Always wanted to know how to start an online business in Nigeria? It’s all about understanding the very important things.
I’ve been asked this question, over and over again and I decided to finally write about it. If you’ve understood the real truth behind making money online, then you’re good to go.
So, how exactly can you start an online business? Follow the steps in this post and you’ll be up and running in no time. The best part is, you’ll learn a lot trying them out.
Also Read: The 3 proven ways to make money online
How to Start An Online Business In Nigeria In 7 Steps
Please note that the information in here doesn’t promise you’ll start making millions of dollars like some people claim, far from it.
Though I’ve seen online business models that guarantees massive and continuous profit, earning potential is entirely dependent on the individual.
Find a Gap and Fill It.
What is a business anyway, if it doesn’t solve a problem?
The first and most important step in starting your online business is to identify a problem that is unique to a certain group of audience, find creative and cost effective ways to solve that problem and you’ll be filling that gap.
Remember this?
People want to move from obscurity to excellence. That problem or challenge that you feel you can find lasting solutions to, definitely has an audience or a market.
For example, OLX and Jiji realized they could create a market place where tens of thousands of buyers and sellers can meet and transact online eliminating the location barriers.
It could have been me or you who would have thought about that, believed in it and pursued it, now these two online businesses are doing super fantastically fine.
Your online business can be location targeted. If you’re a student you can create a market place for thousands of your students to meet and transact…
Also Read: 12 latest online jobs in Nigeria for college students
You see, no one is going to do the thinking for you, you just have to figure out how to see problems that people face every day and when you realize you have a solution, bam! you can start it online.
Yes, I said, no one is going to do the thinking for you, but there are tools to validate your idea to ascertain if it’s worth venturing into.
Competition is a good sign, if there’s competition in the area you intend to venture into, then be rest assured there’s lots of money to be made.
When you identify a problem people face offline and would love to find the easiest & most cost effective solution, you can then proceed to build a platform around it online and even leverage the power of the internet for your business success.
Quick Tips:
To boost your chances of succeeding,
- Visit online forums to see what questions people ask and what problems they’re trying to solve.
- Do keyword research to find keywords that a lot of people are searching
- Check out your potential competitors by visiting their sites and taking note of what they’re doing to fill the demand. Then you can use what you’ve learned and create a product for a market that already exists–and do it better than the competition.
Your goal is to find a group of people who are searching for a solution to a problem, but not finding many results.
Build & Design Your Blog
If you’ll have an online business, then you’ll have an online platform (a blog), to establish your presence and reach your target audience.
It start with registering your domain name
Your domain name is your unique address on the internet. It is your personal blog address. For example Facebook’s domain is www.facebook.com and the Domain of Oasdom is www.oasdom.com. Your new blog domain name will be www.Yourblogname.com.
But you need to pick a unique domain name, so I’ve put together 12 quick tips to choosing a domain name for your business and I’m sure you’ll find it helpful.
Once you’ve decided on a domain name to go for, you’ll need to register with a domain registrar online, and it comes with a little annal fee.
I strongly recommend Namecheap, from the name they offer not just cheap domain registration service, but a super cheap web hosting service as you’ll see below.
Host your newly registered domain name
Hosting your domain name is like getting a room for your business in an estate. So online you have to host your business domain, and make it accessible to everyone.
To host your blog’s domain is like paying a rent to the landlord (hosting companies) to keep your business (blog) open 24/7 every year.
I still recommend Namecheap to host your blog.
For starters, their web host facility features great storage capacity of 20 Gig! and you can even host up to 3 blogs with that plan.
Namecheap promises unmetered bandwidth, free 1 year WHOis guard, SSL certificated and domain based email (like support@yourblogname.com), all at a very low fee around N7,800 or so.
Build and design your blog
Once you’ve registered your domain name and purchased a hosting plan, you’ll need to build and design your blog.
To enable you do this effectively, I created a post on how to create and start your blog all by yourself in 6 steps (that’s if you choose to do it yourself). You can also contract it out to web designers.
The link above explained everything you need to know about setting up a blog, from registering a domain, to finally styling your blog.
You can apply proven online marketing strategies to make passive income on your blog. This includes earning by recommending and selling other people’s products through affiliate marketing.
Don’t forget, make your blog simple, it’s your contents and traffic that matters most.
Create Your Social Media Channels
After registering your domain and having a functional blog online, you’ll want to create social media accounts for your business.
This involves creating your brand profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and a couple of others. Doing this brings you closer to your fans and helps you build a better relationship when you’re not trying to sell anything to them.
Note: Don’t try to be everywhere. two or three social media platform is okay for a start. Managing your social media account to engage audience also requires time, the less the better.
Create Value-adding Contents
Your content is a key part of your online business. What will make people visit your blog? It’s your blog contents.
You need to create problem solving contents so related to the problem you’re solving. For example, I gave an example of a dry cleaner the other time, you can create blog posts or videos on ‘the best way to fold your clothes’.
If you’re a stylist and want to bring your offline business online to reach more audience in your location, you can create quick beauty content for your audience.
Contents that are engaging are worth sharing and that’s what your audience will do to help you get your word out and give you exposure.
You can also take it a step further by taking our free blogging course and learn more about using your blogging platform to write contents and more..
Quick tips:
To make sure your content serves it’s purpose on your blog, put to use the following tips
- Arouse interest of your blog visitors and target audience with a compelling headline.
- Describe the problem you’re solving on your blog.
- Establish your credibility as a solver of this problem.
- Add testimonials from people who have used your product.
- Make a strong guarantee.
Develop Product(s) That solves the Problem You’ve Identified
I’ve always said it in my posts, that something is called a product because it solves a problem and creates value.
So develop your product or series of products that tackles certain aspects of the big problem you’re trying to solve online.
Since you’re online and aim to reach your target audience without location boundaries, you can create digital products that solves this problems and can even sell these products.
Quick tips
- Talk about the product and how it benefits the user when creating your contents.
- Make an offer.
- Create urgency.
- And you can even ask for the sale.
When creating contents around your product(s), you need to focus on how your product or service is uniquely able to solve people’s problems or make their lives better.
[Tweet “Think like a customer and ask “What’s in it for me?””]
Get Traffic to your blog
Traffic is king in any business. No traffic, no business. Offline your customers are your traffic, but online your traffic are your potential customers.
There are many ways to get traffic to your blog, from social media platforms to search engines. All still boils down to free and paid traffic options.
Everyone want’s to cut costs and maximize profit, so you can start out with these free traffic methods and paid traffic options.
Related: 7 ways to grow any business with Facebook
Put in Place Online Marketing Strategies to Make Money
This is the point where you need to learn more about making sales on your blog the most effective way.
Online marketing or digital marketing is simply any effort you put in, to get yourself or your business right in front of people to see, or anything you do to grab their attention and hopefully, at some point, get them to buy from you.
Learn more: The real truth behind making money online – don’t get it twisted
Online income earners, among other things, sell online to make money and they’ll have to market what their selling. I’m sure you know there’s a difference between sales and marketing.
To help you understand the concept of marketing for your online business, you’ll need to understand the key areas of digital marketing.
How to Start an Online Business In Nigeria Summary
There you go, the 7 steps to starting your online business:
- Find a gap and fill it
- Build and design your blog
- Create your social media channels
- Create value-adding contents
- Develop products that solves problems you’ve identified
- Get traffic to your blog
- Put in place online marketing strategies to make money
In our online marketing article series, I’ll pick each of the strategies and give a detailed explanation.
So go ahead, start your online business today.
It took some time to put this together, and I’ll really appreciate giving this post a like and a share on your favorite social media platform. Your comments are welcome as well and Most importantly, digest every bit of information in here.