Loosing your work or business is not the end of life and not a criteria
to mess yourself up. It is simply a period to proof that you
are capable of taking your destiny in your own hands. An adage says: a person who never makes mistake is a person
who hasn't tried doing anything at all.
Make up your mind to succeed and you will.
The bad economic
situation and high rate of unemployment in recent times around the world and
particularly in Nigeria has made it very difficult for a good number of people
to be gainfully employed, and there is high level of hardship being experienced
everywhere. So many people who eventually go to work are simply under-employed
and merely go to work to avoid being idle.
A friend of mine told me
that she runs out of cash a day after she receives her salary. Consequently, she borrows money to make up
for the rest of the month before another salary will be paid and she goes on
like that. She said she has no savings
or any meaningful investment and she has been working for over 10 years. Definitely, this is not a gainful employment.
Those who do small businesses
are not better off and they have the same story of woe to tell. This category of people do their businesses
along the roads, in makeshifts and kiosks because they do not have the capacity
to pay for lockup shops and shopping malls, as a result of which they always
have their wares confiscated or their makeshifts and kiosks broken, others have
theirs burnt because these places are not meant for business purposes and
therefore prohibited by the government.
Since the government is yet to resolve this
issue of unemployment, we need to help our selves, we need to start trying
every legitimate possible ways by which we can feed our families and pay our
bills without investing much on the start up of the business.
Let us consider these two proven and
profitable home businesses that can ensure our daily bread.
1. On-Line Business:
There are so many internet businesses (not yahoo-yahoo) you can do right from your home with little or no start up capital. You will however require a Computer (desktop or laptop) and an internet modem for internet connection. Some people use their smart phones but I always recommend you use a computer for quality output. You will also need a printer. The good news is that if you do not have the money to purchase all these gadgets, you can make use of a good business center or a cybercafe around you.
These businesses includes but not limited to:
o Blogging
o Product Marketing
o Information Marketing
o Recharge Card Printing
o Bulk SMS etc
Blogging: This is the art of writing and passing information to others in ones chosen niche through the internet. You can write on what you are passionate about: technology, news, music, entertainment, home and family, health, education etc and other people will benefit from it. But before you can blog, you will need to have a platform (domain) and a site address so that people can locate you. You can obtain this free of charge or with a little cash. The free one is actually a sub-domain (that is someone giving you the opportunity to use his main domain) and you will get a good sub-domain from Goggle Blogger. However, you will need to pay a little cash to have a main domain like WordPress etc and this you will get from some web-hosting companies and they are available in Nigeria.
Blogging also entails writing unique and quality contents (articles) so that you can attract readers (Traffic) to your site. When you have enough contents and traffic, you will then apply for goggle advertisement (goggle ad-sense). When you are accepted by goggle, they will be giving you adverts in coded form which you will place on your blog pages and whenever your readers click on these adverts, you will earn money from goggle. You will also open a domiciliary account either in dollar, pounds or euro where you will be paying in the cheques you will receive from goggle. This is not a spam as there are millions of people earning their living through this medium and you can be one of them.
Apart from Google Ad-sense there are so many other ways of earning money from your blog. You can place other advertisements, sell your own products and you can also do affiliate marketing. Any how you use it; blogging is profitable if you have the right mindset and ready to work hard.
Product Marketing: Thousands of people go online each day searching for products and services that they will buy. You can take advantage of this to work as an intermediary and market these products and make some cash for yourself.
As the name implies, you will be selling products of your choice on line. You may say you do not have any product to sell, don’t worry; you don’t have to be a producer before you can sell products on line. All you have to do is to approach the manufacturers or wholesalers of these products and have agreement with them about selling their products on line. You will need to bargain the prices to your own advantage so that at the end of each sale, you will have gain that will make up for your effort. You can also seek for commission for selling these products.
Before you start selling your online products, you will need a platform where you will open an online shop, you will also need to take pictures of the products you want to sell and place them on your online shop with their prices. It will be your discretion either to deliver the products to the customers after making sales or give them the address where they can pick up their goods. You should make adequate arrangement how to deliver these goods to your customers.
Information Marketing: Like product marketing, you can also sell means of information on line. All the processes of selling products also apply to this business.
You can sell eBook, CD, MP 3, Newsletters, Reports & Research data, Tutorials etc.
Recharge Card Printing: It has been an established fact that after sachet water, recharge card is the second fastest growing, moving and most profitable business in Nigeria. The good news is that you can do this amazing business from the comfort of your home. Another good news is that as powerful as this business is, you can start it with an initial capital of N10,000.00.
In the past, people use to spend a lot of money to get trained on recharge card printing but now the case is different. You can be trained free on-line and get the complete start-up kit with just N3,000.00.
It is worthy of note that you can only print the paper voucher in the denomination of N100 and N200 for now as this has been deregulated so that small investors like me and you can take part. The other type with foil has not been deregulated.
After buying your start-up kit (ePin), you will have to install it in your computer or save it in a flash for your use. You will also open an email address where you will receive your pins when they are sent by your provider.
To get started as I said before, you must have at least N10,000.00. This is because the minimum unit you can buy is 100. Search in the internet and get a reliable Wholesaler who deals directly with service providers like Airtel, MTN, Glo, Etisalat etc, pay in your money to the account the wholesaler must have provided to you and send the details of payment and denomination you want to buy through SMS to them. They will now send you the pins which you will print out. You can design and customize your cards by inserting your business name, time and date of printing to make your cards unique. In this business, quick turnover is the only way to succeed, so you will need to locate as many customers as possible.
Bulk SMS: This is the process of sending a particular message to many recipients at the same time through the internet. This home business is easy and very profitable. It also requires a very little start-up capital.
To get started, you will look through the internet to search for a standard SMS bulk provider and make sure you find the one that has cheap rate and register with them. You will then fund your account with at least N5,000.00 depending on the number of units you want to buy. They bulk providers charge between N1 – N3 and it will be at your discretion the amount you will charge your customers per unit.
To get your customers, you will need to write a proposal letter to your targeted customers. Your proposal must be catchy and powerful to be able to compete and attract the attention of big customers. By the time you drop these proposals to so many organizations and individuals, you will have a good number of people to do business with.
There are so many people in need of bulk SMS like the churches, Mosques, Schools, Companies, Hospitals, Individuals for Wedding Announcement & Invitations, Birthday Parties, House Warming, Special Seasons Greetings, Political Campaign and Awareness, Associations etc.
The process of sending the message is very simple, you will only need to log in, type your message and the phone numbers and send.
2. Babysitting:
Babysitting is the practice of temporarily taking care of a child. The type of work rendered
as babysitters also differs. It can be in the form of watching a sleeping
child, to playing games, preparing meals and feeding the child, teaching the
child to read etc depending on the agreement between the parents and the babysitter.
There are so many parents out there who go to
work that are looking for good and affordable places where they can keep their
babies while they work. You can take
advantage of this and make some money for yourself from your home. This particular home business does not
require any special skills, academic qualifications or particular type of
accommodation. It only entails your:
Cleanliness: you
must be extremely clean because of the category of people you will be dealing
with. Toddlers are prone to infections
when they are kept in dirty environment. Your cleanliness will also determine the
caliber of customers you will get because no serious individual will like to
keep his/her child in a grungy place. So
there is every need that your environment must be kept neat and clean at every point
in time. Keeping your environment clean will not cost you much since you are
the person doing the work.
Kindheartedness: Anyone who wants to deal with children must be humane, tolerable and patient. These and other good qualities must be part of you because they are the things that will enable you take good care of another person’s children left in your care without feeling bad. You must also inculcate these attitudes in all members of your household because they will be your partners in this business for now. When you treat the children with love and care, they will feel at home with you and your work will also be much easier.
Carefulness: You
are aware that so many children will come to your crèche and they will come
with different belongings – cloths, foods even with expressed breast milk. You are not to exchange a child’s belonging
with another so that diseases will not easily pass from one child to another. Imagine given another woman’s breast to
another child. You just have to find a
way to identify each child’s belongings to avoid being put out of business by
aggrieved parents.
The Idea: Take as an example, you live in a room and a
parlor apartment. I am using this as a medium
of measurement because I assume this is the minimum accommodation a family can
have all things being equal. But if you
have bigger accommodation, you are lucky and the sky will not be your
limit.
You will need to vacate all the loads in your
house except your bed; you can make some hanging cabinets where you will put
these loads. This will give you a lot of
spaces to do your business. Your sitting
room will be their class, feeding and playing ground while the bedroom will be
for laying the babies when they are asleep.
You will also need to buy few toys and books with which they can play and
learn.
Do not use rug on the floor because it retains
dirt and does not guarantee proper cleaning, rather put tiles or carpets so
that you will clean as often as you can, and always make sure you clean with
disinfectants and apply insecticides at night.
Have your walls painted with bright colors always.
You do not need to pay through your nose to
advertise your business; a good short notice around the neighborhood and mouth
advertisement is okay. You can start
with one or two babies and your quality work will speak for you. Your satisfied customers will be your
advertising strategy, just be creative and devise ways of attracting good customers.
Many big crèches started as little as this and when you handle yours well, you
will see good results.
As your customer base and finance increases,
you can turn your babysitting business to full fledged school.
I hope you have gained one or two things that
will help you in life. Please do not
read and go away, use the comment box, make your contributions and all of us
will be good. To your success in home
business.
For details on more home and On-line businesses you can do and how you can go about it, please send me an email on onwumerejuliana@gmail.com or better still subscribe to my updates at http://www.lianafamilytips.blogspot.com.