I run a Small Cybercafe and The café is situated on a University Campus. Café market is drying up and I am thinking of diversity into a related area. I am thinking of opening a Document Scanning Service bureau  . The intended service immediate goal is to help students, lecturers ,Job applicatants etc to convert there valuable documents to Digtal format. Will make there documents like birth  certificate , school certificates e.tc into a searchable database that can searched and sorted on a CD. Thinking of offering to convert up to 50 documents to digital format on a CD  for N1500 and or up to30 documents for 1k. Will give them 2 copies of the CD. Eventually I have bigger plans for this but I want to use this as an entry level. You think It will sell?
My main target is to eventually help small.medium companies to digitise there old paper records.
Does it sound like something that makes sense or that will sell?

It will. When scanning are you going to use font-recognition software like Omnibill? Most companies don't want it in image format.

Kudos to you for trying out something new. You'd better get on with it because many Nigerians will jump into it once they get wind of it.

It makes sense but whether it will sell its a different ball game. Why is the cafe market drying up in Ibadan or are you under charging your clients? What about digital instant passports?

Hello. Thanks for your response. The cafe market is saturated I was the first cae in my area.Now every shop near me is a cafe.
I am really thinking about this scanning service. I mean a pace where they are dedicated to turning paper to digita files stored on a CD.
Possibly in PDF format something like
http://www.scan2disc.com/

I actually thought about this as a possible revenue source, secure documentation storage services it will prevent forgery. fraudulent duplication and safeguard from fire, flood etc. It could be an exclusive proprietary service, You would just have to obtain a high speed scanner that is capable of writing to pdf making it searchable can be done with a database app. Go for it dude!! I am stuck trading stocks and hopelessly hooked however I will definetly use your services once you implement.

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don't worry piddo, nigerians are very conservative people; they wont steal the idea because they are waiting for someone to start it first.

thanks i have stole the idea and am now smiling to the banks every 2hours!!!!!

well Africa will never grow if people like this still exist!!!!

you see what will be will be no matter what you do or don't do OK

all am trying to say is if you have an idea make it open even if it did not benefit you but do benefit others so be it God gave you the vision so make available to everyone. don't be guided by selfish interest, like let me alone benefit first then when am through others will now come in. what a patetic way to reason. If God is this selfish then think what would have befall You and I?

God has his ways and no man, group of men, or nations can mortgage our freedom, even if every family has the nuclear power they will never put it to use unless God so want it so.

in the early time Egypt was the most powerful then Syria, Babylon, modern history said it was Italy to German to USSR to USA now it seems is to China India, Korea south Africa etc (in fact Nigeria will one day wake up and join if we will share ideas)

we Africans must stop this hide this hide that syndrome, the white men have to give us education and modern recivilization we now benefited from it while our forefathers went to graves with their own talents and we are worst for it (cos we have herbal cures which was hiding in the rotten brains of our forebearers, even if you dig up there graves now termites and other ants have eaten them all and are now wiser than most men of this generation)

just like in the Bible a master shared some pieces of talents abi na coins; some traded with their's and become richer some hide their own and become stand still and the master took it back and give to the richer ones.
the moral of the perable is don't be hesitant or selfish.

here is another one in some poor homes they keep their best plates and cups for strangers and bring the bad ones for their use, within some time of lets say 2years the best the kept becomes old fashioned that even when the stranger finally arrives will not now who is more important the stranger or U?

poverty should not necessary mean stupidity but some people are trying hard everyday by their action or inaction to have both (poverty and stupidity) very close to their doorsteps

now to the main issue most inventors did not leave to benefit financial to their invents/products, some even die painfully soon after the break through, even Master Jesus went through to free us from turmoils

so my brothers and sisters when you have any nice idea put across for humanity sake, if God say you will prosper no man can stop you?

Joseph Jacob David are bible examples Obasanjo Mandela and my humble self are livening example so join our Club
and you will be happy you did, and i quote below
One World!!! One People!!! One destiny!!! One desire!!!

and Open Source for all!!!


so if you have any idea say it now or die with it this World still remain in Gods control and not yours
think of all the grave yard and all the men that died with their Idea, now will any fool want to join there list?
count me out!

if you keep hiding your ideas you will be the ultimate looser!
cos is either your idea in slave you or you fall victim of [b]No tell any one o!([/b]aka 419 deals) and you must tell every one by the time they are through with you!!! mugu like you

so i comend the person that post this idea here, your idea is a good one But do more research and see i it worth the effort, cos most people upload their scanned digital document to their Emails,
but may not have access to it if out of net service area, also i think rewritable CD is better so that they can update their documents like if a family had two kids and write their birth cert. to CD when they now have four kid s the should be able to rewriter it or up date it to four in the same Birth Cert Cd. so that the family library will have a proper title.


thanks and am out of here!
so get busy and get lucky cos anything can happen!

Please don't mention Abachanjo's name -- except you want me to classify you as the same breed.

obasanjo then
and for the benefit of the doubt if he step down

but he has picked up african mentality (hide, hide agenda or syndrome has begin to catch upwith him)
may be because of his advicers

so obasanjo of 1978 till 2003. is the one am referring to. pls take not then he was open and direct

In order to offer scanning services to business clients you will need a high speed document scanner.

For a small start up I recommend offering OCR scanning services and pdf conversion. OCR is a process that recognizes a scanned image and converts to an editable word or text file. There is free software that you can use and you will find the links to download pdf995 and Omniformat on our document conversion pages.

http://www.omniformat.com/download.html

Hi,

For large format documents - up to A0 - 42" - come to Third Dimension Technologies, 46 Allen Avenue, First Floor, Ikeja, Lagos. www.ceaser-web.com or www.3dtechnologies.org


Thanks,

Yemmy.

You can also start web design classes. Teach students how to setup websites, blogs etc. Teach them HTML, CSS and show them they can make their own income doing this. I know a lot of students in Nigeria don't have money and so would love to find a way to make extra income for themselves.

You could even go into the web hosting business. You can market this business to students and hold the classes in your web cafe. Put yourself in the shoes of students and ask yourself what kind of things do you need help with that would make your life as a student easier.

You can actually liase with big companies that have these equipment and start paying small whilst pushing your business to larger client base.

There's a big scanning operator office at Ikeja. It's called Havilah Scanning Service.

Visit the website for more http://www.havilahgroup.ng/scanning/ or just go to 2, Allen Avenue, Akin Taylor Estate, Ikeja.

NEWYORKDOC:
In order to offer scanning services to business clients you will need a high speed document scanner.

For a small start up I recommend offering OCR scanning services and pdf conversion. OCR is a process that recognizes a scanned image and converts to an editable word or text file. There is free software that you can use and you will find the links to download pdf995 and Omniformat on our document conversion pages.

http://www.omniformat.com/download.html