Many motivational speakers always harp on the fact that "you should pay yourself first" at the end of every month, before paying all others - your internet service provider, your gsm service provider, your cable tv provider, your vendor, your brewer (especially your brewer), your mama put, etc.

The problem is that most of these speakers are not close to Nigerians and really do not understand how the Nigerian system works. They, for example, will find it difficult to understand that:

i. We do not own credit cards in Nigeria (most people don't), so it makes zero sense to advise someone resident in Nigeria to cut his credit cards and avoid debts.

ii. When it comes to providing amenities, the people are a government to themselves. For example, we provide our own security, potable water and power in addition to so many basic amenities, most of the time.

iii. The average Nigerian not only takes care of his nuclear family, but is expected to take care of his extended family because there is nothing like a practical social welfare program for the elderly, nor council flats, nor any enduring social commitment from the government in any way. This makes the salaries of many-a-worker inadequate ab-initio.

iv. Even when you manage to keep something aside, and set up a business by the side, dishonest Staff are more likely to turn your dream into a conduit which will drain future salaries the more, hence most people prefer to only go into business when they disengage from paid employment.

www.fundscheap.com/project/do-you-have-the-guts

IS IT POSSIBLE TO PAY YOURSELF DESPITE ALL THESE BARRIERS?

The truth is this: Spending ninety thousand per month on expenses will almost go as far as spending one hundred thousand in the same month. Besides, if you are spending ALL your salary and even borrowing on a monthly basis, you are preparing the ground for a disastrous financial future.

Having little or no savings puts you in a position to keep digging yourself into debt, and in case of an emergency, you will need to borrow, that is if "you see to borrow".

So, can you squeeze out N5,000 to N20,000 on a monthly basis for the purpose of delaying gratification and accessing lump sums in the future which will help meet bigger dreams? I am not talking about saving it in the bank, as most people find it impossible to save, no thanks to our economic realities.

What I mean is this - consistently use a little portion of your salary to pre-order goods/services on a crowdfunding platform which accepts payment in installments, and when your purchase is ready and due, you get something remarkably tangible.

Let me give a real practical example:

Imagine setting aside N6500 (money which would barely take care of just one outing with the girls/guys) monthly from your earnings to pre-order a ton of raw cashew nuts from a crowdfunding platform, and when your full payment is complete and your produce due, you get to sell it stress-free for N550,000 ( which is 2017 price. It could be more in 2018).

You would have paid yourself first every month, at zero stress, bringing out N6500 at a time, while reaping over half a million Naira in lump sum.



THE CHALLENGE

What's that? No crowdfunding website will fund most of Nigerian businesses? Well, to some extent, you are right. No FOREIGN crowdfunding site will put out and support most Nigerian businesses. Not kickstarter, not gofundme, not fundrazr nor indiegogo will achieve funding success for up to 10% of Nigerians who dare to seek for funds on their platform, so you will find it impossible to monthly put in N6500 of your own funds in support of any such business.

Yet a few years ago someone came on kickstarter with a project saying he wanted to make vegetable salad, and he needed just $10. Funny project, right?

Well, the funds rolled in, and kept rolling in, until he had raised over $55,000! For a dream to make a bowl of vegetable salad!

So, why is it so easy for the westerners, and difficult for Africans/Nigerians to raise funds for bigger projects?

Well, each time some misguided "yo-yo" (no pun intended) cheats anyone from anywhere in the world in the course of doing business, or regarding matters of the heart, he almost completely wipes out trust for his compatriots in the eyes of a few more citizens of the world, and this makes it difficult for the rest of us.

Trust, which is naturally a scarce commodity, has become more difficult to come about in Nigeria than it is to find N999,999 while walking on the streets, so much so that we do not trust ourselves anymore, and with good reason. Many have got their fingers burnt while dealing with others in the past.

This is just one of the challenges I have highlighted. There are so many more.

WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?

First thing first, you need to change your mindset and start to regard your salary not as money for immediate spending, but as capital towards building your own business. That way, you will find it a bit easier to put aside a few thousands monthly for your own benefit.

Then you need to get a reliable community the Fundscheap platform makes it possible for most Nigerians to put aside a little part of their monthly salaries in form of payment for goods and services in installments, while you get to monetize when you receive your products.

For anyone, I mean any Nigerian who also has a dream to start a business while working at his day job, this gives them a superb platform to raise funds for themselves, since such communities will centrally process most projects, thus giving visibility and a help-desk facility to all backers. It means your business will probably already be a success before you think of letting go of your day job.

It is a lot easier for backers to monitor all such pre-order payments since it is a community and every project promoter gets to update its backers with pictures and videos, as well as on-site visits among other things.

The advantages of such a platform are many, but I will consider another real-life example.

Imagine pre-ordering a timeshare for a hotel room by paying just N20,000 monthly form your salary. Timeshares are for one week in a year, and your proposed room will fetch you N20,000 per night if you mandate the operators to give it out. This will fetch you a lump sum of N140,000 yearly for a few decades, meaning you are virtually collecting rent without being a landlord.

Now, imagine that you cautiously started with pre-orders for one unit, and upon seeing the progression of the project, you increase your holdings to 2-5 units. Easily, you will be raking in some decent hundreds of thousands annually as lump sum.

The great thing with such platforms is that they also accelerate the approval for campaigns by backers of hotel projects such as yourself to raise funds for their own hotel projects, even if they had never imagined that it was a possibility for them in 5 years.

What this simply means is that by changing your mindset from one which does not believe you are capable of putting up a structure because of a poor salary figure, to one which believes you can own a hotel in the next five years, you will actually get a better chance of achieving such a dream while doing everything legally. I will simply suggest you always keep yourself abreast of new campaigns, as there will also be hotel projects which will cost just N5000 monthly in pre-orders.


CONCLUSION

Paying yourself first on a monthly basis is very important if you want to build a future of financial security. You need a plan, an investment outlay, and a simple vehicle which can help you achieve your goals. The fundscheap platform looks out for Nigerians and is a highly recommended place to begin.

One great thing about such platforms is that they do not collect any payment from you until they have a minimum pre-determined number of backers ready to fund the project, and since you are pre-ordering, you get HUGE bonuses when the project is complete.

Nice summation sir. I really like it that fundscheap is helping Nigerians think big. My only reservation is whether crowdfunding can actually work in Nigeria.

Sarahluv:
Nice summation sir. I really like it that fundscheap is helping Nigerians think big. My only reservation is whether crowdfunding can actually work in Nigeria.

That is a valid question so many will ask, and I fully understand where they are coming from. For any crowdfunding platform to work in Nigeria, it first and foremost, must not be crowdfunding for equity. Secondly, all backers must be protected and at least have some form of guarantee that they will receive the goods they have pre-ordered.

It is for this reason that the fundscheap approach easily takes the number one position it terms of attempting to deliver a workable crowdfunding platform for Nigerians. They focus on delivering projects which are supervised centrally to ensure that every backer gets what he has paid for, and if for some reason, the promoter of such campaigns cannot pull his weight and get things done, they offer perks of equivalent value to preserve their integrity.

I believe it is the best way to approach crowdfunding in Nigeria, and with such a plan, it can only achieve humongous success.

Cool, but what if I pay and they cannot get enough people to meet up with the project requirements.

And pls, for the benefit of some of us who'd like to know, what are campaigns, backers, projects and the promoters you mentioned.

Sarahluv:
And pls, for the benefit of some of us who'd like to know, what are campaigns, backers, projects and the promoters you mentioned.

Sorry, I've been a bit busy. I will address your questions in a little while.

Tenk

Sarahluv:
Cool, but what if I pay and they cannot get enough people to meet up with the project requirements.

If you go through some of the write-up, you will notice that they do not collect any backer's pre-order if the total number of backers needed is not attained.

This works out well for the backers because you will not have someone tying down your money, and it is almost certain that transactions start to move briskly once the numbers are completed.

It also works out well for the project promoter because he only needs to take action as soon as the required number of backers who will make his product profitable, come on board.

The fact that the promoter is also supervised centrally makes it a lot easier for the community to ensure that all backers receive what they have paid for. Brb

Sarahluv:
And pls, for the benefit of some of us who'd like to know, what are campaigns, backers, projects and the promoters you mentioned.

Great question. Let me start with what a campaign is.

Crowdfunding in Nigeria in the context we are considering allows every single Nigerian to raise funds in order to create the product/brand they wish to build.

It supports projects which create something tangible, sustainable and enduring.

In order to raise funds, you need to fill the form in the appropriate part of the website and create a campaign telling backers what they stand to gain by supporting your project.

Since backers are pre-ordering a product that may take some time to deliver, they are usually given significant bonuses.

After filling the form, provided you have met the criteria for active members, you will wait for approval.

If you are lucky to get the approval, your campaign is created to tell everyone about what you are offering.

Those who back campaigns get to enjoy both bonuses and a chance to upload their own campaign.

Another wonderful thing about this model is that if you design your campaign very well, one successfully completed project may serve as a foundation for continuous growth, since the backers will remain customers month after month.

The implication is that many can take their businesses from a kitchen operation to a national operation, and possibly in future, an African and global operation.

I'll stop here for now and try to answer the rest of your question tomorrow.

Sarahluv:
And pls, for the benefit of some of us who'd like to know, what are campaigns, backers, projects and the promoters you mentioned.

For the second question - who is a backer?

A backer is someone who has seen a campaign he likes and decides to back it so that he can enjoy the goods/services and the attached bonus when he completes payment.

He never needs to make any payment until the total number of required backers for the project is achieved.

The backer also enjoys certain benefits, because only an active backer can get a new project campaign approved.

Now to the question of what a project is.

Any active backer in the community may have a project which he intends to execute. This project could result in the backer growing his business from a parlour operation to a national operation.

To achieve this, he needs more clients than he currently has. By running a campaign on the platform, interested backers will signify interest and subsequently pre-order his product. If for instance he use to cater to 20 people in the past and now 10,000 people pay for his product, it becomes quite difficult for him to meet up with the surge in demand.

This is where the community steps in and ensures that the operations are centralized as much as possible, and the pre-orders are delivered.

The active backer who promoted the campaign for this project can also be called the promoter.

Well said! I find the vegetable salad story intriguing.

Is it a true story?

I'll get you the link in a minute.

Beautiful Bungalow for Sale at Ijoko, 2 bedrooms, one toilet and one bathroom, one store, one kitchen, one parlour. Nice interior and exterior. Tiled interior. Moderate power supply. Moderate road network. Serious buyers only. Price is 3m and is negotible. House still for sale, quick buyers needed please, for more information and details, contact 08089809968 (call or WhatsApp), 07062218885

Sarahluv:
Is it a true story?

Sorry, it was actually a potato salad. Here is the link https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zackdangerbrown/potato-salad

Notice that he only needed $10, but almost 7000 people gave him over $55,000

The Fundscheap platform is a way for Nigerians to get something similar.

So what is so special about this project and the amount it raised?

The promoter just wanted to make a plate of potato salad. He even admitted he had never made salad before, yet people rallied around him to raise resources to do something far beyond that.

To put it in perspective, resources can be mobilized towards a grand goal without waiting for funding from a central source like the government.

Okay, so to be clear, if I express interest in a project, I don't have to pay anything until that campaign gets the total number of backers needed.


What if some of those backers refuse to pay?

Sarahluv:
Okay, so to be clear, if I express interest in a project, I don't have to pay anything until that campaign gets the total number of backers needed.


What if some of those backers refuse to pay?

Not to worry. Even if some fail to make pre-payment, it will not be an issue for those who do.

grabdbull:


Not to worry. Even if some fail to make pre-payment, it will not be an issue for those who do.

Pls shed more light

Okay, let us consider a project which needs a minimum of 1000 backers. Pre-payment for the project will not commence until there are 1000 backers. Chances are that there will be more than that number.

Messages are sent to everyone to pay up, and when they start to do this, the backers who fail to comply are replaced with new ones from the excess backers above 1000.

The second month payment will not commence until the minimum number of backers pay for the first month. That way, the threshold for adequate orders will be met.

Long and short of it all, you have nothing to fear.

Thank you for taking the time to break this down.

I have registered on fundscheap and filled the form to back two timeshare projects. What next?

Sarahluv:
I have registered on fundscheap and filled the form to back two timeshare projects. What next?

Great move!

I'll do a step by step explanation of what to do next.

Just give me a few minutes.

How do I get the website address of fundcheap?

jonaboy:
How do I get the website address of fundcheap?

Thanks for this question. You left out the "s". It is fundscheap, not fundcheap, and the web address is www.fundscheap.com

Hope you got it?

Good morning.

Sarahluv:
Good morning.

Good morning. Sorry I have not answered your question. I have been quite occupied, but I'll ensure that I do that today.

Sarahluv,

After signing up, the next thing you need to do is to navigate the different areas of the fundscheap website.

There are over fifty pages, so you can take two or three per day.

I'll take a few of them and go through with you.