future.. No seriously it is!

Google Discontinues Nexus One, Android May Now Lack Hardware Rythm!

2010-08-03T20:55:00.000-07:00

This is not a blog about gadgets, phones and the likes. But it is a startup blog and today I am focusing my post on user experience around hand-held gadgets! Specifically Smartphones.

User experience or user interface design is a must learn for any startup in a consumer market.

I am talking about android, nexus one and the user experience around the combination here. Many users reported the nexus one (users that have other smartphones, like Iphone or Blackberry) as the best smartphone they've ever used, and Google stopped the nexus phone. Is android going to end up an orphan in the mobile OS market? Not at all. Android has got Motorolla, HTC and even a tablet called Inye soon to be unveiled in Abuja Nigeria.

Google's main problem is being massively out-sold by Apple's Iphone. The Iphone 4 sales where heading for the million mark while Google had only sold a little above a hundred thousand phones. But is the Nexus one really a better phone than the Iphone? Well. a lot of users that have used both phones say so!

The Nexus one gave android the hardware match it needed. If you doubt this, here is an example for the Blackberry user who use their phone to tweet. Before the Blackberry had its own Twitter app, there was UberTwitter. And when RIM launched its official twitter app, those that switched to the app, would certainly witness a change in performance and experience when the use their blackberry phones to tweet.

For some reasons, I wont say on this blog if the change the Blackberry users witnessed is positive or negative. Nonetheless, it's a good example of software/app and hardware rythm or fit! Same goes with OS and the hand-held device.

The Nexus one is the phone that users had the best experience running android on. Now that its gone, where does the android stand against othe mobile OS!

The facts show surprisingly, android is even gaining ground by beating all the rest smartphone operating systems. Including RIM and Iphone OS who make their own hardware for their OS exclusively!

Android is number one selling mobile OS in the US for the second quater of this year reports the NPD Group. I still believe, Android would have done better with the Nexus, which I believe brings out the best of the OS. I guess its still all good for Google's mobile OS.

Startup Advice: Get Ready To Go Big Or Go Home Early!

2010-08-03T20:15:00.000-07:00

Right from the beginning of the commercial web, you have to be super ambitious as a startup in other to stay longer than the next code innovation!

You have to be ambitious and focused on a market for a start. But you have to keep your eye on the big picture by following market shifts and new products or new startups launching. You have to think how you are going to gain more n more market share over time.

Your team also needs to be obsessed with innovation if you don't wanna be the next Myspace. You have to try new things, new ways and new code to improve your products performance. If elese, someone will get inspired by your idea and move to your market and beat you.

Come to think of it, Google came up with the "don't be evil" slogan and from the search engine that they started with, now they have a blogging platform which I am now writing this article on, an architectural design software (Google sketch), an operating system, a smartphone OS, a mobile phone brand, Google Earth, a mobile ad platform, the list goes on and on.

The point I am trying to make here is that, to be a big success, you have to think of dominating the World atleast a few times before you go to sleep! :). No... Seriously.. You have to dream of ruling the market you are in and you have to try to see that it comes true! Just trying to be a player in the market isn't healthy for an aspiring startup to dream.

Now Lets take a look at Facebook. You think Mark Zuckerberg only wanted to build a social network for college students? Well may be you buy that, but I don't. I don't know how true the stories in the book "accidental Billionaires by Ben Mizrich" is, but Mark is really an ambitious person. You can check out the book here http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Billionaires-Founding-Facebook-Betrayal/dp/0385529376

You really need to hope to be big when you are just starting and work towards that. If not, you may not even get to start. Did I confuse you? Well, I'm sure the ones that really have the startup DNA in them know what I'm talking about!

Nigerian Version of Twitter is a Total Waste of Time! Why is Everyone Doing it?

2010-08-03T08:48:00.002-07:00

The truth is, we cannot really handle or consume properly the amount of information that is sent flowing our way all the time. With new services, it's only getting worse and we are becoming less productive by the day.

We are trying to stay updated with the latest news, Global and local, at the same time we are trying to keep up with latest trends, stay up-to-date with friends and family on facebook, follow what our friends and role models are tweeting, talk to contacts on blackberry messenger, we have blog posts to read and more........

So with all this information we are following, do we have room in our heads or time for another twitter like app specifically for Nigeria?

For a sec, let us take a look at what happened to FriendFeed. I am not saying they failed, so don't get me wrong. The guys didn't fail, the got a nice exit and sold to Facebook. But recently, FriendFeed has become nothing more than a platform for tweets, a secondary tweet platform. The activity is on Twitter so don't go against the tide by trying to build your own twitter (thats like re-inventing the wheel when they already have airplanes). Instead, find a way to tap twitters content!

This is just a short reminder for my fellow Naija Internet entrepreneurs.

Correction from last article. Nairaland was started in 2005!

2010-08-02T10:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Seun Osewa for making the facts clearer from our last blog post! Nairaland was started in 2005 and not 2001 as we earlier wrote (seems like its been around for a decade).

That means Nairaland grew even at a faster rate that we thought. Getting to 500,000 members in just 5 years in the Nigerian webspace is truly remarkable!

Startup Lessons: 3 Ways Nairaland Got So Big!

2010-06-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

Nairaland has been around for a long time.. So have so many other early Nigerian websites, but Nairaland has outlived them to become successful.

Here are 3 (THREE) reasons I think Nairaland lived and grew successful over the years.

1. FIRST MOVER ADVANTAGE

Nairaland started around 2001... A year or even 2 before I got my first web presence. Nairaland is one of the earliest web properties in Nigeria.

There are early Nigerian sites that haven't changed a bit since they first started and they have successfully made themselves forgotten.. look at Motherland Nigeria. I am not saying MotherlandNigeria.com is a failure. As a matter of fact, it was a pioneering and great site back in the day. But I don't think it has changed in it's 11 years of existence. I'm just saying....

I'm saying, Nairaland utilized it's early advantage and grew very large over time (since 2001). This huge over time growth means lots of posts on the forum, many threads, many topics, many users (readers and posters) and many pages of the forum indexed in many search engines overtime for a wide variety of search keywords/keyphrases and ranked high in search results due to long articles (threads), freshness of content and external links.

As a result of above, Nairaland gets a lot of traffic from search engines alone and new user are brought to the site, many end up registering to participate in the discussion..

It all goes back to the first mover advantage... now Half a million registered users.

2. VIRAL & WORD OR MOUTH.

People talk about Nairaland a lot, in real life, they talk about stories they have read on Nairaland and discussions or polls they have participated in to their friends and so on, thereby spreading news of Nairaland through word of mouth...

Viral, this happens when people forward or share links to Nairaland threads/pages on other sites, through email, on facebook or as tweets.. This causes a wave of commenting, sharing, resharing and retweeting. The story on Nairaland and the user participation make it go viraland grow bigger with fresh users discovering the site all the time.

3. USER ENGAGEMENT

The gists, the gossip and discussions make Nairaland engaging. A poll I once came across on Nairaland comparing the site and Facebook in user engagement, Nairaland beat Facebook hands down in Nairalanders perspective.

So there you have it... The 3 (THREE) secrets that made Nairaland once the most trafficked Nigerian website. You can still use the same secrets right now and build a 500000 user or even million user online empire in Nigeria.

Study these 3 points well and build them into your web service or application...

Venture Capital Funds for Nigerian Startups

2010-06-26T02:00:00.000-07:00

I have written earlier on this blog about Venture Capital funding in Nigeria here - 4 reason why Nigerian startups aren't funded. As the title indicates, it wasn't a nice article to write because it spots failures of Nigerian Entrepreneurs, Investors and the country's infrastructure in general.

The truth is, there are some Venture Capital firms in Nigeria, though they hardly focus on Internet or technology startups. They are mostly into telecom, oil industry and services. I still think they are worth giving a short if you are confident with what you are building and the market size is HUGE! Yeah, you need a huge market for the kind of returns these VCs are looking for.

So if you are focusing your startup on Nigeria alone, then I am not sure if you should approach these Venture Capitalist because they make investments of around $10 million which is too large for a small market focus.

Anyway... Here is a list of some some Venture Capital firms focussed on Nigeria.

1. Travant Capital

2. Adlevo Capital

3. Menlo Ventures

4. Providence Equity Partners LLC

5. African Capital Allowance

So goodluck on pitching.

Most Importantly Find Angel Investors first. Rich people you know and try to explain your idea or project and see if you can make them understand.

Nigerian Brand Websites Need to be on the Cutting Edge!

2010-04-22T03:30:00.000-07:00

This is a real quick post. I'm even typing it while sitting in a car on the road out from Abuja. I was just going through "the web designer mag" a UK web design publication. You can check out the mag at http://www.webdesignermag.co.uk. And I realised how much Nigerian brands only care about having a web presence and they don't bother on being on the cutting edge of the web.

So the first question I think we should answer here is; "do Nigerian websites (brand and product sites) really need to be on the cutting edge?", "Is it worth it for them?" I would give a big YES as answer to both questions. Here are my reasons.

11 million Nigerians online, so as a brand in Nigeria, the web is a marketing and even soon payment channel you dare not neglect.

"So would an ordinary web presence do?" Nope sorry it won't do my firend!

As a company, brand or product, apart from web presence (making people able to find you online even if its only a single HTML page), there are so many messages you can use your website to convey to the consumer. One of them is having the consumer understand you or your product more. You can use web videos for this. Another thing is Interactivity, or being able to listen to your users and give them feedback and being able to improve your product and brand based on info you gather from consumer input.

The newest Mountain Dew drink was all made by users on the web. Mountain Dew makers opened up and listened to consumers on what they would love the drink to taste like. I believe soon, majority (if not all) products would be designed and built with direct consumer involvement in the direction and decision on how the product will be.

So as a brand, you have to have an interactive site that lets your consumers say what they feel about your product and also have them collaborate on some disscussions that you would fall back to when making product decisions. The easiest way to do this is by integrating already social platforms like Facebook connect or Twitter's @anywhere or Twitter connect.

In other news.....
Coincidentally, I just made a quick stop at Mr Biggs, UAC foods (I am not sure what their name is these days). We are at kaduna bypass, It's around 1:30 pm and I haven't eaten any breakfast. I walked into the Mr Biggs and I just couldn't stop my mouth from watering. The Eureka moment came when I thought, how could Mr Biggs use the web to give a customer (a website visitor) a similar experience to what I am having right now? Of course it's not easy for them to make every website visitor's mouth water like mine, but they can still use the web to make you want their product by designing their websiteon the cutting edge with the latest of web technology that would be able to allow for such experience. I am sure a great flash script with some sense of design would get the job done.

I haven't visited Mr Biggs' website before, neither have I searched for it, but I will try and check them out as soon as I have a connection (that is if they do have a website).

So, I'm just saying!

Nigerian Brands can use cutting edge technology in web design to get more people (11 million users online) interested in their products, give their product fans a great experience and a place to hang out online and ultimately make their product better by involving passionate customers/users of their product.

That's not all Nigerian Brands can use the web for. I promised this post to be short, but I promise I will find time to do a detailed post about ways Nigerian brands can use the web.

P.S just used my Effd Up Internet connection to check mrbiggsonlin.com. The site is pretty cool I must say, but can still do better. But UAC foods main site is not as impressive to me.

P.P.S. Thanks http://nigerianbrands.blogspot.com for the image. Had to rip it off your site folks because its the best fit I can find for the post. Thanks guys.

Nairaland Reaches A Milestone: Half A Million Users

2010-04-09T16:36:00.000-07:00

Nairaland has been Nigeria's most visited website for a long time (though it has been losing ground recently to job search sites and news sites like jobberman.com and 234next.com plus some newspaper sites).

Recently, Nairaland hit more than 500,000 registered users. This is a huge milestone considering Nairaland allows people to view it's content without registering. If the content was restricted to registered users only, then I believe they userbase will grow bigger and almost double.

This is good news for Nigerian startups, it shows the userbase is there, you only need to smartly find a way to capture it. You can learn from Nairaland's strategies which we would be looking at on this blog. Make sure you subscribe to get the next post on how you can get 500,000 users for your Nigerian site.

You Need User Recommendation to go Viral. So Go Find Those Passionate Users.

2010-04-07T06:17:00.000-07:00

The title is really long. But I will try to keep the post as short as I can.

My previous post is supposed to be part of a series I am working on about "Nigerian startups and how they fit in Globally". I will continue with the series shortly, however, I need to squeeze in this post in-between due to some recent happenings in my startup's social media marketing.

Back to today's post.

Today's post is focussed on the power of Passionate users (people that love your product or idea) and how it can push to the roof your marketing, the efficiency of your product development and your market understanding.

How do you find or make passionate users? The truth is, you don't even need to have a product to find people passionate about what you are working on, some people can fall in love with your product the moment they hear about the idea. And they will talk about and recommend you and your product to everyone they know.

To increase your chances of having such passionate prospective users, you need to be active on the social networks. Facebook, Twitter and may be LinkedIn. You need to engage and discuss with your target audience. Some of them will hit you with a conversation, while the rest you will have to talk to first before they respond.

So what makes users passionate and how can their passion help you and your business?
They are mainly your perfect customer. The perfect fit for your product. The people that reallyyy need your product. The people you thought about when you came across your product idea. They may be just like you with the same interest and same perspective on the market.

Above describes exactly what makes up a prospective passionate user of your product. But you need to bring out the passion in the users by connecting with them, discussing with them and getting to know them on a personal level(very important).

They can promote your business across social networks and the rest of the web, they can get you content from friends, may be, and they make good team members because they share your belief and enthusiasm.

Your passionate users will do a lot for you and every business needs them.

HOW TO GO VIRAL!!!!

Going viral is the ultimate peak of every marketing and the number one rule is, NO BUSINESS, IDEA OR VIDEO CAN GO VIRAL WITHOUT PASSIONATE USERS.

I don't believe there is another way around going viral than utilizing your passionate users.

To create a viral campaign, you have to have people (passionate people) that will share whatever you want to go viral with all their trustees and friends on the various popular platforms like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and more. This will ignite the initial spread of the viral campaign.

(The post is becoming long, I need to round up).

Ok. Now, before you reach any conclusions, building a viral campaign can not be complete with only passionate users. You need more than that, You need to build a strategy. But you can't do it without passionate user.

Finally, the only thing that guarantees you of getting many passionate users is a much needed product (product with high demand and if you are a first mover), or any great idea.

Spend most of your time on making sure your product rocks before you invest your time in any viral campaign.

Pioneering startups, Google, Facebook and the noise.

2010-01-01T16:38:00.000-08:00

Internet users have been suffering from Information overload, it got only worse in 2009. 2009 saw many startups being crunched up all the time, and almost all claim real-time. Is real-time ahead of it's real time? May be it is.

There are just so many useful web services around that a user wouldn't even know which ones to focus on, so many real-time streams of data (many are pointless or simply spam). The startup scene and online services market is just so saturated and confusing. It is now more important than ever to FOCUS on a niche.

Why you should focus on a niche;

- Specialized content is hard to find because of too much noise. Filtered specialized information is Gold.

- Leave the wide markets for the big guys. Small startups with ambitious projects will be sidelined by the Big Guys as soon as everyone finds out how great the startup's idea is. This will happen unless the startup is really lucky and the team knows how to use the press very well.

- It's so hard to get attention nowadays unless you are in a niche where you can pitch niche bloggers and press. if not, you have to have a GREAT GREAT product.

That said, I think Facebook and Google will have a real face off in 2010.
They are both into real-time, facebook has improved it's search and Google now has profiles(or accounts atleast). With these two and each of them trying to dominate, there is going to be little room for any new startup to go mainstream in 2010 (though, no one can tell how much technology is going to change within the year).

I have a feeling this is very similar to what happened in the late 90s (only now in real-time). ;)

The market will stabilize with time and not without throwing a lot of things (services) that are considered now "hot" out the window. Who knows what? may be real-time search, may be not.

Search engine traffic, long-term users and startups.

2009-12-17T15:29:00.000-08:00

How many startups rely on organic search engine traffic for the early push? The truth is, very few, if any.

Organic Search engine traffic does not come in quick, while new startups need to make many things happen as quickly as they can.

Majority of startups rely heavily on buzz from press releases, pitching industry bloggers and some social media promotion for the quick take-off traffic. These methods are good for getting quick traffic (they also cost money/time), but I don't believe they offer the best kind of traffic a startup should get.

Some people, especially startup founders may see the idea behind this post as a bit off the line. I am open and ready to hear your views on it right here on this blog. The new/normal belief or advice you get these days is about how/why you shouldn't worry about the search engines and that you can create a buzz or may be even success withous worrying about SEs.

PR can surely take a startup a long way, but that is as far as the startup gets. Beyond the buzz, a few percentage of the actual users the buzz attracted will still be using the startup's product.

With organic search traffic, users, the press and bloggers get to validate the idea and the product for you. The users didn't just discover you in an email or press release, they searched for what you are offering and found you, so as long as your service is good, they won't abandon you that easily. If any bloggers or press write about you without you actually pitching them or paying them (that is they found out about you through the SEs), means you have a great product and you are a great startup.

Traffic from organic search is free. Any buzz that this creates for you would be based on the actual value of your service, so with that in mind you can invest more in your idea (knowing it has value and potential for success).

PR is a great tool, however add organic SEO to your arsenal and may be try it first before spending money and time on PR.

3 things that will make Google penalize you for pagerank or Link fraud

2009-11-21T09:09:00.000-08:00

Cross linking all your sites or blogs: Dont try to cross link your sites or blogs inorder to boost your Google PR. Back in 2005, I had about 9 blogs. Some of pr 1, about two with a pagerank of 2 and of course some with a pagerank of 0. Inorder to raise their pageranks, I decided to link to all my blogs from each one of them. A few weeks later, all the blogs lost all their pagerank.

Buying tons of links: Never buy 500 links or submission to 150 directories because if you do, it will send a signal to the Google spam filters that your site should be in the sandbox especially if it is a new site. Focus on getting links from blogs, forums and Authority sites that are related to your site.

Replicating the same content: Google has content filters and will make sure it drops any multiple contents you have (especially if they are linked to each other, or linked to from thesame website.)
If you have to post a single article more than once, make sure you reword atleast 40% of the content, completely change the title and the first few paragraphs of the article.

Dont be lazy.

Discuss on blogs, forums, email bloggers, write and update your site all the time and do some web2.0 marketing. But DO NOT SPAM because it will come back to you.

I have a site about african entertainment which is now 2 years old. I have been link building slowly with blogs, forums and article posts, I was even lucky to be featured in some tech blogs. With the recent Google pagerank update, the site is now a solid PR 3. This is considering we haven't been sending PR releases or asking to be featured. We are totally focussed on rolling out the product.

Happy Birthday to the African TV project.

Change with the search!

2009-11-17T12:32:00.000-08:00

If you have been following any web marketing firm's website or any search marketer's blog lately, you would have by now come across Google's change (or overhaul) of it's search technology.

It's time for SEO to change too. Shortly, Web companies like ours that rely mostly on organic search traffic will have to change their ways of thinking. New tests will have to be run, new analysis and more.

My company is doing well on search engines and most especially on Google, we've beaten most of the big guys to get to where we are and we get atimes more than 1500 monthly visitors from Google alone. Upto now, we haven't spent a dime on marketing, or atleast promotion.

In preparation, I went to the Google caffeine sandbox page (not sure if that's what it is called) to test the new search technology, to see if I can notice any changes to search results. I was too late to arrive because from the message I found on the page, Google is done testing it, they think it will work and have taken it off the developer test page.

My guess is, the technology may have some LSI built into it, atleast more than what we have already seen (or atleast think we have).

If any of you has used Google caffeine in test, we would love to have your thoughts here. Just comment on this post.

6 signs that your startup needs a new marketing team.

2009-08-22T07:13:00.001-07:00

Here is a post that outlines 6 different things that may be a sign that your marketing team is not fit for the Job.

1. Whenever someone Googles your startup's name, pages about your site on websiteoutlook, compete.com, alexa, about.com come up in the first results page.

This means your marketing team has only been updating a few wiki pages and checking up the value of your site instead of getting you valuable users.

2. Whenever someone googles your startup's name, they don't get press releases about your startup on the first page, and hardly one profile for your startup from either myspace, facebook, folkd and definitely not twitter.

Your marketing team is not leveraging the power of press releases and they are so web1.0.

3. Your startup is less than a year old and traffic increase has been less than 30% in the recent months.

Growth is very slow, its time you put your marketing on steroids.

4. The only links you can find about your startup are the ones you put up yourself, obviously no blogger thinks it is worth writing about.

They are not sending the right message about your company.

5. Your webmaster's inbox is always empty, seems nobody bothers to know where you headed.

They lack creativity.

6. The Google Pagerank of your just months old site is thesame after 2 Google Pagerank updates.

They have never heard of authority sites. They have been link building for a while but hardly get a link from any site that is not a low traffic directory.

Internet Marketing that has worked for me.

2009-08-15T05:58:00.000-07:00

Tips on promotion techniques that have brought traffic to my site for free.

>>> Google.
Google will always be on top. Atleast since I don't have a Yahoo! directory listing. Back in 2004 when I cleverly got my website listed in the Yahoo! directory for free, Yahoo! used to be my biggest traffic source.
Now even if I do secure the listing, I don't expect my Yahoo! traffic to exceed the one I already get from Google. My site is doing really good on the Google SERPS with top 10 listing and even #5 listing for my best keyphrase and #1 for many other keyphrases. (Atleast 3 more).
Well incase you want to know what my secret is, content. Content is the key, build more pages, link to them from blogposts, Digg them and more traffic will come from Google.

>>> Yahoo!
I am doing decently well on the Yahoo! search, (though I don't know how well I will still be doing since they turned to Bing). The thing is, this time around my site doesn't have a Yahoo! directory listing so I don't expect Yahoo search to favour my site in it's result so much.

>>> Nairaland
Participating on the Nairaland forum has helped me a lot scoop up some home website traffic. I get significant traffic to my site from 2 of the threads I participated in on the forum.
Here are some tips for participating on Nairaland.
- Respond to threads that have lots of activities, with responses into the hundreds.
- Some Google PR of 1 or 2 would do.
- And please say something reasonable. (it's ok to include a link on your response or add a sig file).

>>> Twitter
As long as you follow the right people and get followed on twitter, you will get some traffic to your site and lot's of mention about you. participate in discussions, send @replies, follow the right people and update your status regularly. Just logging on and listening to what others are saying will give you the idea on what to say.

>>> Digg
Digg it, don't spam it.

>>> Stumbleupon
Make friends with people on related industry, stumble their favorites and make sure they like you so they stumble yours too.

>>> Hubpages
This is really a great service. all you have to do is write and publish articles, ping them and add them to other social bookmarking sites and watch the traffic grow and Google Pagerank rise. You can publish a good article and it can reach a Google Pagerank of 2 in a few weeks. You can also network with people in related industry so they know when you publish a new hub. You can publish weekly, though publishing monthly isn't bad at all.

>>> Blogging
I started blogging early, probably around thesame time that blogging experts like Yaro Starak started. It was really great then back in 2004-2005 doing wonders with blogs and pings.
Well blogging is not like it used to be. I have had blogs with close to a thousand daily visitors. But now apart from this blog, I only use blogs for some link building.

>>> Reciprocal links
links I requeted from other webmasters.

New techniques I will be using

Press release
article marketing ( I have done this to some extent, but not big time).
squidoo lenses
paid ads

4 reasons why Nigerian startups are not funded

2009-07-30T07:39:00.000-07:00

1. Traffic does not hold value. No analytics to specify value of each and every website visitor, advertisers are acting blindly.

2. The issue of online scam or 419. reminds me of my post where I said this lies on the back of the netpreneurs, It's time we start seeing b2b startups in Nigeria that solely address the problem of security.

3. Infastructure. see the post "can we build silicon valley in Nigeria?" well, do we have the infastructure.
http://www.sturvs.com/Science_Tech/Startups_Nigeria_-_Can_We_Build_Silicon_Valley_in_Nigeria/

4. Absense of a developed ecommerce system. Most startups have to run on the ad revenue model. The question is, how many companies want to advertise online in Nigeria? Since no one is buying online.

June so far

2009-06-19T04:00:00.000-07:00

This month has been the busiest since we started out online TV startup. I just sent a draft copy of a paper I am supposed to present in a conference in November, and ot looks like we have finally secured a technology partner.

I can't remember the last time I blogged here, it's probably been about 2 months. I am hoping I will post a few things before the month ends including a review of a hot new Nigerian startup.

The month is still not over and I am looking forward to reaching deals with about 5 content owners before the month end or early next month.

I have to go now, I have think and respond to an email.

I am not a travel blogger, but I blog when I travel.

2009-05-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

I have not been on here for a while, I have been away. I really miss blogging but don't have the energy to write.
Anyways I am enjoying my trip and hop to blog something good from the trip.

Why and how you should find a co-founder for your startup.

2009-04-22T10:04:00.000-07:00

I have been working on startup ideas for a long time (close to ten years), and I've only seen significant change by working together with a partner (co-founder), someone with equal determination and vision as mine.

The co-founder is there to fill in your weaknesses and having one gets you through the lows as Sep Bishop said to Entrepreneur TV, "if you are looking to start your own business, from my experience, I've always felt that having a partner is a good idea. You tend to find that entrepreneurs usually have big egos and seem to think that they are good at everything and know the answer to everything."

He said " Daniel and I were quick to recognize that we have weaknesses in certain areas, mine was fund raising, Daniel had a huge amount of experience in that area and he particularly didn't have any experience in advertising which I brought."

He continued, " In startups, there will be incredible highs and incredible lows, and having a partner in those times when particularly the lows, you will need somebody to pick you up. At some point a lot of entrepreneurs are willing to give up."
Seb Bishop later sold his ad company Espotting for $186 million.

So many startups were started by 2 or more founders. Yahoo, Google, Myspace, Youtube, Facebook and the list goes on.

Having a co-founder with same passion and some set of skills or chracter that you may lack increases your chances of building a successful startup.

Look for people that are very good at what they are doing, open-minded, ready to learn and who believe in what you are doing.

They don't have to be people you know personally or in the real life. Micheal Cerda founder of Jangl met his co founder Ben Dean on Craigslist.

I met my partner in the Startup I am working on now on Spidgit. I went through some of his posts, I knew he knew what he was doing and he was good at it. I approached him and we exchanged emails.

Been busy lately, but will soon reap the benefits.

2009-04-15T10:29:00.000-07:00

I am just squeezing some time to write this post. I don't want the blog to seem quite even if it's for a day. Sometimes you just don't feel like typing and even if you have already typed posts, you just may feel too lazy to copy and paste especially after long hours of work with very little sleep.

I have a long list of upcoming posts with lots of tips for the Internet startup guys like me. I haven't been writing lately but I have been reading and doing a lot, so look out for my latest tips on startup ideas and some stories too.

I love blogging and I won't hold out any thing to myself, I just feel free and write everything here, and most of the things I write here are those that I have tested myself. I am very careful at writing what I have not tried out myself.

Anyways, this blog is not meant for my personal news or news about my Startup, still I feel I should share this good news with you guys. I am about to close on my first partnership deal for my startup. The only clue that I am going to give here is that the company I am in talks with is from Kenya. It's going to be a great partnership, let's all hope that it will go through.

No reviews so far, only tips.

2009-04-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

I wanted to build this blog around reviewing Nigerian Internet startups. There are many of them, this means I have so much to write about.

After reviewing Nairaland.com, I made a review of some online payment sites for nigeria and since then I haven't written about any startup reviews on this blog. Rather I have been blogging tips on how to create a startup.

I have a lot of tips that I feel happy sharing them with everyone. There will be more tips coming. So fellow Nigerian cybreprenuers and everyone, make sure you bookmark this blog. The best is yet to come.

Today's Startups Type (conclusion)

2009-04-05T11:21:00.001-07:00

The 3 startup types we talked about in the just finished series, all signify one thing. the shift to cloud computing and that many large corporations and startups are betting on that.

We see many of the large corporations buy a stake in or aquire these startups. (Newscorp acquired Myspace and Microsoft has a stake in Facebook).

Theses Startups especially the ones in the recent post have been very successful and most Valued in the tens or hundreds of millions and a few like Youtube and Facebook valued into the Billions.

If you are interested in starting a startup or working on your own startup, you should take a serious look at these startup concepts, not the services but the model. They are all about user generated content, sharing, remote hosting (taking your desktop with you) and simplifying everything for the end user.

If your startup idea falls within these criteria, then with some hardwork you will surely realize your dream and you can also in the process create a market for your startup product or service even if the market doesn't already exist.

Now I want you to go back from the beginning of the "Today's Startups" series of articles and read them again till you grab the concept or the big picture behind all those startups combined. And you will surely figure something out for yourself.
Good luck! and don't hesitate to drop your comment.

Today's Startups Type 3: You run the show (and sharing is caring).

2009-04-02T09:26:00.000-07:00

Many Startups of today are about you, the user. They are all about the users on the driving seat, running their own show while sharing everything they do with the general public or their firends.

Most of the biggest sites today all rely on user generated content, the content may be text, video, audio, or pictures.

flickr is an online album for user uploaded photos.

Twiiter is a micro-blogging platform where users add and share status updates, twitter asks "What are you doing now?" what ever your answer, it is shared with other twitter user and your followers.

Users upload and share everything from comments, pictures, videos and more.
There are Community built and user generated online encyclopedia like Wikipedia.
Users share their bookmarks on sites like Del.icio.us, simpy, blinklist, technorati and more.

Today's Statrups Type 2: Taking your desktop with you.

2009-03-30T12:21:00.000-07:00

Many things you had to keep or save on your desktop to be able to acess them some other time. You also must not forget to carry that computer with you to be able to make that presentation, check that website you saved or show family and friends your vacation pictures.

Thanks to new online services, now you can virtually always remember to carry the desktop with you.

Startups like Del.icio.us help you access your bookmarked web pages from anywhere. you dont really have to carry your computer or a notepad around.

Slideshare hosts your slideshows, and you can easily give your colleagues or clients the link to your presentation.

Flickr holds your pictures for you. You only need a Yahoo account to start using Flickr.

Rapidshare hosts all your files to free up some space from that old desktop of yours, or just to make your uploaded files available wherever you are and there is access to the Internet.

This update of Today's Startups forcussed on web applications that will host your files, bookmarks and so on remotely.

This concept and the latter are all driven by Cloud Computing.

Today's Startups Type 1: Everything for dummies.

2009-03-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

This is a series of articles about todays Internet startup ideas, the problem they solve and I hope it will inspire you to do something. Let's begin!

Today, many web startups are all about making one a pro in something only geeks used to know how to do 3 years back.

Startups come up with online apps to make ordinary people like you and me build very professional things. Remember those things you needed to by tons of softwares to be able to do with your computer, sometimes you needed weeks of tutorial to be able to do them, and even you may finally give up and decide to hire a professional or a nerd to do it for you.

A few years back, you needed to learn to code or hire a programmer to be able to have a cool professionally designed site. Not anymore, the African startup Synthasite (It recently closed a $20mm series B funding), Google pages and a couple of more online services are here to rescue you, most of them are free to use.

Just a couple of years back, you needed to learn to use adobe photoshop, Ulead photo express or anyother good picture editing software to be able to do whatever you wanted with your pictures. Then came along picasa, anyone could just upload a picture and edit it online using very simple tools.

Video editing and animation used to be some work you had to pay someone big bucks to do. Well, incase you have an idea for any animation, see Aniboom.

The 2 Internet business types

2009-03-24T11:36:00.000-07:00

Right from my first year trying to market or buil a business online, I noticed to types of approaches to Internet business by cyberpreneurs.

1. The idea approach, and 2. the get paid approach.

Some analysis

1), The Idea approach

This is harder to realize as it involves brainstorming on an idea (a product or service) building and branding a business based on the idea and also monetization.

This kind of approach pays bigger dividends to the cyberpreneur and it may take a long time before it pays anything.

2), The Get paid approach

This is more like the web hustler approach.

Anything that will bring in pay quickly.
This includes forex and commodity trading, squeze pages, adsense sites, selling services, blogging (most people are passionate about blogging and don't do it for the money), sales pages, affiliate sites and many many more.

I'm back!

2009-03-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

I know I havent blogged for a while. I was consumed with work for my new startup during the past weeks.
We have entered turbo mode ;-) and we are trying to make some good progress before middle of this year. We are presently upgrading the site and hoping to enter into private testing soon.

Guide on Building A Successful Online Business

2009-03-21T08:56:00.001-07:00

My first Internet business idea was to share african music and other entertainment with Africans around the world. I thought all I had to do was learn web design and I would build a successful web business. I never thought it would take years of research and testing.

Forget all the hype about new tools, online secrets and so on. I believe all you need to build a successful business online is some sort of understanding. By this, I mean understanding the online market, what works and what doesn’t, combined with hard work and perseverance, you will automatically guarantee your success online. It's simple!
So how do you understand the market and know what works and what doesn’t work? And save all the time you would have wasted following one new marketing secret after the other.

There are two ways you can learn this, the first you go through almost every online lesson through trial and error by yourself, or the second, you learn from someone that has been in and out of the struggle so you save yourself a great deal of time. Please dont get me wrong here. I am not trying to sell you something, nor am I trying to make myself your mentor, I also dont mean you should start following every online guru. That is also another formula for failure.
What I am trying to do is have you relax for a bit, and then have you analyse a few successes online, not the success stories you hear, but the actual story behind the success story. Look at how someone that was once like you achieved success, and I am sure behind that you will see a staright to the point approach combined with persistence.

My time, I chose the first option (trial and error), not because I thought it was the better option, but because it was the only choice I had.

After a lot of hard work, I managed to put up a site on a free server, and that was when I began to learn some Internet marketing lessons.

I didn’t have any idea on how to get people to my site, I was completely new to the Internet and I already had a website. So I found a start page exchange program and I joined it hoping I would be able to get a lot of people to my site, make some sales and in the end realize my new found online dream.

It was never as easy as I thought. Web design became more complicated than I ever expected and I didn't have enough money to hire someone to do it. Getting website visitors became a very hard and time-consuming and making a single sale seemed impossible. Only one thing didn’t disappoint me, myself. I didn’t give up.

I kept trying, learning and getting better. Whenever I fail, I make a list of reasons why I failed and made sure I avoided them the next time I try something out again.

After the failure of my first attempt, the main reason that came at the top of my “reasons why I failed list” was the fact that my site was hosted on a free server. Such sites look very unprofessional, and distract the visitor with too many ads. Who would trust a web business that cannot invest a few dollars for hosting their site?

When surfers want to buy something online, they tend to go to an established online company, so if your site is hosted on a free server like www.yoursite.freehost.com, people wont buy from you. They get annoyed or carried away by too much ads on the site, unless if you are using a free non-ad supported platform like blogspot or wordpress.

So one of the first corrections I made was to invest about $20 for a web hosting account and a domain name, so that I would have my own address for visitors to remember and come back anytime and I would be able to post only what I want on the site, which gives a more established image of the web site and a focussed environment so that my prospects can focus on what I have to say and don’t get distracted by flashing banner ads.

I was still not making sales even though I now have my own hosting account and a domain name for my online business. I knew I had to make another list of possible causes. I needed to ask myself what I thought was going wrong and how to solve it.

I was not getting much traffic to the site, just around 300 visitors and the big problem is the source of my site visitors. I had not been indexed by any search engine, so I was using a startpage exchange program for my traffic which were popular with newbies and marketers then (2002). I soon realized that was part of my problem. I was not targeting any market, I was driving traffic to my site without asking myself if they want my product or not.

My site was a niche web site, but I was not targeting that niche market. The people that actually went to my site were participants of the traffic exchange program I was using. They were all website owners or affiliates, they are not the perfect customers for my site, a music site. An internet marketing and website promotion site would do better in that program because most of the participants were interested in Web business promotion and marketing or just making money online.

When I realized that, I knew I had to change my strategy and target only those that I think would be more interested. So I turned to the search engines to drive more targeted traffic to my site.

After 2 months I got listed in Yahoo and immediately saw an increase of up to 200, then 400 site visitors a month, and a month later I got listed in Google and many other search engines like Alta vista, Hotbot, Askjeeves, Alltheweb, Overture and many more.

My traffic increased steadily. And then I got listed in the ODP (dmoz.com). I started getting hundreds of sign ups and everything got so big that I couldn’t even handle it. And that was just the beginning.
I am planning on writing my complete story so anyone interested would learn a lot from what I have been through. I welcome all comments, also if you have a story of your own you want to share, drop us a comment and we will publish your story as a complete post.

Nigerian economic crisis? who should we blame?

2009-02-03T11:00:00.000-08:00

The nigerian economy in crisis.

The SEC chief blames the banks for the current economic downturn and mainly for the stock market plunge. He blamed the ways the banks gave out loans and their way of raising money.

Lending is a vital part of every capitalist economy, but sometimes not paying back the loans can bring out the cons of a capitalistic system or a free market.

In Nigeria, 388 billion naira in such loans could not be recovered, why? Because mainly the loans where used to buy shares in the then thriving stock market and the colaterals used to borrow such loans where also stocks. In an event of any bear market, consumer confidence will plunge and a big sell out will make the market fall further thereby making the borrowed money depreciate with the stock prices and as the collateral also depreciates, this causes more kaos and panic. Even if the borrower sells the stocks, plus the stocks, he cannot pay back the loans and the banks are left with collateral in stocks that are almost worthless. In this kind of scenario, the borrower or investor loses everything and the bank too loses the money it lent out.

This is very similar to what happened in the US, only for what we have in Nigeria may be less stable and a bit more risky. there also, the crisis was ignited when people took mortgage, they couldnt pay back the money they borrowed for their homes, while the homes depreciated in value and they were forced to go into foreclosure. The lost their homes and the banks got stuck with real estate far less in value than the money the lent out to the home owner. The crisis hit the banks real hard that Government had to intervene and many people lost their jobs, many more their homes.

What we are seeing here in Nigeria could be worse than what there is in the US. why? Because the stock market is more volatile than the real estate or housing market, i.e a housing crisis could be a bit more stable than a stock market crash.

As a solution, we can see how the Government in America reacts to its crisis. If successful, we can borrow a few startegies and save the economy.

Also government can buy and hold a few stocks to reduce the amount of selling and dealing that causes the stock to plunge back as soon as they start gaining some ground and people start selling off again. the sec can also intervene and try and enforce a minimum holding period for some stocks so as to eliminate some trading done by investors to profit from turmoil like this.

The executives responsible for this shouldnt go unpurnished if the is proof of their wrong doing or carelessness.

At first, the Government officials though that Nigeria was immune to the global economic crisis. I dont blame them, though I dont know why the thought so, but I also though we were immune to the crisis citing our growing revenues from crude oil sales. I thought we were heading into a boom like in india and china only that ours is not fuelled by manufacturing or information technology but by crude oil.

I did not expect the crude oil prices to fall back quickly and now we are stuck in a correction following the overvaluing and manipulation of share prices in the stock market.

Anyone knows where we are heading?

NIGERIAN CURIOSITY: NIGERIA'S INTERNET FUTURE

2009-02-02T06:38:00.000-08:00

NIGERIAN CURIOSITY: NIGERIA'S INTERNET FUTURE

Nigerian online payment solutions, which one to use?

2009-01-28T09:35:00.000-08:00

As a growing online economy, Nigeria's ecommerce is still in it's infancy, and the scammers are not helping things.

There is still no universal online payment system and this is much needed for Internet startups and online retailers to make money and grow. This is a big limiting factor.

For Nigeria's Internet economy to have any significance to foreign investors and venture capital firms, they have to be able to generate some revenue. Where will the revenue come from if its not safe to buy or sell anything online. Something has to be done!

Anyways a few companies are trying to solve this problem, but is the online community with them?

Interswicth:- The biggest ATM/debit card provider in Nigeria. They are also in the e-payment, online payment business. The users may be a bit more comfortable with this service and it can easily claim being the biggest online payment service because of its large number of ATM card users due to their e-banking contarcts with so many banks in the country. The startup cost for websites here is around 150,000 Naira.

Fastecash:- This service is very similar to paypal, users make bank deposits to fastecash's bank account and their online account is credited which they can use to pay for goods and services on websites registered to the service, users can also apply for credit cards so they can pay for the services they buy in dollars from international websites.

NetNaira:- This service claims to have more than 15,000 members. Registered members can use ATMs to load their online accounts and pay for goods and services on Nigerian sites that are registered with NetNaira.

Nigerian Internet marketers

2009-01-26T02:23:00.000-08:00

I think at first I underestimated the knowledge of many Nigerian Internet marketers.
I think this is part of Ignorance from my side.
Being into internet marketing since 2002, that is long before most of them had a website or even email adress, I just didnt listen to any of them when they started out.
I have learnt from so many of the World renowned Internet marketers, but I still learnt a lot from our own Internet marketers here in Nigeria.

I have began studying most of them and here are a few that I find most interesting.

Lateef Olajide

I think he is the most respected of Nigerian Internet Marketers, he owns the site Internet Marketing Nigeria, I have read a lot of his articles and he surely knows what he is doing.

There are a few other names that I will write on and study them more

Have You read the Classic?

2009-01-07T04:59:00.000-08:00

If you have read the classic "think and grow rich" by napoleon hill, you will come across this sort of idea in chapter 2.(the idea I talked about in my last post on this blog).
In the former post, I wrote the article without knowing of such an idea in the book think and grow rich, and just a week later while reading the book I came across it and I thought "oh I just blogged about this".

The idea was stated in his list of 6 steps to transmuting a desire for riches into financial success.
The idea was clearly stated in step 6 and brought up again and again in the following chapters.

# ways of motivating yourself to work towards achievement

2008-12-26T07:06:00.002-08:00

Sometimes, setting up a time table to finish a certain project isn't always enough to have you work at your best and make sure you meet up with the date. Projects or building products or business may suffer not being completed or dropped in the market at the right (best) time due to delays and lack of motivation from the product builders or people working on the project.

How many times would you spot an idea and a good money making potential and sit back and do nothing about it or sometimes you start and stop or just forget about it on the way.
The most successful people in the world are highly motivated and focused. Whenever they get busy with something, there is no turning back.

So how can you get yourself motivated, focused and not be a failure in what you do.
I am a writer and a building designer, to succeed in either of these fields, one needs not to be lazy and one needs to be highly focussed.If I will take longer than usually to produce completed building designs, I would slow the project, the client and the contractor. This will affect future jobs I get and I will end up not having a job at all.

As far as writing is concerned, sometimes you just dont feel like picking up a pen to write or logging on to a computer totype a story, and if you dont move yourself to do so, no words means no job to a writer, so you really need to settle down, compose yourself and come up with a good article, take your time to do reviews and corrections if you want that article to be presentable and to fetch you anything.

Sometimes you just feel too busy to do anything, so let my give you a few tips that may help.

1. put on a video and move staright to a rich fabolous scene.
2. read a quote or a page in an inspirational book
3. picture yourself in the future (as a rich and succesful individual)

In the next post we will explain more on how it is done, till then...

Nigerian Forum

2008-10-12T13:35:00.001-07:00

In our first feature we will review Nigeria's no 1 online forum, though it is not a start up, but with a good makeover it will be one of Nigeria's hottest web destinations.

Nairaland.com

Members - About 250,000 members

Type - Nigerian forum

Nairaland is a very busy forum for nigerians to discuss all sorts of topics (including gossip) its been online for a while and is also a good spot for promoting anything targeting Nigerians.

It has subforums for entertainment, politics, business and many more.

Possible Makeover - The forum can be transformed into a social network discussion, features like better profile pages, picture and video sharing can be added to improve the user experience.

If you have a Internet startup in Nigeria or one targeting Nigerians, drop us a comment and we will give it a visit to consider it for review.

Nigeria's Internet Startups

2008-09-28T04:14:00.000-07:00

Many Internet Startups and mostly web2.0 startups are emerging in Nigeria. Many are just social networks, some are similar to digg and others are completely original ideas.
The main reason why we see so many Nigerian startups at this time is mainly because of the growth of Internet usage in Nigeria and these Netrepreneurs are hoping to cash in.
We will be reviewing the best of these startups and giving Nigerian Internet users the latest in other Internet and Technology news around the world.