There is no doubt, there is a lot of computer and internet talent in Nigeria, but in building an Internet startup location really matters. we are paying more than 10 times what founders in other startup hubs pay for bandwidth.

Also you have to plan on how your new venture makes money from day 1. If you focus too much on scalability, you startup may grow to large for you to support and getting funding for startups in these times is not easy even in Silicon Valley. Focusing too much on scalability without a business model is one of the mainreasons most of the early dotcoms crashed.

I have been learning about startups for almost 9 years now and I blog my experiences at naijastartups..com

I have also been looking for their contact. it appears they don't have a web presence. Its easier to call them and find out their rates.

I am a startup guy, I have been since 2002, I love sharing my experiences and stories. I even set up a blog for this naijastartups.
I now want to share a few tips and strategies with you guys on this thread.

The nigerian economy in crisis.

The SEC chief blames the banks for the current economic downturn and mainly for the stock market plunge. He blamed the ways the banks gave out loans and their way of raising money.

Lending is a vital part of every capitalist economy, but sometimes not paying back the loans can bring out the cons of a capitalistic system or a free market.

In Nigeria, 388 billion naira in such loans could not be recovered, why? Because mainly the loans where used to buy shares in the then thriving stock market and the colaterals used to borrow such loans where also stocks. In an event of any bear market, consumer confidence will plunge and a big sell out will make the market fall further thereby making the borrowed money depreciate with the stock prices and as the collateral also depreciates, this causes more kaos and panic. Even if the borrower sells the stocks, plus the stocks, he cannot pay back the loans and the banks are left with collateral in stocks that are almost worthless. In this kind of scenario, the borrower or investor loses everything and the bank too loses the money it lent out.

This is very similar to what happened in the US, only for what we have in Nigeria may be less stable and a bit more risky. there also, the crisis was ignited when people took mortgage, they couldnt pay back the money they borrowed for their homes, while the homes depreciated in value and they were forced to go into foreclosure. The lost their homes and the banks got stuck with real estate far less in value than the money the lent out to the home owner. The crisis hit the banks real hard that Government had to intervene and many people lost their jobs, many more their homes.

What we are seeing here in Nigeria could be worse than what there is in the US. why? Because the stock market is more volatile than the real estate or housing market, i.e a housing crisis could be a bit more stable than a stock market crash.

As a solution, we can see how the Government in America reacts to its crisis. If successful, we can borrow a few startegies and save the economy.

Also government can buy and hold a few stocks to reduce the amount of selling and dealing that causes the stock to plunge back as soon as they start gaining some ground and people start selling off again. the sec can also intervene and try and enforce a minimum holding period for some stocks so as to eliminate some trading done by investors to profit from turmoil like this.

The executives responsible for this shouldnt go unpurnished if the is proof of their wrong doing or carelessness.

At first, the Government officials thought that Nigeria was immune to the global economic crisis. I dont blame them, though I dont know why the thought so, but I also though we were immune to the crisis citing our growing revenues from crude oil sales. I thought we were heading into a boom like in india and china only that ours is not fuelled by manufacturing or information technology but by crude oil.

I did not expect the crude oil prices to fall back quickly and now we are stuck in a correction following the overvaluing and manipulation of share prices in the stock market.

Anyone knows where we are heading?

This article was extracted from an earlier post on a blog inorder to share it with nairalanders. naijastartups..com/2009/02/nigerian-economic-crisis-who-should-we.html

I have been eyeing the Nigerian stock market for about 2 years, bought some shares in the middle of the boom and held on the a little too long. when the stocks rose to their peaks, we all held on to our stocks still hoping for further rise in the stocks only for them to bounce back. We still held on thinking that is just temporary. now the stocks are almost one fifth of what they used to be.

I am still not looking forward to selling, because there is actually no point selling right now after all the lost. the best thing is to hold on and hope for a recovery.
I update my story on how I feel about the Nigerian stock exchange ate this blog naijastartups..com

A post here comparing Nigeria's online payment services, contributors are welcome. http://naijastartups..com/2009/01/nigerian-online-payment-solutions-which.html

lets not forget about TV shows that aren't on TV. There are many Nigerian online TV shows like "Your Access", "Hip hop TV" and many more.

Any Newbie looking for freebies should try Naijabator.com. free info on starting a web based business there.

Bros making money online is not as hard as it seems, and all may not be as easy as many may think. you need focus, research on your idea and make sure the market is there and also plan your site and marketing campaign. there are many free tools online you can tgake advantage of and make this possible.

Since you are not selling anything, this means your sites business model is ad revenue. Therefore the most important thing you should focus on is TRAFFIC. If it were an ecommerce site (with a product to sell) then I would advice you to spend a lot of time on your sales process.

With a site like yours, what you need is a lot of traffic so as to make any sufficient money with your business model. You should also work on user retention (keeping users busy on your site and making them coming back to the site always). With this you can make money with the site.

You can learn all these and more at a site dedicated to helping Nigerian Internet entrepreneurs Naijabator.com, go and have a chat with them, they will guide you through every process. also try out Chitika ads chitika.com as an alternative to google adsense.

@felifeli, I agree that doing real estate in Nigeria still has a long way to go, but starting right now shouldnt hurt anyone, with the right marketing you can make some money through ads (real estate ads pay a lot of money). I once thought of such an idea, but I was skeptic so I just set up a blog about home foreclosure in the US. foreclosuresupport..com

I think the Nigerian economy is going to see something very similar to china and india. An economic growth driven by retail activities and population, Nigeria has the highest market in Africa for telecoms, Internet and so on. Thats the force behind this economic growth (i.e a large market for almost everything). So the population will sustain the economy.

mytruspot.com is a nice new site.

Here is a post very similar to this one. It's almost thesame discussion www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-5126.0.html