Recently, Future Awards held training at Terra-kulture, showing interested people how they can earn money by setting up shop online. Some of the tips shared by the speakers include: Omojuwa specifically emphasized on the need to create value which will attract traffic to your brand whenever your resource is needed.
Cheta Nwanze who started the discussions highlighted the increase in the number of Nigerians using online platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. He also spoke on how to drive online traffic by utilizing mailing lists, crowdsourcing, and the use of available social media platforms to propagate content.
There were more insights shared and I am sure those who attended gained value.
Low Entry Barrier to Starting Online Business
The entry barrier to starting an online business is very low. For this reason, if you search, you will see that that there are many blogs that are littered around the internet that are on a quest to make a living from their online business. The tales of success are fewer. Worthy to note is the fact that brands and agencies are always on the lookout for web and online communities or blogs with a huge following and an engaged audience.
Bloggers and Online Business Earning Naira
This search has enriched a few that have been able to grow their brand and offer users and visitors of their online portal desirable content and media experiences. A few of these online destinations for brands, advertisers and agencies that come to my mind are: Nairaland, The Naked Convos, 2go, Linda ikeji, Mobility blog, Omojuwa and YNaija.
There are many more. If you go through the list, you will find some common thread among these blogs and services; they have engaged users and a thriving community. Users and communities are the lifeline of online business. If you are thinking of building one that will be profitable and sustainable, you should take a cue from these ones.
Let’s look at 2go
2go is not Nigeria based. They are a South African company having more than 13 million users in Nigeria. There are over 3.5 million people who use the service daily. 2go has recently launched 2go Market Research and 2go Premium Advertising. With 2go Market Research, brands can poll millions of users and get real-time responses.
So for instance, a recent poll by 2go to their 13 million users showed that GTBank, First Bank and Access Bank were rated the top 3 banks by their users and that over 15% of 2go users are still banked. This is an example of a perfect market opportunity for banks to reach their own customers and to acquire new ones. Another poll showed that Nigerian’s favourite English football club is Manchester United!
You will agree with me that the opportunity to reach and engage with the 2go community provides advertisers and brands with a powerful new mechanism for one to one marketing and social interaction. If I were a marketer in Nigeria I wouldn’t ignore 2go, we think it might just be Nigeria’s largest social network!
Who wants to be the next superblogger? Don’t forget, you can make lots of Naira from it while creating value for users and brands. What challenge do you have at creating a sustaining blog? Fire away in the comments and I will be here to respond to your questions as much as I can.
