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How to get your first 1000 customers

One of the things I have noticed business owners struggle with is making money from their startups in as short a time as possible. Because if the business is not making money, it is likely to sink in debt and when bills can’t be paid, the business is likely to die.

But how do you make money from your business?

The answer to that is simple. By attracting a good number of buyers/customers/clients. A good number of customers can be anything from 100 to 10,000 depending on the product you are selling.

However, one thing I have noticed is that a lot of business owners set 1000 sales of their products/services as a milestone. For the purposes of this article I will presume a 1000 sales means purchases from a 1000 customers.

So how do you get 1000 customers?

The answer to this is not so simple, nor is it straight-forward. Customers are the lifeblood of any business. Research has shown that a satisfied customer is 60-70% more likely to buy from you again, while a new prospect is 5-20% likely to buy a thing from you.

For instance let’s say you run an eCommerce website that specializes in custom-made shoes. You have a new batch of shoes and announced it on your Facebook page. Let’s assume that two sets of shoe-addicts saw it: Abigail and Dagrin. Now Abigail has bought one of your shoes in the past and she loved it while Dagrin stumbled on your announcement.

Who do you think will immediately click the link with the intention to check it out and purchase it?

If you guessed Abigail, you are right. Because of the pleasant experience of her last purchase, Abigail will buy anything from you, once she likes it.

Dagrin, on the other hand, would be skeptical. First he has to be sure your website is legit, then he has to be sure the shoe really looks good, then he has to be sure you will deliver his shoes, then he has to be cajoled into parting with his money.

But if your business is new, then you will have to know how to convert Dagrins into Abigails. To help you with this, I will explain how to build your customer base then show you a practical case study after that. Ready? let’s delve in.

How to build your customer base

1. Determine what you will sell

In this article, I will assume that you already know who your ideal customer is. I will also assume that you already have a website or blog. Next you have to determine what you will sell on your blog. There are many ways to make money from blogging but the most popular ones are:

Through Affiliate sales
Through Ad placement
Through sponsored posts and reviews
Through selling your own physical products
Through selling your own training courses/ ebooks
Through selling your services

The model you use will greatly depend on the type of business you ventured into. For instance if you are a catering company, your revenue will most likely come from selling your own meals or outdoor catering services or training courses on how to cook spectacular meals. CrockPot Restaurant is an example of this as shown below:

But if you are a food enthusiast who just loves to write and talk about food, then majority of your revenue will come from affiliate sales and Ad placement. For instance Jenn Segal of OnceUponAChef uses adverts in multiple sections of her site to monetize her site’s traffic

Don’t worry if you are a bit hazy about this at the beginning. You can figure this out as you get website visitors and begin to discover what they like, don’t like and what they need solutions to.

2. Set a realistic goal

Often times I see newbie entrepreneurs hoping to break even and start making a healthy profit within a month or two. Not only is this hard to achieve, such expectations can quickly dampen your spirits when you fail to meet them.

For instance, if you started a photography blog, do not expect to get 10,000 unique visitors within a month of starting that blog. Many 3-year-old blogs can not boast of half of that traffic.

According to Shanelle Mullin, Director of Marketing at Onboardly, “The key to setting achievable marketing goals is to spend time evaluating your current position. Many startups set lofty, unattainable goals and end up discouraged, which can be detrimental in the early days. On the other hand, some startups set easy, insignificant goals and end up missing out on growth potential.”

So it is important to balance it out. Don’t set goals that are too difficult to reach and don’t set goals that are not challenging.

3. Build a robust marketing plan

“Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.”
– David Packard, co-founder, Hewlett-Packard

And David is right. No matter how good your website looks or how terrific your content is, you must actively promote it. Do not expect your customers to find you. Go out and hunt them down! When Noah Kagan, founder of Appsumo and the OkDork blog, launched a new product, How To Make A $1,000 A Month Business course, he knew he had to develop a spectacular marketing plan. His target was to sell 3,333 memberships to the course within 12 months. He reached his target in 10 months!

How did he achieve this?

By breaking down his big goal of 3,333 memberships into monthly goals. Each monthly goal is further broken into daily goals. So each day, he had a benchmark to reach.

According to Noah, “Overall there’s no ‘right’ goal; you want something that isn’t easily achievable but also something that’s realistic so you don’t feel overwhelmed.We break our goal into a daily target so––even if our goal is a billion––we know on a specific day if we are on track; for example, in January when we had to be at 10,000 uniques a day.

A key thing with goals that I learned from Facebook is to only have one goal for a specific period of time. It helps with saying no to other distractions you will face during the year.”

Noah reveals a lot of the marketing strategies he used to achieve most of the stellar successes Appsumo has experienced in this article: Create Your First Marketing Plan

4. Always Act this: “Customers come first”:

Customers determine how fast or slow your business grows, so they should be treated like royalty. This treatment might involve tweaking your marketing plans to accommodate the needs of a vast majority of your customer base. Do not be rigid. Happy customers lead to a thriving business.

Carry out frequent surveys of your customers to find out what they want and develop strategies or modify your products/services to suit them.

For instance if you planned to sell a course on “Starting a Photography Business” to your customer base but found that 80% of your email list need to know “How to take a spectacular photo” then you now know you must change your original course to the one your customers need.

If you wanted to create an ebook on “How to prepare delicious African Delicacies” but your survey revealed that your email list needs video tutorials, not an ebook, then you have to adapt your original plan to what your email list wants.

If you run a fashion eCommerce store and from your stats, found that most of your eCommerce visitors navigate to the ‘dresses’ section or ask for ‘fashionable, formal outfits’ then you know what to stock up on to increase your sales.

Also do not make your prospective customers uncomfortable in any way. According to Neil Patel in this article on Kissmetrics, ways you can make your prospective customers uncomfortable include:

Unexpected Shipping charges
Forcing prospective customers to create an account before they can complete a purchase
Being too stingy to offer discounts

Case Studies:

Now its all good and well to state what people should do to grow their businesses. But many atimes, practical examples are the best ways to demonstrate this. For my case study I will tackle an interesting field: Fashion Blogging

How to get 1000 customers as a Fashion Blogger:

1. Have an idea of products you can offer on your blog:

As a fashion blogger, you can make money from any of these avenues:

Being a fashion consultant and offering your services on your blog
Writing and selling a fashion ebook
Making money from Ads
Making money from subscription services
Making money from Affiliate sales

2. Set a realistic goal:

Your blog will only make money if you have a good amount of traffic. To get 1000 customers, you need traffic of at least 10,000 email subscribers. To get 10,000 email subscribers you need a minimum traffic of 100,000 annually. Now if you are a newbie fashion blogger, there is no way you can hit 100,000 website visitors in a month, unless you are well-connected in the fashion blogsphere. First break down 100,000 into achievable monthly amounts.

100,000/12 = 8333

Now we have a more manageable number. Do not fret if you don’t hit this number in your first two or three months. Simply subtract, then stack up the remaining months with the leftover.

Example: January you got 100 visitors

that’s 100,000 – 100 = 99,900 visitors

Divide by the number of remaining months

How many months left: 11 months

therefore your new monthly target is: 99,900/11

= 9081 visitors

So how do you meet your monthly target? You need a marketing plan

3. Marketing plan for a fashion blogger:

As a fashion blogger (or any type of blogger) your marketing plan must first tackle how you will attract targeted traffic to your site. Then when you do that you have to convert this traffic to subscribers. When you achieve that milestone, you will then be able to reach out to these subscribers as many times as you want and hence have many more opportunities to convert them to customer.

So first how will you hunt down your prospective customers and entice them to your site?

Follow these guidelines:

Who is your ideal customer? Who would you love to visit your blog?
Where does your ideal customer hang out? This would include Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and other popular fashion sites. Build a list of these popular fashion sites.
Start blog commenting on these sites. To attract traffic from these sites use the name of your site as your name. A few newbie bloggers do link-spamming or link bombing as shown in the image below: While this can be effective, many website owners frown on it and will delete your comment immediately.
Build a Facebook fan page
Join active fashion groups on Facebook. Be active on these groups and post links to your latest blog posts here. I have found Facebook groups to be a highly effective and cheap source of driving traffic to a website. I use them personally. The trick is to be active on these groups. Don’t be selfish and post only your links. Build relationships by commenting on other people’s updates too. This way the group administrator will not be forced to block you from the group.
Run a giveaway.
Make sure your website design is good. Your website is your fresh impression online. The better that impression, the more likely your website visitors will stay and check out other articles.
Make sure you have an email marketing plan in place. This involves signing up for companies like Madmimi or MailChimp. I use madmimi and love their customer support, so I recommend you try them out. To understand how powerful email marketing is, check out this post by Dan Shewan on Wordstream titled “Is Email Marketing Effective? Three Examples That Prove It Is”
Make sure your email optin forms are super visible.
Offer a better bait than “free weekly updates” for your email optin. Consider something like “15 ways to rock a skater dress from work to party on a tight budget“
Make every new email subscriber love you. How? Ask every new subscriber what their pain point in fashion is. You can do this with an autoresponder. This way you know what future articles to write and what future products to create. Also make sure that when anybody tells you their problem, you answer that email immediately with a solution. Sue of successfulblogging.com does this for every new subscriber she gets:
Keep delivering super, quality content that is shareable. How do you know shareable topics? Head over to Buzzsumo, then copy and paste the link of one of the top fashion blogs you compiled. The more shareable your content, the more eyeballs you can attract to your website and the closer you will be to hitting your target.
Make your website interactive through quizzes and comments. Kamdora uses quizzes as shown in the image below: Encourage people to comment on your articles by responding to each comment. Then if you are having trouble getting comments, consider partnering with fellow fashion bloggers to trade comments on each others sites. Read all about this technique in Neil Patel’s article:The Day After: 11 Things to Do After You Publish a Post

When you have reached your milestone of the number of monthly visitors, you should take a critical look at your email sign-up rate. Typical industry averages are: 3% to 11%. Anything higher than 11% is stellar. That means for every 100 people that visit your blog, 3 to 11 are likely to signup for your newsletter.

Then next take a critical look at the problems most of your email signups complained about. Is there a common problem complained about by most of your email subscribers? Write articles packed with solutions for these problems. Are these articles widely successful? Or more popular than any other articles on your blog? Then you have identified a pain point. You can cash in on this pain point in the following ways:

Find already existing solution-providers and become an affiliate for them: this is the easiest way to cash in
Find already existing solution-providers and write sponsored posts or reviews for them
Find already exiting solution-providers and pitch an advert space on your blog to them.
Start offering a consultancy service that solves this problem: This means you will develop a solution and sell it to your email list.
You can setup a subscription service like the one Kamdora did, where your subs have to pay a minimal amount weekly/monthly to access your best advice. (Did you also notice that Kamdora is running a giveaway?)

And when you start hitting your monthly goal, you can start displaying google ads on your site. I normally advice new bloggers to forget about using google ads on their site until the site is 3 months or older. Because without a great quality of traffic, google ads is useless on your site. In the article, “How to build a profitable blog” Kay Rockley shows us that Huffington post makes $2,330,000 from just ads. When adopting the ads model, your ‘customer’ is anybody who visits your blog regularly.

Click here to see the full infographic

When adopting the affiliate sales model, your customer is anybody who buys through your affiliate links. Pat Flynn made up to $123,853 from mostly affiliate marketing.

When writing sponsored posts or reviews, your customer is any company that pays you to write the sponsored post or review. Enstine Muki makes a killing from this model of revenue generation as seen in this post. He also makes a killing by selling advert space to specific solution-providers.

When offering subscription services, your customer is any person that pays for this subscription service.

When selling an ebook, your customer is any person who buys the ebook from you.

4. Remember Customers come first:

As you try out each type of money-making model on your blog, be attentive. What do your customers like? Which model do they prefer? Which model is reaping the most returns for you? Your objective is to ensure you make money, get more customers and not repel your present customers in the process.

To achieve I suggest you carry out surveys on your email list to find out what they really want so that you can provide it. I normally use Google Forms to do this because there is no limit to number of responses I can receive. I recommend you use this. But if you want a more robust survey system, then use Survey Monkey. I also use surveys as a medium to ask, “What can I improve to serve you better?” and “What is the one thing you don’t like about my blog?”

Watch your ads stats: What is your average Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

Observe the number of email subscribers who eventually buy your products and those who abandon the cart. Then find out from those who abandoned the cart why they did and see if a discount will help in closing that sale.

Another thing you must consider is what you can do to turn your current customers into your ambassadors. Your current customer turns into your ambassador when she shares your posts on her social media accounts and when she recommends your service to her friends and family. This is where embedded social media share buttons, running giveaways or customer reward programs become highly effective.

But first you must satisfy that customer before providing means for her to spread the word about you.

Conclusion:

Setting a milestone for your business is necessary. Depending on your type of business, a milestone of 1000 customers in 12 months is advisable. To achieve this milestone, you should know who your ideal customer is. Then you should have a website too.

One way of getting 1000 customers is to diversify your revenue-generation models. Do not be fixated on one type. Develop a robust but flexible marketing plan as well. Your marketing plan should focus on how to get targeted traffic to your site, then how to convert this traffic to subscribers so that you can have the opportunity to reach out to them and turn them to customers. Then test and try as many revenue-generation models (advertising, affiliate sales, coaching e.t.c) to see which one works perfectly for you.

Whatever you do, do not sideline your customers. They fuel your business so do as much as you can to keep them happy. Also to ensure you hit your milestone sooner, try converting your customers to your brand ambassadors by making it easy for them to share your content or by offering them mouth-watering rewards for every friend they refer.

Over to you. Tell me your greatest challenge in meeting the 1000 customers milestone in the comments below and I will answer right back with actionable tips you can try.

How to drive traffic to your business blog

Its annoying right? You do what is recommended to ensure your business grows: You develop a great product, launch a website, then tell your friends about it.

Then to your astonishment and frustration- Crickets!

No traffic. No sales. nothing. zilch!

Its almost as if you wasted your time, efforts and money because you are getting nothing for it.

I know the feeling. I have been there before. But i did certain things that helped me get targeted traffic to my website and start making sales. Before I reveal the methods I used, I need to answer a very important question:

What is Targeted Traffic?

You have probably heard this term before but have you ever wondered what it really means?

Picture this: Let’s say you have an archery gameboard like the one in the picture below.

Your goal in this game is to hit the bull’s eye (i.e the spot painted yellow). Any arrows that do not enter that bull’e eye spot is a miss.

Its the same thing with target marketing. Your target market is the yellow spot. That is where you must hit with your marketing efforts. Any marketing effort that lands outside the yellow circle is a miss.

How do you determine your Target Market

Your target market is determined by the ideal prospect for your business. Let’s say you are a fitness instructor and you want to open a fitness club.

Your ideal prospect is anybody interested in having a trim, healthy body. Therefore your target market are any group of people who want to have a trim, healthy body and are willing to spend time in the gym to achieve this. Now we know what our yellow circle is.

How do we fire marketing arrows that will hit only that yellow circle?

By marketing only where your target audience hangs out. Any other marketing effort is a miss. For the fitness club I will recommend the following:

First determine how your target audience thinks: Are they visual in nature? Do they like to read a lot? Is your product a formal or friendly one? The answers to these questions determine where you will start. Now for a fitness club, most people who are interested in fitness prefer seeing training sessions in pictures or videos. therefore you should be advertising in Facebook, Youtube and Instagram. Also fitness is a friendly product and requires social interaction, therefore Facebook and Instagram are a must.

Locate where your ideal prospects already hang out: You are not the first fitness club to materialise on planet Earth. Locate other fitness clubs’ pages on these social media and see who their followers are.

Replicate what these fitness clubs are doing on your own social media page: These fitness clubs are your competition. Find out what they are doing, improve on it and do it on your social media page. Are you competitors updating their Facebook pages with motivational images and videos. Create your own motivational image and videos and upload on your Facebook page. Are your competitors using videos to demonstrate on Youtube? Create your own video and upload to your Youtube Channel.

Find other areas that your ideal prospects will be interested in: People who spend time in gym are careful about what they eat. So look for healthy food websites. People who gym wear sporty wear to the gym. Look for sporty wear websites. Make a list of the most popular ones within your locality. Become friendly with the owners of these sites. Then after a little while, ask for a recommendation to their followers or for an opportunity to guestpost for them.

As you can see, the first step in this marketing process was knowing who your ideal prospect was. Once you figure that out, the rest is a whole lot easier.

Ways to drive targeted traffic to your business blog

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website. But if you want your business to make money, you must concentrate on how to drive targeted traffic to your website. This is because targeted traffic are people already looking for the solution you offer. They want it. Therefore it will be way easier to get them to pay for any of your services.

Because they already want the service.

Below I describe methods I use to attract traffic to my website.

1. Search Results:

This is one of the best ways to get targeted traffic to your website. This is because when people do a google search, they need the solutions to their search. To ensure your website always turns up on google search results please follow these guidelines

Your website must have a blog: In your blog, offer solutions to pressing problems your ideal prospect experiences. For the fitness club, this will be fitness-related articles. make sure these articles are pressing pain points. Because people do google search for pressing pain points.

Do not copy and paste: Make the mistake of stealing articles from another fitness site and Google will penalise you by reducing your website’s ranking and hence making it near impossible for you to get to the first page of google search results. And the first page is where you want to be because it converts higher than the second or third page.

Make sure your website is mobile-responsive: If you use a website theme that is not mobile-responsive, Google will remove your website from all searches done on a mobile device. This is bad business for you because 7 out of 10 people use mobile devices to make google search.

Provide high value content in your blog: Ensure you write blog posts that are share-able. Blog posts that go viral are high value content that solve a specific problem.

Encourage Social Sharing and commenting on your blog: When there are so many websites vying for the same keywords, Google puts the sites with the most relevant comments and social shares in the first page.

2. Advertising:

Let’s face it, to make money you must be prepared to spend money. Many may cringe at this fact but it is the truth

To attract targeted traffic to your site, you must be prepared to spend on advertising. Three of the most effective advertising mediums for local business owners are Facebook ads, Google ads and similar-interests websites.

When advertising on Facebook, I greatly recommend using Custom Audiences for the best results

When advertising on Google, I greatly recommend choosing long-tail keywords that are as close to the solution you offer as possible. This way you reduce the money you have to spend on Adwords.

Similar-interest websites are websites that your ideal prospects visit. For a fitness club, their ideal prospect is likely to visit nutritional blogs. Therefore they should look for the best nutritional and health blogs within their locality and approach the site owners to place their ads on their site.

3. Influencer recommendation

I have written many articles on the power of influencers and how they can skyrocket your business sales.

Related: The Secret Sauce of Success

An influencer is a well-respected person who is an expert in a certain field. Influencers typically have from 10,000 to 1+ million followers. Imagine having someone like Don Jazzy or Jay Z recommend your music?

Instant stardom right?

The same applies to business. For the fitness club, imagine having someone like Genevieve Nnaji, or Mo Abudu recommend you? You guessed it, instant sales.

Don’t know any A-list celebrity (or Big Fishes as I prefer to call them)? Then target smaller fishes who are still well-respected influencers and have at least 5,000 to 10,000 followers. I write about how you can accomplish this here (How to build your connections and grow your business).

4. Referrals

The cheapest form of targeted traffic is referral traffic.

What do I mean by referral traffic? When a customer buys something from you and recommends you to their friends, and those friends come and buy from you because of that recommendation, that is called referral traffic.

To get referral traffic, you have to entice your customers with discounts and rewards for each customer they bring. This will propel them to tell their friends about you. Also I greatly advise the use of giftcards on your site.

Giftcards will help current customers attract new customers to your website. I intend to write an entire blog post on what Giftcards are and how they can help your business.

5. Giveaways:

I have used giveaways many times in my marketing career. What I learnt is that if done right, giveaways can lead to targeted traffic explosion and an increase in your email subscribers.

But if done wrongly, giveaways can turn into a huge money sucker that will give you absolutely no results. Trust me, I have had one or two failed giveaways and i have had successful giveaways too. Here is what I learnt

Choose your gift wisely: Unless you are a phone retailer, do not giveaway any phone! Unless you are in the travel and hospitality industry, do not giveaway an all-paid trip to anywhere! This is because your gift is highly instrumental in attracting those that will participate in your contest/giveaway. If you giveaway a phone, every Tom, Dick and Harry’s cat will want to win the phone. Instead giveaway something related to your business. For the fitness club, I highly recommend giving away free membership, or sport wear or one-on-one private fitness coaching. This way people who are not interested in fitness will not even bother to enter your giveaway.
Keep the timing short: Do not let your contest drag for months! Even 30 days can be too much unless the giveaway is worth millions. Keep the giveaway short (between 7 – 14 days) for the best results
Choose your host wisely: One question you must answer before you start a giveaway is “Do I have a large enough following?” There are two ways to host a contest: On your site or on another person’s site. If your email list is 0-100 subscribers and your Facebook page is less than 2000 fans, you should not host the giveaway. Instead look for a similar-interest website with massive following and host your giveaway with them. This way the followers of the website will take part in your giveaway and you automatically acquire a large following!
Choose the giveaway software wisely: The giveaway software will greatly determine your success rate with the giveaway. You want to choose a giveaway software that has many options for making your contest go viral. I greatly recommend Gleam.
Tell your friends about it: One of the biggest mistakes I made in one of my giveaways was I did not tell my friends about it. When you want to run a giveaway, pester your friends about it. Even if you are running the giveaway on another website.

6. Free E-books:

This is an option I am currently working on. This option has high returns. And it only sends targeted traffic to your business website.

How does it work?

You write an ebook about a pressing problem that your ideal prospect has. Then you upload it to ebook platforms like Amazon, Smashwords and set the price to 0.00

That’s right, you make the ebook free!

The goal of the ebook is to attract traffic to your site and not to make money. Make the ebook as concise and straight to the point as possible. Then make sure you put links to a landing page on your website.

Why should the ebook be free?

To encourage massive downloads. When the ebook is free, you remove a customer’s resistance to price. Normally before a customer will buy a book (even if it is $0.99), they will check customer reviews and testimonials to be sure it is a good enough book. Then they will check other alternatives to be sure that your ebook beats the competition.

But when it is free, they hardly check these things. They just go ahead and download it to see if the book is really good. If it is not, they simply delete it.

I have seen this method convert nicely for friends and acquaintances. That is why I am interested in doing it. Many times, customers acquired this way go on to buy products worth thousands.

So there you have it; a concise guide on how to drive traffic to your website. Hope you enjoyed it. If you did please share and help others discover more ways to increase traffic to their business websites.

Do you have a suggestion I omitted? Tell us your suggestions in the comments.

P.S: Want a personalized traffic solution for your blog? Let me help you with my free Business Plan Service. Click here to get started.

How to make so much money from your business – guaranteed!

Let’s sit back for a second and consider some of the reasons you open up a business:

To change the world: Maybe you have an idea that you know can make the world a better place.
To pursue your passions: Life is sweet when you can earn from doing what you already love.
To afford any luxury you want: Let’s face it; you got bills to pay and you want to own a car and you hope to afford vacations every year. Plus you want to provide the best life possible for your family.
You want to be your own boss: Enough said.

But here is the truth: Running a business is not a piece of cake. It can be challenging and if not managed properly, can lead to lack of sales and frustration as you will then find it difficult to achieve any of the reasons you opened your business.

How to Ensure You make money from your Business:

Someone I know told me that Sales solves every problem in a business.

And I agree with him. Because when a business is making money, no matter what you might be facing in that business, it won’t frustrate you. If you have customers that complain a lot, you will swallow it; if you have employees that slip every now and then, you will overlook it; if you have a project that needs financial assistance, you can secure a loan from a bank; if you have a kid that needs special academic attention, you will pay for it.

A thriving business with consistent money flow and profits is every entrepreneur’s dream.

But how can you build a business that makes so much money, bank managers will be following you bumper to bumper just to convince you to put it all in their bank? I drew up a list of ways to increase the revenue-earning power in your business. They are:

1. Watch your business expenditure:

The mistakes a lot of entrepreneurs make is that they do not watch how they spend money made from their business. If you want your business to be successful and profitable, you have to watch your expenditure; there is no two ways about this.

Ways you can watch your expenditure:

Decide what your salary is: A lot of entrepreneurs do not give themselves a fixed salary. This is really bad. They take money based on the profits they make or the issues that might crop up at home. I discourage that. Fix yourself on a salary and every single extra cent that comes invest it back into the business. Instead give yourself a milestone. Tell yourself that if you are able to achieve consistent volume of sales of a certain amount, then you will increase your salary. This way yo will be motivated to work more so that you can achieve your target and hence increase your salary.
Only spend on what is necessary: Entrepreneurs always face an inclination to splurge. Maybe you are a new entrepreneur and you want a shortcut. So you have been told if you spend more on this and that, then boom! your business will be the next CocaCola. Or maybe you have been in business for a while but sales are at an all-time low and you are hoping you can buy back your customers by spending money here and there. STOP! If it is not necessary do not spend on it. Keep your expenditure tight. This way you will have more money and increase the money flow capability of your business.

2. Increase your client base:

More Clients or customers equal to more sales. That’s not rocket science, that is a fact! One of the best ways to invest in your business is to invest in strategies that increase your client base. Follow the following tips to increase your client base:

Do not lose your old customers: Research has shown that it is way more easier to get an old customer to buy another product from you than it is to turn a complete stranger into a new customer. So do everything within your power to keep your old customers. Establish a rewards program, so that when someone buys something from you, they are entitled to a discount coupon they can use on their next purchase.
Give out Giftcards on your site. Sites like Eve & Tribe and Fashpa are doing this well. Giftcards are great because they mean more sales for you. A giftcard is something you purchase when you are not sure what gift to give. Ensure there is a giftcard service on your site, so that your old customers can give it out to their friends and family.
Make your old customers refer you to their friends. The most trusted and effective advertorial is when a friend says, “I have used it before and I loved it. You should get it too.” Encourage your old customers to recommend to their friends by rewarding them for every referral that turns into a sale. Software you can use to do this include Referral Candy and Gleam Rewards.
Do giveaways: Nothing attracts new business like a giveaway. But a lot of entrepreneurs get this wrong by giving away something that will attract the wrong audience. Example: giving away an iPhone 6 will attract every tom, dick and harry to your site. And most of them (99.9%) will never buy a thing from you. Instead give away something related to your business. Do you sell custom shirts? give away a custom shirt. Do you make cakes? Giveaway a sumptuous, mouth-watering cake. Do you design apps? Giveaway an app design and implementation package.
Liaise with established influencers in your target market, so they can advertise you to their audience. This is one of the most effective methods of attracting new customers and clients to your business. Click here to learn more.
Advertise on Social Media Platforms your target audience hangs out: To grow you need new customers. Another way of getting new customers is through advertising. Get the best conversions on your advertising budget by advertising only on social media platforms your target audience already hangs out in.
Advertise on Google: Every single day, millions of people use Google Search. Need new customers? Chances are that you can get them through Google Adwords.

3. Offer more value than your competitors:

Its one thing to advertise to new customers, its another thing to convince them to stay. And this is determined by your Unique Selling Point (USP).

To create a USP that converts into more sales, you need to ask yourself: How can I offer more value than my competitors?

To answer that question, first you need to know what your competitors are offering. Then you need to know what extra value you can add to that.

For example if you are a fashion retailer, offering nationwide delivery is no longer an added value. Everyone is doing it. But you can go a step further by offering clients a LookBook for any outfit they buy. In this lookbook, they will see 6 different ways to wear that outfit they buy.

An advantage of this lookbook is that it will contain more pieces for your store. So customers who get this lookbook will be enticed to buy even more outfits just so they can complete at least one or two of the 6 different looks.

4. Network/partner with the right influencers:

I have written about influencers in this article and this article. Have you ever noticed that whenever a blockbuster movie is about to debut, every single prominent actor/actress in the movie is interviewed by a well-known media personality.

Why?

There are many reasons for this but one of the reasons is to subtly market the movie to the media presenter’s audience. Because when someone like Oprah says, “Wow, I will like to watch this movie” you can bet that more than 10,000 Americans will want to watch the movie because of what she said.

Use the same strategy in your business.

Find an influencer who is well-respected and loved. Get them to recommend your product and watch the sales pour in.

5. Solve a pressing problem:

I wrote about this in the article: The fastest way to acquire success. Imagine if someone was to discover the cure to HIV. And imagine if his solution is simple like pop a drug in your mouth and in 24 hours you are HIV negative.

He will be a billionaire overnight right?

Exactly!

You should apply the same mentality in your business. Try to turn your business into a problem-solver. Solve a pressing problem and your increase your profits almost overnight.

6. Market the blazes out of that solution:

I don’t care how good your product is, but if nobody knows about it, it is not going to sell a piece. I learnt this the hard way and wrote about it here: 10 reasons why failure could be your best friend.

Thee ability of a business to make good money depends on the marketing strategy they have. Market your product to the right people, through the right mediums and at the right time and you will make a killing.

7. Get testimonials:

Nothing chases away good business like a bad testimonial.

Picture this: You are browsing on Amazon and you want to buy a facial repair moisturizer. But you are very careful because you have used two fake creams before and the damage they caused to your face has resulted in tens of thousands in dermatologist fees. You don’t want to end up in the hospital again.

Then you see a cream you really like. And it has got 20 rave reviews and just one negative review. You decide to check that negative review out and you see this:

“If there is something lower than 1 star, I would have given it. The texture of this cream is watery and nothing like the original. To make matters worse, after using this cream for only 5 days I noticed a fungal infection on my face. Do NOT BUY THIS fake product.”

Now be honest with me: Will you still buy this cream? Even though it has 20 excellent, 5-star reviews?

Chances are that you won’t! In fact you will run away from the retailer’s amazon page as fast as you can.

That is exactly what one or more negative reviews can do to your business. It can send customers running.

The opposite is true of a positive review. When visitors click on your ads on Facebook or google and they come to your website, see your products and see only excellent reviews and testimonials, they are immediately convinced to buy. Because if people have used your product and liked it, that means your product is genuine and trustworthy.

To encourage more website visitors to turn into new customers, ask your old customers for a testimonial. Entice them with gifts if necessary (this is because many people will not honour your request for a testimonial but will be more easily swayed if they will be rewarded for dropping a testimonial)

8. Get a website:

So Important. The internet is the home of billions of people. If you really want to make serious money, then you need to start thinking of how to sell your business to as many people as possible.

One of such ways is through a website.

I always advise people to open a website before they open a brick and mortar office. This way you keep expenditure low, then start making money before you start paying for office space. A similar strategy was used by Sweet Kiwi and it greatly contributed to their success.

9. Create tiered prices:

Though this not applicable to all business, it is greatly profitable for coaching and training programs as well as businesses like Makeup artistry, catering, health and fitness to mention a few. Tiered pricing works with this principle: the more value I offer, the higher the price I will charge. Look at the image below to see an example of tiered pricing.

Be creative. Start with a base service/product. Then figure out what extra values you can add to increase the price. The extra values can be video tutorials, more hours spent making up the bride and her family, 3 other cakes of different flavours.

So there you have it; More ways you can turn your business into a cash cow. Do you have an addition to make? let’s know in the comments

Sharing is loving; Share with friends and family so they too can make more money from their business.

How to Build your connections and grow your business

I have been tinkering around Facebook and twitter, trying to find new ways to grow my brand. And here is what I found out.

Facebook Likes are almost useless

Tweeter followers are almost baseless.

No am not lying or trying to make things up. If you have a website and want to use internet marketing to increase you client base, then stop spending money on ONLY facebook ads or twitter ads.

Why?

Because, unless you are a gossip site, you will be discouraged by the results. To better illustrate what I am saying let me give you an example:

You are at a great party, sipping your favorite drink at the bar section. Suddenly a complete stranger walks up to you and says, “Hey hi. My name is Josh. And I have something I am so sure you will like.” And just like that, this complete stranger brings out something from his pocket, sticks it in your face and starts telling you all the benefits of that “something from his pocket”.

How will you feel?

Like you are suffocating? Like you want a breath of fresh air? Like you want to be someplace else but within a mile of “Josh”?

Why? Because you don’t know him, you don’t care about him and you certainly don’t care about whatever he is thrusting in your face.

That’s exactly how people feel when they see your ads on Facebook. When they are browsing through their newsfeed and suddenly see an ad with an unknown business name, that is you intruding into their party time. When that ad goes on about some product they have no clue about, that is you thrusting ‘something from your pocket’ in their face.

And to take a breath of fresh air, what do most of these people do? They ignore your ad and look someplace else – (Wow! Look at that cute little kitten. OMG, is Kim Kadashian naked again?)

But Facebook and Twitter are not completely useless, if you know how to use them. From my tinkering, I found out that Facebook and Twitter (and most social media platforms) are great places to build and solidify your connections and use these connections to grow your business.

Now let’s go back to the party scene. You are silently sipping your favorite drink when you hear someone call your name. You turn around and to your pleasant surprise you find best friend and colleague at the office, right behind you. You squeal with joy and the two of you embrace. Then the two of you do a little chatty talk. Then you notice there is someone beside her. You ask who he is.

“Oh, am so sorry,” she says. “This is my friend Josh. We met at that expo I told you about. Guess what? He has this amazing product I think you need. Josh, why don’t you show her.”

Then Josh brings out the product from his pocket and starts talking about it. For every two sentences Josh says, your friend adds a supporting statement. Then your friend ends it by saying, “I have tried it and I loved it. You should try it too.”

Tell me the truth, wouldn’t you be greatly tempted to buy the product even though you have never met Josh before?

And be honest, you probably never felt like bolting away from Josh’s presence. You probably enjoyed all that chitchat too.

See the difference?

When a stranger is introduced to you by someone you already know, that stranger turns into an acquaintance instantly and a firm foundation for a better promising relationship is built.

And that is how Social Media should be used if you want to get the best results. You should market your products by using an achiever’s influence

Who is an Achiever?

An Achiever is a person who has accomplished a lot in their industry, is well-respected and has a huge following. Want examples? Steve Jobs was an achiever with a massive following and he was greatly respected for being innovative and visionary. You can’t make three sentences about top-selling mobile products without mentioning his name or his company Apple. Oprah Winfrey is an achiever. Her show touched and changed millions of lives, her grass-to-grace story inspired and liberated many women. Mo Abudu is an achiever, with a huge following and she has inspired many to forget their limitations and pursue their dreams. Tony Elumelu is an achiever and has helped many entrepreneur fund their startups.

Imagine when these achievers with tens of thousands of followers mention you to their audience? Let me tell you what will happen because I have experienced a similar occurrence:

1. You will get massive visits to your blog/website.

2. You will see a spike in the subscription to your newsletter and autoresponder lists.

3. You will feel lesser resistance when you talk about your product to your new audience. Its almost as if they want to hear about your products.

4. You will experience a spike in sales of your products after the achiever recommends you.

5. You will observe that you spent less money and achieved better results than Ads would give you.

So you see the advantage of an achiever introducing you to their pack of followers. You spend less money and you get more sales. WIN WIN!

But there is a little problem.

How do you get achievers and influencers to introduce you to their friends and followers? There is one way to do it: you befriend them first.

How to befriend an Achiever.

I must give you fair warning though: Befriending an achiever is no walk in the park. This is because a lot of people are clamouring for their attention. What I advise my clients to do is to start with the small fishes. Achievers fall into three groups: There are the small fishes, then there are the medium-sized fishes and there are the big fishes.

The Small Fishes:

Small Fishes are those achievers that have set themselves apart in their locality, community, industry. Within these small establishments, they have proven to be different and are respected. They also have more recognition and a large number of followers compared to their peers.

Examples of Small Fishes are

people who have fan pages with 10,000 to 99,999 followers.
people who are moderators of active groups with more than 1000 members.
Recently published authors who have shown their expertise in a field and whose books have been downloaded more than 1000 times and have at least 50 amazon reviews to prove this.

These people are easier to meet and befriend.

How do you befriend them?

Follow them on twitter, like their page on Facebook
Find out their website and visit it.
Subscribe to their newsletter.
Each and everytime they release a post, read the post/article and drop a relevant comment (very important)
Be active on their social media platforms, contributing, liking and retweeting moderately.
Do this for at least 5 months before you ask to guestpost for them.
After guestposting, humbly ask for a mention of one of your products to their audience.

Now you will notice I said that its very important to drop a relevant comment on their website. Bloggers love comments on their posts/articles.

But not just any comment like, “Hey hi. Nice article. Can’t wait for the next one.”

That is not a relevant comment, its a spam comment. It shows that you didn’t even bother to read the article at all.

If you really want to get in a blogger’s good books then, read his/her article and drop a comment that shows you read and learnt something from the article. Do this regularly. That is why I said, you should subscribe to their newsletter. This way you know immediately they release an article and you can rush over to their site, read the article and drop a comment.

Notice that I also said you should be active on their social media platforms. But don’t do this in a spooky way. Do not comment or like all updates on their social media. That will look desperate. Instead comment or like or share most of the updates so that they notice you but at the same time you don’t appear to be spammy or desperate.

The Medium-Sized Fishes

Medium-sized fishes are upcoming stars and celebrities. They are the people that are just beginning to catch the attention of top news channels like CNN or even the attention of established big fishes like Oprah Winfrey (and yes I am ‘unapologetically’ a huge fan of Oprah 🙂 )

Medium-sized fishes have accomplished the following:

Built a huge following of a 100,000 or more followers on facebook, twitter, or any other social media site.
Are proud authors of many books/albums/movies that are just beginning to sell like hot cakes.
Are well-established in their industries and widely known as experts.
Can charge crazy fees for the simplest services and yet people rush to book them.
Have spoken in one or more events or seminars.

These upcoming stars are not easily approachable. Your best bet? To be recommended to them by a small fish that they respect. My advise? Start building a relationship with a well-known and respected small fish.

How to befriend a Medium-Fish

Follow them on all their social media platforms and subscribe to their newsletter.
Comment appropriately on all their content (whether on social media or on their blog)
Attend a networking event you know the medium-fish will be attending. Make sure you know a small fish that is a mutual acquaintance and hence can introduce you to this upcoming superstar.
When introduced, try to find a pain point they might have and offer to help free of charge. Do not forget to mention that you have been actively following and participating on their social media and website.
After you have offered help and your help received high praise, seize that opportunity to ask for an introduction of your product to their huge following.

The Big Fishes:

These guys are celebrities. Everywhere they go people are scrambling to have a selfie with them or have their autograph. Contacting such people is near impossible because all communication is routed through their PAs. Your best bet? Get recommended to them.

If you impressed a medium fish well enough, you will definitely be recommended to these celebrities once the chance presents itself.

So there is my advice. If you want your business to succeed do not rely on Ads alone. Use connections with Achievers to improve your sales. To be able to do this, befriend an achiever. To ensure you don’t get frustrated while trying to catch Oprah Winfrey’s attention, start with the small fishes.

Maximize the exposure from the small fishes and the medium ones will take note. keep excelling while pitching the medium fishes with a carefully thought-out strategy and soon, those medium fishes will not only be your friends, but will be recommending you to established celebrities.

To drive my point home, do you know any popular musician whose first interview was with CNN? Nope. They all started out begging local stations to cover them. But with time, as they rose to fame, CNN now has to call their publicist to book a time that will be favourable to the popular musician.

That’s how it is with business. When you are starting out, you might find yourself begging people to listen to you and care about your products. But with the right strategy you could rise to the popular musician’s status and be like Microsoft who has newspapers rushing to cover any news about them.

Did you love this article? Then share so that it could help another person find out how they too can improve their business sales.

The Secret Sauce of Instant Success

If you are more than 10 years old, you must have noticed something fishy about life. Ask the school girl who painfully watched the coveted spot of lead dancer she wanted so badly and worked so hard for go to the richest girl in class simply because the girl’s father was the chief sponsor of the school’s cultural festival. Ask the boy, who hates going to school because his bully who happens to be the Principal’s son, has never been punished regardless of how many times this bully had been reported. They will tell you one thing:

Life is Unfair.

And it only gets worse. Many graduates must have discovered that graduating with a first class or second class upper might get you an interview but it can never guarantee you will get the job. Many entrepreneurs must have discovered that having the best product in the market does not guarantee your product will be an instant hotsell and profit maker.

Far from it.

If you are missing the secret sauce, then your path to success will be long, tiring and filled with frustrations. What is the secret sauce?

It is your Connections.

Why Connections can Make you Successful Almost Overnight.

The old adage stills hold true, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”. Like it or not, “who you know” determines how successful you will be. I remember when I wanted to do a book launch. Two weeks to the date, I didn’t have any candidates to make the keynote speech about my book. I went to one of my mentors and a dear friend, Mrs. Ezeani, telling her my predicament. The very next day, she called me to tell me that she had arranged a topnotch magistrate -who is currently chief judge- to do my book review and deliver a spectacular speech for me on my launch day.

Without my mentor, there is no way I would have known this top achiever. Without my mentor, there is no way I would have approached this trailblazer and convinced her to make space in her busy schedule for me. Because of my mentor, she inconvenienced herself that day by going to a family occasion early and cutting short the amount of time she was supposed to spend there, then sped to the other side of town, just to grace the book launch of a woman that she didn’t even know three weeks prior.

And my case is just an example of how 1 powerful connection can make your life and success, so much easier. Listed below are the reasons connections make you an instant success.

1. Their success will rub off on you:

Imagine going to a networking event and someone you have never seen before is introduced as Bill Gates’ protege. Won’t you immediately start seeing the person in a new light? Won’t you find yourself admiring, respecting and actually listening to this previously unknown person?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above, you are no different from 98% of humans.

This is because humans are wired to respect achievers because we all crave to be stellar achievers. Once you can connect yourself to an achiever, the respect rubs off on you. Subconsciously, people start to think “if an achiever can respect this person, who am I not to respect this person?” or “If an achiever knows and recommends this person, then this person must be worth knowing and respecting”

2. They will inspire and motivate you

Achievers are not driven by jealous rage. Can you imagine Warren Buffet being jealous of anybody? Or Aliko Dangote, one of the richest men in Africa, backstabbing another person?

No.

Why? Because they are accomplished. They have achieved a huge percentage of what they wanted to achieve in their lives. One peculiar thing I have noticed about achievers is that they lift people up. They try to inspire and motivate people. They reveal how they achieved their successes, where they made costly mistakes so that you can replicate their successes.

My sister Ify, got this right when she entered university. She immediately attached herself to achievers (older students who are brilliant, were on scholarship and had huge dreams) and they guided her rightly. She went on to secure a PTDF scholarship throughout her stay in Nigeria, then a commonwealth scholarship for postgraduate studies in Cambridge and within a month of graduating from Cambridge got a job in one of the most prestigious companies in the UK.

The reason her story is different from so many graduates out there is because she aligned herself with achievers.

3. They will introduce you to other industry leaders

Once you are a protege of an achiever, you life will be miles better than a highly brilliant guy that has no achievers to back him up. Achievers take delight in introducing you to their network of friends. And guess what? An achiever’s network of friends is made up of fellow achievers. This is exemplified by my mentor knowing a trailblazer who is currently a chief judge.

4. They will root for you

Once you prove yourself to an achiever, once you show that you are a hardworking, dedicated, focused and loyal individual, then the sky will be your starting point. Because this achiever will recommend you to not just their friends, but their clients and customers. LightWedge CEO experienced this firsthand. Before his product, a book light, appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, this book light was averaging $3,700 a day. The day it appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, all Oprah said was, “I need to get me one of these.” and sales skyrocketed to $90,000 that afternoon.

Once an achiever recommends you or your product, you are on a fast-track to success.

5. Their advice can save you from losses worth millions

One common thing about achievers is that a lot of them had to make a lot of costly mistakes during their lifetime. Some of these mistakes cost them dearly in cash and relationships. So when you pitch an idea to an achiever, they will immediately advise you based on the experiences they have had, not on some theoretical assumptions many false gurus base their supposed “foolproof” strategies on.

I am a typical example of this case. Previously, in my first three failed blogs, I did something many rookie entrepreneurs do. I looked for an easy, shortcut to success. I met a lot of genuine influencers and achievers but the advice they gave me, I did not like. This is because the advice involved a lot of sweat, consistency and a minimum of 6 months to get to success. I wanted success in 3 days. So I instead chose to adhere to the advice of fake gurus, who promised that if you just implemented their tips and tricks, you will be on your way to insta-success in as little as a week.

Fast-forward 3 years, a lot of money down the drain, a lot of wasted effort and many frustrations, and now I am obeying the genuine influencers and achievers. And so far I have achieved a whole lot more than the nothing I achieved with the fake gurus.

6. They make it easier for clients and customers to build a relationship with you.

I have never met Bill Gates but I already trust him. Achievers are trusted. It’s the unfair principle of life. When an achiever recommends something to his clients or customers, the trust factor is instant.

Recently, one of my neighbours, Chike, got a posh job. The job was a managerial position in a pharmaceutical firm with the benefits of a car and a three-bedroom apartment in a choice neighbourhood. Here is the real gist: He NEVER applied for the job. In fact he didn’t even know the job existed until he was called to accept or reject the offer.

No Interview. No Aptitude tests. Nothing.

So how did he get the job? An individual known as a topnotch performer was previously offered the job. But this topnotch performer had so much work choking him, that he couldn’t accept the offer. Instead he made a recommendation. Chike was hired without even an interview to judge his skills but simply based on word-of-mouth referral. This simply points out that this topnotch performer has achieved so much that if he can be impressed by and recommend somebody, that person must be of his calibre. And the funny thing? Chike is not even related to this topnotch performer by blood or family ties. This recommendation was made purely out of a singular past business interaction.

How You can make connections with Achievers

1. Attend networking events. Though they are pricey, they are really important and is a suitable ground to mingle and meet achievers in similar industries. I greatly recommend attending an event at least once a year.

2. Help people: Do not scrimp from helping people no matter who they are, or what they do. Do not monetize everything you do. Sometimes extend favors to people, clients, customers because in the long term these favors can snowball into a leverage/recommendation for you.

3. Always deliver your best: Where I come from there is an adage, “the legs that walk about, is monitored closely by the eyes that look about”

Meaning that everything you do is watched by someone you do not know. When you over-deliver or supersede expectations, people are watching. When its time to make recommendations, your name will be the first to spring out of their lips.

4. Become a protege: No mentor will watch as their protege sinks and do nothing about it. Because a protege’s failure becomes their own failure. Which is why, in the political arena, unknown politicians attach themselves with accomplished godfathers in order to increase their chances of clinching a political position. Bringing this argument homeward, it is very safe to argue that without Tinubu’s influence and participation, Gen. Buhari will not have won the presidential seat.

5. Always seek an opportunity to help an achiever: Economics lets us know that human needs are insatiable. Contrary to popular belief, achievers do not have it all. There is always a favour you can extend to them. Many achievers will not hesitate to return a favor if you ask.

So there you have it. Did I miss anything? Do you know other ways of attracting the attention of achievers? let’s know in the comments.

P.S: If you found this article helpful, consider sharing it and helping someone else with the information they need to become successful.

They lied about Online Business

I can imagine the look on your face; like what is she about to say? Is she not one of those that canvasses about the online business model? Or is she about to finally confess? So the truth will set her free!

Sorry to disappoint you guys. I am not about to start shouting on the rooftops that all every internet business should be rejected. Nor am I going to say that internet business is scam.

Not when Jumia and Konga are there to prove me wrong. (By the way if you never shop for Konga, I don’t understand again ooo! Even with the N1000 flat rate delivery to any part of the country?)

No, when I talk about Internet or Online Business I mean those sleazy internet marketers that promise that once you buy their ebook, or pay N3500 or pay $25 (the latest scam I found) you will become a millionaire in 3 days or less than a week.

But these desperate 419ers do not stop at that. For where? they go ahead and tell you that you don’t need computer or even internet, in fact you don’t need to do anything at all. Just own a phone and a bank account. Then pay for their millionaire secret and vavavooom! you don hammer be that.

I can almost hear you say, “Nobody can fall for that trick. Not in today’s time!”

I was thinking like that before ooo, till one of my friends became a victim. As you rightly guessed, I took to my blog to alert other people before they fall victim.

How do you know scam artists:

1. They do not have functioning websites themselves: When next you are browsing on facebook and you see an ad that promises to reveal secrets of how to be a millionaire, be careful. When you click the ad and you land for a website that doesn’t have any other content, does not have a menu, nothing except gist about how the self-named guru will reveal millionaire secrets to you, run! You have entered one-chance. DO not buy anything. Do not copy any account number and go, so you can pay into that account.

2. They promise you don’t have to break a sweat: Like seriously? I do online business and have engaged in most forms of online business from Freelancing to e-consulting, and I have one thing to say; it is work. Not even small work ooo. Sometimes I have to wake around 4:30am just to write a meaningful article for you, my lovelies. I spend a minimum of 1 hour writing the article. I spend hours spread across separate days just to research the material, because I don’t like to vomit rubbish. And someone wakes up from the moon and says all you have to do is switch on a phone and the millions will troop into your account. Story for the gods.

I understand that the rate of poverty in this our beloved country has made it impossible for many people to think straight. Coupled with scarce jobs and the easy-peasy, grass-to-grace story our musicians are spreading (more on that in another article), so many people are desperate for money. But you should be careful. Some of these scammers actually want your account number and they put payment buttons that can be used to get your account details.

So be extremely careful. Before you believe a word you see, make sure of the following:

1. The website has other content. He must demonstrate his skills and this can only be done when there are other articles to show that this guy actually works for his money

2. The guru has authority: has he published a book? Is he networked with well-known experts? Is he learned or dedicated to improving his knowledge

3. He is willing to offer his knowledge free: Or at least a sneak peek of it. You have to taste the pudding and be sure its worth paying for.

Scamming is real in Naija. Shine your eyes my lovelies. Till my next post remain fruitful.

P.S: Have you ever fallen victim to 419 guys or any type of online scam? Do you know anyone that has? Tell us about it in the comments and help others avoid the same fate.

5 Effective Ways To Become A Well Known Authority In Any Niche

The name Wole Soyinka commands respect. Chimamanda Adiche, Oprah Winfrey, Lanre De Silva are a few black women who are respected in their fields. Why? Because they all have proven to be an authority in his field. Regardless of their backgrounds, their education. It is what they have accomplished despite all odds that make people admire and respect them.

What is an authority?

An authority is a person who is knowledgeable and has in-depth skills in his/her chosen field. Notice that I didn’t say that the person has in-depth education; I said in-depth skills. Granted education can help you become an authority or expert in a field but many entrepreneurs did not start businesses centered on what they studied in the University.

A remarkable example is Tera Odukoya, Founder of House of Tara. Tara is an educated Lawyer (or an Learned as they call themselves). But today, she is the proprietor of a successful brand that empowers makeup artistes. She has spoken as an ‘authority’ in many shows and has come to be recognised as an Authority in the Make-up Industry. This is because of what she has accomplished in this field, not what she studied in the University.

Taofick Okoya with a HND in Ceramics is the hugely successful founder of Queen of Africa, a Nigerian-based company that produces beautiful African dolls. It has been reported that these dolls are outselling Barbie dolls in some areas of the country. As st the time of this writing, Okoya had a distribution network for his dolls in US and South Africa and is planning expanding to other countries in trhe world. But he doesn’t have a degree in Business Administration, or even Plastics, yet he is building a company that is charting new grounds.

So it not about your degree! Its about knowing what you do. After all, I have been a victim of a quack pharmacist who had the degree but didn’t know the skills of his trade.

So how do you become an authority in any field you choose? By enacting the methods outlined below:

Position Yourself

The mistake many entrepreneurs make is focusing on traffic, sales and profit. This might have short term gains but in the end, it will damage your reputation. Instead focus on establishing yourself as an authority in your business. When Tara wanted to become known as an authority in her business, what did she do? She started a make-up training course. She started a blog that inspires and motivates people.

In other words, the fastest and easiest way to become an authority in your field is to teach, to educate, to help people with the information you have. The cheapest way to do this is to start a blog and post articles. Example if you are a fashion designer, write articles about the right way to mix and match fabrics. If you are a health and fitness guru, write articles about how to live healthy, how to lose weight without stress. If you are an event and decoration expert, write articles about perfect wedding decoration colours, 5 unexpected expenses to look out for when planning an event. Etc. If you have pictures of real life jobs you have done, put it in your articles. This builds great confidence and trust in what you do.

Another way to establish your expertise is to write a book. Once you are an author, people immediately respect and reverence you.

Start with a niche:

The mistake many entrepreneurs make is to start with a huge field, in a bid to make as much profit as possible. Imagine this: an entrepreneur starts a new beverage company and makes beverages that look and taste almost like Coca Cola’s Coke, Fanta and Sprite. His ambition is that people who love Coke will patronise his beverage.

This entrepreneur will be lucky to recover his capital! Why? Because he is completing with a giant who has the resources to advertise, has the best prices for its products and has a loyal market-share that trust every single product Coca Cola makes. At best, the entrepreneur will be seen as a counterfeit or copycat.

How should he have gone about it?

He should have tried to provide something different from what Coca Cola has to offer. When La Casera started, they started with an apple drink in a disposable plastic bottle. This was during a time when Coca Cola products predominantly came in glass bottles which had to be returned after consuming the liquid contents. They then developed a remarkable marketing strategy: to target travelers who will want to take something liquid during their journey but didn’t carry empty Coca Cola bottles with them. The result? They became an instant hit and predominated a market they created for a very long time. How did they become an instant hit?

They started with a niche of beverage refreshment: just one flavour of apple drink.
Their taste was different
Their provided a solution to the pain of carrying replacement glass bottles
They had a unique marketing angle and quickly established themselves as the traveler drink.

Understand that people don’t care how smart you are

If you can’t deliver, you are worse than the dumbest kid. It’s that simple. A doctor that can’t cure his patients is a failure regardless of how many accolades and degrees he has. An entrepreneur that can’t deliver her goods and services will be seen the same way.

But once you have the relevant skills and deliver, nobody cares what you studied. They will be rushing to you because they know you can solve their problems.

Quit Procrastinating:

If you have a business idea and have the skills necessary to start, then START. Even if its just baby steps. This way you will learn along the way and grow stronger. This way you will improve your skills and experience.

I often hear this excuse: “I want to know everything before I start”

I have got news for you: You can never know everything. Everyday new discoveries are made, every day the market-scene changes. So if you are waiting till you know it all before you start, yo will never start a thing.

Also don’t waste money on unrelated products.

I have seen people rush to buy products that promise them instant success in 5 days with no work involved. I have been in the business scene long enough to know that business is just like Rome; it is not built in a day. So if you are really willing to be successful, then you should be ready to do the necessary work required to get there.

Don’t be ashamed of your humble beginnings:

People empathise and relate more with entrepreneurs who are open and reveal to us how they made it. Till tomorrow Oprah Winfrey will be respected, not just because she single-handedly started a multi-billionaire dollar company, but because she was open about her challenges and the rough childhood she had.

Even in Nigeria, people tend to trust people who are open about their past and current struggles. President GoodLuck Jonathan won his first presidential election on the strength of a single story, “I grew up without shoes…”

Tara also used this method on her way to the top. She exposed how passionate she was about make-up and how she started with just N15,000. And how she grew N15,000 to a multi-millionaire naira company.

One of the reasons Linda Ikeji’s blog is successful is because we all know how she started and the challenges she faced, even the failures she faced. We know how despite all these challenges, she has risen from the ashes of poverty to the grandeur of being a self-made millionaire. And that has endeared her to us! So don’t be ashamed to share your story.

The five best payment processors in Nigeria

Gone are the days when customers had no choice other than to go through the hassle of making direct payments into a merchant’s bank account for a successful order. Now, with the availability of online payment processors, customers can place orders right from their homes, once they are connected to the internet. Merchants yet to embrace the online payment method are throwing a lot of money out the window.

But not all payment processors are built equal.

While there are a plethora of payment processors to choose from, some of these payment processors are designed for small scale businesses while some are designed for established businesses. I give a rundown of the 5 best processors, as well as their strengths and weaknesses to guide you in making the right choice for your business. My benchmarks for accessing each processor is ease of use, website integration, ability to undertake local and international transactions, timely processing of transactions, Cost of procuring service and if they have affiliate opportunities.

Interswitch

Interswitchs Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) switching application, supports major networks including Verve, Mastercard, and China Union Pay, besides other proprietary networks. The infrastructure is based on open-system architecture and uses relational database technology, offering clients portability, and reliability as they expand.Our open-systems architecture reduces/eliminates the considerable expense, of paying for proprietary hardware, software, and PCIDSS compliance.

My verdict: 4 stars (٭٭٭٭)

Pros: Interswitch is an established platform with international links and has been in this game for a long time. Their network is robust and is used by most other payment portals. If you are a top-tier company whose ranks fall within the same space as Jumia or Microsoft, then this is the platform for you. Also with this option, customers can pay for you services from anywhere: ATMs, computers, mobiles etc. Also they process payments in a timely manner, and money made reflects in your bank account.

Cons: Very Expensive. Not designed for the small business. Their setup fees alone start from N150,000 with 1.5% fee on each transaction to a maximum of N2000 (as of the time of writing). Their cheapest plan, Quickteller basic, has a setup fee of 16,500 and a percentage deduction of 3.5% on every transaction made. Unless you are an established business with a high rate of turnover, this is not the platform for you. No affiliate program. So you can’t make money by recommending them.

WEBSITE: http://www.interswitchng.com

GTPay

GTPAY is a one-stop, safe, secure and convenient web payment solution that enables merchants receive payments from both local and international payment cards.

My Verdict: 4 stars (٭٭٭٭)

Pros

International Acceptance: GTPAY accepts both locally and internationally issued cards including Interswitch, MasterCard and VISA.
Timely transaction processing and reporting: Merchants get value next day after transaction takes place.
Reduced sign-on fee: GTPAY integration fee is waived for merchants, so you don’t need to pay a developer to integrate the platform for you, unlike Interswitch.

Cons:

Very expensive. Setup is N150,000 (as at time of writing).
A noted preference for GT Naira card. I have noticed that e-commerce sites that use GT Pay accept GTB Naira mastercard easily than other cards. For some other banks, if you don’t have internet banking activated, it will be extremely difficult to pay with GT Pay.
No Affiliate program.

WEBSITE: http://www.gtbank.com/

Simple Pay

Simple Pay allows any business or consumer with an e-mail address and a bank account to securely, conveniently and cost-effectively send and receive payments online or through their mobile phone. Their network provides a global, real-time merchant transaction processing solution. SimplePay for merchants is ideally suited for small businesses, online merchants, individuals, and others currently underserved by traditional payment systems.

My Verdict: 5 stars (٭٭٭٭٭)

Pros:

Ideal for small businesses. Registration is free. With rates of 1.5 per transaction, they are affordable for the small business owner.
They charge all types of cards, local or international. So you can accept payments from Nigeria and beyond.
Sales Reports. This way you know just how much you have sold in real time.
The processor with the most plugins developed for different platforms like wordpress, joomla, woocommerce etc.
An Affililate System: They reward their affilates with N125 per verified account. So you can also make money by recommending them.

Cons:

Integration Costs: Unless you have some knowledge of programming languages like HTML, you might need to hire a programmer to integrate their platform on your website. If you decide to contact them to do that, you have to pay them for such a service.

Website: www.simplepay4u.com

Cash Envoy

Cash Envoy is like the Nigerian version of Paypal; it allows account owners to send money without sharing financial information, with the flexibility of payment using their bank accounts and debit cards. It is safe because account holders will not have to expose account details on the numerous websites they do business on. Convenient, because users don’t have to carry about cards to process transactions. Apart from using it to pay for goods and services online, it can also be used to donate money for a cause.

My Verdict: 4 stars (٭٭٭٭)

Pros:

The only independent payment platform I know that is approved by Central Bank of Nigeria – BPS/PSP/GEN/PSM/02/010.
No integration fees (as of the time of writing)
Fast Settlement: According to them you get all funds generated from business transactions that same day.
Relatively affordable: Transaction rates For Naira Cards: 2.5% + N12.60, maximum of N3500.For Int’l Cards: 3.9% + N12.60, maximum of N5000.

Cons:

No affiliate program
Integration cannot be done by self, unless the merchant has some knowledge of programming knowledge. You must rely on them. A service they have warned might not be free in the future.

Website: https://www.cashenvoy.com.

Vogue Pay

VoguePay is a unique online payment processor whose vision is to offer buyers and sellers a secure and easy-to-use means of transacting business online.
VoguePay allows site owners to recieve payment for their goods and services on their website without any setup fee.

My verdict: 3 stars (٭٭٭)

Pros:

Vogue Pay has been around for a while and can accept money from local and internation cards
Simple integration: You don’t need a developer. All the help you need is in their members area.
Wonderful Affiliate system: They use a multi-tier affiliate system. So when someone signs up through your link, you will keep earning a percentage from every single sale the person makes on their website. And this will go on for 6 months before the affiliate duration expires. If you are also looking for a way to make money in your sleep system, this is one of it.

Cons:

High verification fee: You have to verify your business account before you can use it. And the verification cost N2500
Everything is charged on percentage level. For people to buy your product you can pay up to 4.5% per transaction. For you to withdraw your money, you pay 1% per amount you are withdrawing. For transfer of funds, a transaction percentage of 1% applies. In the end, you are milked for every single transaction you can think of that you want to make using this payment processor.

Website: https://voguepay.com

So there you have it. The five payment processors any business in Nigeria should consider. If you have other suggestions, lets know in the comments. If you have a question, send a mail to canozie@simplyquinessential.com. I try to answer every mail I receive.

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The fastest way to acquire success

The easiest way to succeed as an entrepreneur is to take advantage of opportunities. When Ebola broke out and nearly halted international transactions with certain countries (Nigeria inclusive), many saw the disease as a problem. Only a few saw it as an opportunity. Because of the Ebola outbreak, Businessman Jon Schultz of Blue String Ventures made a whopping $200,000 in one day!

How?

In 2008, he bought the domain Ebola.com for $13,500. When Ebola broke out in 2014 causing global panic and frenzy, he put the domain in the market and sold it to a Russian company for $200,000. (The Verge)

But Jon Schultz was not the only one to capitalize on an epidemic.

The first place winners of the 2014 AMPION Venture Bus West Africa were developers who used their skills to create solutions tackling healthcare issues; specifically Ebola. Ebola was such an epidemic that AMPION choose to consider favourably applicants who could present plausible solutions to eradicating the disease from a digital standpoint.

And this is just one epidemic. History has shown that once you can help people by offering a solution to a pressing problem, you will be successful almost instantly. More examples include Jumia (which became widely successful because of the ease of transaction and guaranteed delivery it offered), MTN in Nigeria (which became widely successful because it solved the headache of acquiring a Line from NITEL and made communication more seamless).

Now there are two ways to capitalise on a problem: Either you provide a solution (which the winners of AMPION did) or you invest in events/products that could lead to a solution (which Jon Schultz did). Of the two, the less risky and more viable is option A. I am a firm believer in helping people solve their problems, putting people first because when you do this, money will always find you.

Interested in cashing in on a problem? Follow the steps below:

Identify the problem: This is the first step. If you do not see the problem, you will never know what solution to look for
Determine the magnitude: A problem experienced by a handful of people is not as profitable as a problem crippling a nation. When Edison created the Lightbulb, it was a massive hit. Why? Because the alternative source of light energy at that time, the gas lamp, was not as cost effective, safe, energy conserving and bright as the light bulb.
Figure a solution fast: When the Ebola epidemic broke out in Nigeria, a lot of smart shop owners stocked their shelves with Hand Santiziers. These shop owners made a killing before other shop owners saw what was going on and rushed to do the same.
Analyze your solution carefully: Business oftentimes demands an investment of cash or human resources or both. Make sure that your solution will be worth investing time and money on. Determine how much this solution will cost you and how many people are likely to buy it. Hint: make sure your solution is a plausible one and that it really helps people. Always put people first when starting your business, not money. Because once you develop something that is insanely helpful, people will be more willing to pay for it. Also make sure that during your cost price analysis, your product/solution will be affordable. This will also help you get more customers.
Deploy as soon as possible: you are not the only smart person on the planet. Chances are that someone else is brooding on that same idea. Normally the first to act and deploy gets the most reward. Example MTN is enjoying a large share of Nigeria Telecoms market not because of the quality of their service but because of the fact that they came in first. Same thing with Indomie and Coca Cola. So if you have an idea that will help people immensely to get rid of a terrible problem, work out your logistics, costs and market price, then deploy. Otherwise someone else will beat you to it and you will be forced to scramble for leftovers.

I really hope this article helps you and if you have any questions please do not hesitate to send a mail to canozie@simplyquintessential.com. If you have any additions or suggestions, let us know in the comments.

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