₦airaland Forum

charlesazeh:
please sir whatsapp me, i want to discuss with you

Alright, add up 08077183350

Good evening all. I just want to quickly say that no single body of knowledge is totally complete. If you have practical knowledge about the subject matter, please go ahead and share with us. At the end of the day, we can all learm from our diverse experiences, because the discussion becomes richer and like it's often said "2 (or more) good heads are better than one."
Thank you.

bahyor:
Nice write up, can you contact me on Watsapp 08035669513 for discussion

Thank you. I've done that.

edoman2016:
You didn't state the challenges of selling on credit to customers. And collecting payment at due date from customers. Thereby affecting the cash flow of the business. Pure water business is not as smooth as you think.

Thank you for pointing that out. Maybe I didn't say it the way you expected. But I tried as much as possible to show some of the problems one could encounter by implication. One of the biggest lies some people will tell you is that "Water is free" which implies that you cam never run at a loss. As if it's ice kobi kobi we're talking about! I emphasised the purification and packaging processes and I never said those were free. Of course you have to pay.
The most important consideration to make in entering any new business is to look before you leap. There's a big difference between book knowledge and practical knowledge.
Money alone does not guarantee success in business, I'm sure you're aware of that. If you rush in you'll end up rushing out. If your planning stage was sound enough, then you've boosted your chances of success.
And of course, packaged water business just like any other business can be affected by other factors such as demand, credit and debit management, branding etc. That's not strange anyway, because it's a business afterall.
Thank you.

@OgaCEO thank you for the complement. Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing wellI believe. I'll add you up now and I'll definitely be glad to be of help. Have a productive day.

There are several small and medium enterprises that you should consider setting up, especially if capital is not exactly surplus. From freelancing online to grasscutter farming. Today, we'll talk about a business so simple to set up, and the inputs can be gotten at the price of guess it - FREE you must be wondering why you never thought about it all this time. That small business is Pure water business. Well, not exactly a small business, more of a medium scale business as you'll soon find out.

Pure water business in Nigeria is a hot cake so to speak. This is not surprising in the least, considering that water is life, especially in our hot clime. You can decide to fast for 40 days, but try to abstain from water for 3 days and tell us your findings-you, yes you, I'm talking to you.

Wether you decide to call it pure water or packaged water, or sachet water, (we'll use the terms interchangeably in this post), the fact remains that the rate at which people consume this product is quite high. It gets even higher in certain special conditions such as in hot weather, (harmattan and the dry season is coming soon), during occassions such as wedding ceremonies and of course around institutions such as schools, markets, etc.

A visit to any owambe party will confirm the fact that people just love their sachet water.Now go on another fact-finding mission to any major town or city in Nigeria, and tell me how many of them have a functional, potable municipal water system. I can't think of any right now, what about you?

The lowdown of this entire analysis is simple-There is a huge small business opportunity in pure water business in Nigeria. If you didn't know before now, or just didn't care, don't worry, follow me on this short journey, and let's dissect sachet water business together. From this point onwards, we'll just deal with the subject matter directly to make it easy for everybody to follow along.

Reasons why you should consider starting pure water business

1. The raw material water can be gotten freely

2. The demand is super high and relatively consistent

3. The cost of setup is moderate

4. Production costs are relatively modest

5. It's now easier than ever to obtain NAFDAC certification

6. Packaged water business is very profitable
Requirements for Starting a Sachet Water Business

A farmer going to farm without cutlass and hoe is doomed to fail, okay I get it now, not cutlass and hoe anymore, combined harvester and planter. Before starting out on any new business voyage, you must make adequate plans and take necessary steps to guarantee your success. Some of the things you need to start up a packaged water business include:

1. Prepare Your Business Plan:

A Business plan is simply put a document that includes the details of the business you intend to start, including the operational chart, your objectives of starting the business, analysis of the business environment as well as the potential competition, and finally, your set of strategies with which you intend to penetrate the market successfully. Of course this includes a sound Cost Analysis.

It's not enough to simply think "oh, I've got it mapped out in my head". Be proactive, and stop being silly. You need to have a written plan charting your path to success (hopefully) in that new business. If you feel that's too tasking for you, hire it out to proffesionals, or ask a friend you think can to help out. If you mess up this stage, you're gone, yeah really, really gone.

A well laid out business plan shows potential investors that you mean business. You can even use it to obtain loans from banks. It provides a template that guides your activities and helps you not to lose focus of your grand objectives.

2. Register Your Business Name:

Like we always advise, it's a good idea at this stage to go ahead and register a suitable name for your business. It's required for branding and legal reasons to do so. The process of registering for business name in Nigeria can now be done in 48hrs. The longer you wait, the less chance there is that your desired business name would still be available. Don't worry, it costs less tha N15,000.

3. Choose a suitable Location:

At this point, you should look for suitable locations where you will be producing your pure water. If you have free space already, maybe an adjoing flat, all the better. Otherwise, look for land in a suitable location to site your package water plant.If that's not possible, rent a small apartment and convert it to make it fit for your pure water business.

The location you choose must be hygieneic and neat. Remeber, eventually you'll want to apply for NAFDAC certification, and they'll definitely assess the state of hygiene in your sachet water factory. You don't need 3 plots of land in Lekki to start. A plot will do for a medium sized pure water business.

After acquiring your land, you need to put relevant structures in place. A small bungalow is enough. This will be used for both treatment, production, and especially sorting and storage of the sachet water produced on a daily basis.

4. Staffing:

Hire your staff wisely. Also learn to motivate them, not necessarily with money. By simply treating them as humanely as possible, it could be the diffrence between a non-chalant staff and staff ready to run through brickwall for you. Firmness is not the same thing as harshness. Learn to draw the line where it matters.

For smooth and efficient running of your pure water business, you nee:

- Manager

- Cashier

- at least a machine Operator

- A Marketer

- 2 -3 Packagers/sorters

- A Cleaner

- Driver and loader

Some of these roles can be combined, depending on the size of your packaged water business.

5. Create an Unpolluted, Depandable and Clean Water Source:

Yes, water is free. But that's not an absolute truth. To ensure that you remain in Business for the long haul, you need to have a source of water that's:

- Cheap

- Clean

- Reliable

- Plentiful

Boreholes are generally used to serve this purpose. Not just any simple bore hole though. It should be deep enough to be free from the upper water table which gets easily contaminated especially by surface pollutants. The cost of sinking a bore hole of this nature varies depending on location, but averages about N350,000.

6. Select Water Purification System to use:

Currently, there are different methods availbale by which you can purify your water. These include:

- Distillation

- Use of Carbon filters (including activated charcoal)

- Reverse Osmosis

- Chlorination

- Ozone purification system

- Ultra Violet Light Purification system

- etc

It's possible to combine all the different water purification processes together in a bid to ensure absolute purity. However, this can get easily cost intensive.Distillatiion and reverse osmosis systems are 2 of the more commonly used systems.

So, distillation purification systems are commonly adopted as it is quite effective in removing germs as well as other contaminants such as chemicals (organic and inorganic ), heavy metals, volatile gases etc. It's cost effective as well as relatively simple to employ, while at the same time producing good quality, potable water.

You simply heat water up to its boiling point and collect its vapour and cool it down in specialised chambers. Okay, this is not a chemistry class...

7. Automatic Sealing Machine:

This is needed for the massive production of the pure water as it automates the process of filling, sealing, cutting and counting the pure water, hence packaged water. Depending on your production targets, you might need just one or two of this machines. The automatic sealing machine is high in precision packing. Note that there are also semi-automatic machines as well as manual ones. The cost is different as one would expect as well as their effectiveness. A full auto pure water machine costs about N350,000 and can produce about 40 sachets of water in a minute on the average.

8. Supply and Distibution Network:

There's no use producing pure water if you are not going to be able to sell it to your customers. If you cannot afford a distribution vehicle yourself, you could hire commercial vehicles to take care of that aspect for you pending the time when your finaces allow for that.

Ensure that you try verything within your power to be punctual. Don't keep your customers waiting, otherwise somebody else will gladly take your place, and I mean GLADLY.

9. Regulatory Body Approval:

The only regulatory body in Nigeria permitted by law to oversee the control of products such as pure water is the NAFDAC (National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control). Before commencement of production, you should visit their office to obtain and fill the required forms that would be provided. The certification process takes roughly between 3 – 6 months depending on how qucikly you meet the NAFDAC certification requirements and guidelines.

NAFDAC has regional and State offices and you can get your registration and accreditation done at any of the branches closest to you. You can download the Application Requirement for proper study so as to have a prior knowledge of what it takes to start production before going over to fill the forms. The processing fee is N30,000.

10. Miscellaneous Requirements:

- Power generating sets

- Plumbing works

- Office equipment and stationery

- Packaging nylon and Branding (To create brand awareness and for marketing)

- Security

If you like and your finance permits it, you could add a bottled water wing to your pure water business. The production line is similar up to the packaging stage. The machine used for pckaging bottled water is different from that employed in pure water packaging. With this addition, you can offer more value to your customers, as well as penetrate new markets with novel opportunities.

Also remember that it's possible to scale your business according to the available resources - you could start it as a small venture. In this business, there's ample opportunity for growth. So you don't really have to sell all your family land in the village just to start pure water business. Start small, grow big.

So, that's all for today. Pure water, or packaged water, or sachet water - call it what you will, but don't forget that people are already making millions from this business, so what are you waiting for? If you have the financial power, go for it. The market is big enough, and there's some reall cash waiting to be made.

This is the link to the screenshots rar file: https://www.4shared.com/rar/Uo8qWFjEca/woocommerce-tutorial.html

Step 2. Setting up WordPress

In this tutorial we'll continue with setting up both Wordpress and WooCommerce for your online store. This is a sequel to our previous post step by step guide to start online store in Nigeria 2017. In case you missed that post, I advise you to go back and check out the contents before cooming here, or you may choose to continue..it's your choice really. Wordpress installation on domainking is a breeze, and its free! Similarly, WooCommerce installlation follows the same pattern-easy peasy!.
The screenshots that go with this tutorial have been added in form of a zip file at the end. Hope they make things clearer.


WooCommerce comes as a Wordpress plugin that needs to be installed on your Wordpress-run site. To install, simply navigate to the plugin page from your Wordpress dashboard by clicking on "Add new" sub menu on the "Plugins" link, which is found on the left sidebar. This takes you to the Wordpress plugins directory. Type WooCommerce into the search bar, and click on the install button. Click on the "activate" button and voila, you're LIVE!


First, you need to visit Settings » General page to setup your WordPress site title and description.

Setting up HTTPS to Use SSL

You are going to need a SSL Certificate in order to complete this process. You can easily add this option to your current hosting account, if you didn't already select it as an add-on during checkout for your hosting plan. The price of a domain SSL currently ranges from somewhere around N6000 to as high as N300000 for Symantec SSLs. In case you don't mind hosting with a foreign webhost, 1and1.com provides excellent hosting plans that are affordable, as well as domain registration. If you order their basic plan, it comes with a free .COM domain name as well as free SSL certificate for one year. All this you can get for just $10...yeah I know, its awesome!

Activating your SSL certificate shouldn't be a problem, and in case you need help, you can always contact Cutomer Support for assistance. The next step is to configure your WordPress site, so it loads as https rather than http.

On the Settings » General page, you need to change your WordPress Address and Site Address to use https instead of http.


Don’t forget to scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the save changes button to store your settings.

Your basic WordPress setup is now complete.Up next is time to setup your online store!.

Step 3. Setting up Your WooCommerce Store

Before you can start selling, there are a few things like currency, payments, and shipping information that you need to set up.

You will be seeing a ‘Welcome to WooCommerce’ notification on your WordPress admin pages. Go ahead and click on the ‘Run setup wizard’ button in the notification.

This will launch the WooCommerce setup wizard where you need to click on the ‘Let’s go’ button to get started.

WooCommerce needs few essential pages for cart, account, shop, and checkout. Click on the continue button to automatically create these pages.


This will take us to the next step-you will need to tell WooCommerce where your store is located and which currency and unit of measurement to use.


After selecting your location and currency, click on the continue button to move on.

Next, you need to enter some minor shipping information.


Click on the continue button to move on.

Next, you will be asked to choose a payment method for your online store.


By default, WooCommerce comes with support for PayPal, PayPal Standard, and Stripe payment gateways. There are many other payment methods available for WooCommerce which you can install later if you need.

Currently, Paypal is not a valid payment option for Nigerian merchants. This is because Nigerian domiciled Paypal accounts can only be used to make payments at the time of writing this post, and not to receive payments. Nevertheless, there are several other payment gateway options available to you as a Nigerian Merchant.

After completing this setup, your WooCommerce online store is all setup.


Congratulations! you just completed the setup wizard. You can now proudly go ahead and tweet to your friends about your shiny brand new store.

After finishing the WooCommerce setup, you are now ready to add products to your online store.

Step 4. Adding Products to Your Online Store

We are now going to be adding the first product to your online store. You may choose to proceed directly from the previous screen by clicking the "create your first product tab". Otherwise, you can also acheive the same purpose by clicking Visit Products » Add New page to add a new product.


First, provide a title for your product and then some detailed description. The latest version WooCommerce provide intuitive guides to set up your new products, from giving it a name to setting a price.

On the right hand column, you will see the ‘Product Categories’ box. Click on the ‘+Add New Product Category’ to create a category for this product. This allows you and your customers to sort and browse products easily.

Scroll down a little and you will notice the Product Data box. This is where you will provide product related information like pricing, inventory, shipping etc.


Below product data box, you will see a box to add product short description. This short description will be used when users are viewing multiple products on a page.


Finally, on your right hand column you will see boxes to add a main product image and a product gallery.

Once you are satisfied with all the product information you have added, you can click on the Publish button to make it go live on your website.

You can repeat the process to add more products as needed.

I hope you've found this post useful. If that is the case, please feel free to like, share, and of course drop your comments! If you have some experince about the topic, please contribute as much as you can. No man is an island of knowledge. See you later...
I'm currently working on a tutorial about how you can easily customize your theme to make it unique among all the Woocommerce sites on the planet. Keep tuned in....

NB This post is a sequel to our previous post step by step guide to start online store in Nigeria 2017.
God bless us all!!!!!!!!!

Hello, where are you based please. And what are your rates?

I got mine within 2 weeks in B/City. But the last client I worked for got hers after 3 weeks or so. Just be patient a little bit more

Thanks for the complement @ghettowriter. I'm compiling the next part of this walkthrough. I want to include screenshots too, so that it'd be easier for anybody amd everybody to follow along nicely....

[center]HOW TO START AN ONLINE STORE IN NIGERIA[/center]
http://smenigeria.info/2017/09/step-by-step-guide-to-start-an-online-store-in-nigeria/

You may have heard something about selling online generally, or setting up an online store. Well, some are true, some others aren’t. Almost everyone of us have at one time or the other dreamt about just resting at home while money keeps pouring into our bank accounts. As an entrpreneur, one should never ever rest on one’s oars. Even if your business is doing great currently, it can definitely do better, unless of course you are one of those not interested in making money. I can categorically tell you that I don’t know of any, do you? Thought as much.

The Nigerian Online Retail Store Business is one of the fastest growing business opportunities you can find at the moment in Nigeria. The results of a recent study done by one of Nigeria’s foremost management companies, Philips consulting, revealed that Nigerians spend over than N1.3 billion monthly on online shopping with Jumia enjoying 38% of the market and Konga coming a close second with 26% among others including dealdey, Olx and Kaymu.

Starting an online store today has become simpler than ever before. Anyone with a computer or even a smart phone can get started within a couple of minutes and you don’t even need any super power skills. You don’t have to be a programmer to start a successful online store. And more importantly, you can sell anything and everything, so far it’s not contraband anyways. As long as you have a personal product that people really want, or some awesome ideas about how to sell useful, original products that other people are making, you’ll always be able to improve your revenue stream thanks to the online retail industry. You don’t even need a personal website. Did I also tell you that you don’t need to have a product you made yourself in order to sell? So, I just did. You can take other people’s product and sell them for commission. There are intermediaries that facilitate that for you. The likes of Amazon, ebay, Jumia and Konga are just a few of the more prominent names in this area-enter affiliate marketing. Service providers are not left out in this either. You can create an online office to showcase the services you offer, whether you are a Caterer, or an interior decorator. This will enable you to project yourself to a whole new category of audience. It also helps to move you higher in the credibility rankings. In case you are interested in starting your own personal online store, and I do recommend that especially if you are a a creative type; fashion designers, artists, and the likes, this next section is for you. You could even be a farmer with farm produce to market, or maybe you just wish to start your own online supermarket.

The following are just a couple of products/services you could consider selling online:

E-books
Clothings
Shoes
Toys
Paintings and other artworks
Old Household Scraps
Furniture
Electrical appliances
Mobile gadgets such as Phones, Tablets
Other home appliances
Catering
Event planning

By following the steps below, you can have your own online store up and running within minutes of reading this blog. I’m not just going to be giving you blind directions. These are tried and trusted steps that have worked for others, and they can work for you too. You can setup your online store with WordPress in 45 minutes or less by simply following the directions in this tutorial.

Six (6) things you will learn:

Choosing a product to sell
Choosing a flexible online store platform
How to Register a free Domain Name and web hsting account
How to Install WordPress
How to Create a WooCommerce store
How to Add Products in your Online Store

Step 1: Choosing the products to sell:

Obviously, if you have decided that you want to launch an online store, the first thing that should come to your mind is determining what and what to place on your virtual shelfs…logical right? If you are responsible for creating those products yourself, then fine. All you have to do is create a couple of your products in advance, as far as your resources will allow. However, if you are going to be selling other people’s products, then it’s a good idea to carry out a background check on which products are available for you to sell. It’s better to go with products that people will actually be interested in, rather than a product with little obvious usability just because of the eye watering profit margin involved. Try to strike a balance between your long and short term profitability. Turnover is the basis of most successful small businesses. You can scale your investments according to your targets. This will ensure that you don’t end up being out of cash just because you placed all your eggs in the wrong basket.

Step 2: Choosing a flexible Online Store Platform

There are two popular e-Commerce platforms that I recommend: Shopify or WordPress + WooCommerce. Shopify is a fully hosted e-Commerce solution that starts at $29 / month. It’s a hassle-free solution where you just login and start selling just like you would open a gmail address. The downside to Shopify is that it gets quite expensive, and your payment options are limited unless you pay additional fees. Also the package is not easily customizable as you are kinda stuck with features that ship with the platform

This is why most users choose WordPress + WooCommerce because of the flexibility it offers. Even though it requires a more technical setup, it’s well worth the hassle at the end of the day. WooCommerce is the world’s largest eCommerce platform. Woocommerce currently runs on is 22,097,921 online stores and counting globally.

guide to setting up online store in Nigeria

Impressive right?

In this tutorial, we will concern ourselves with how to setup an online store in WordPress using WooCommerce. To setup your store, you need to have a domain name, web hosting, and a SSL certificate.

A domain name is your website’s address on the internet. It is what users will type in their browsers to reach your website (for example: google.com or smenigeria.info). Web hosting is where your website files are stored on the internet. It’s your website’s residence on the internet. Every website on the internet is being served from a web host.

SSL certificate adds a special layer of security on your website. It enables you to safely accept sensitive information such as credit card numbers and other personal information. This is a prerequisite condition which you must satisfy for you to accept credit card payments on your website.

Normally a domain name costs around N4000 per year, while serious web hosting can be procured for about N1000 per month, and SSL certificate can cost upwards of around N56000 in a year. Thankfully, domainking, one of the most prominent web hosting comapanies in Nigeria offers users a free domain name and a discount on web hosting when you subscribe for their hosting plans. You can get all this starting from just N3000 per year.

Let’s go ahead and purchase your domain + hosting + SSL. Simply choose a web hosting package of your choice and then choose a domain name that you like and is available (nobody is already using it).
You can pay with your Nigerian Debit card or at the bank. It doesn’t matter either way. After payment you will recieve a confirmatory email containing your login details on domainking. The next step is to setup your WordPress site and then your online store

Step 3. Setting up WordPress

WordPress installation on domainking is a breeze, and its free! WooCommerce installlation also follows the same pattern.

Watch out for part 2:

Manual clearance starts tomorrow MON 5th Nov 2012....
If U nid any kind of help whatsoever...08077183350,drazy005:2go id.
Cheers @ y'all:-)
Check out Metaphy...'s post 4 sm vital requirements...

Akeks: Mornin 2 ya'll my fellows. What is dis i hear 'bnout my hostel space? Is it true dat as a frst lisyt admitted student i av my hostel space in repose untill i clear it no matter wen i get 2 clear it? Pls sb fill me in on dis...

@akeks, d fct is dt inasmuch as u've bn offered h.accom,it continues 2 b reflctd on ur personal page (as a debit of course),until wenever u dcide 2 pay up...so d rule of d thumb is 'if u dnt nid it,dnt apply'
It's hwever comon practise 2 find out dt after d 1st sem,most yet-2-b-cleard bed spaces are sold out 2 dose who hav applied usualy tru d Stdnt Affairs Dept.
So,watchout!...hapy clearing..!

Goodluck4to: is dis 45k part of d payment of hostel sef or dat hostel fee dy different?

Skul fees (45 jeez) ordinarily doznt cover d cost of h.accomodation...

Jessicavizzy: Plssssooo wo can tell me wat n wat r 2b inside d guarantor's letter,,plsss rilly nid ansa,,cos ayam confuse..tnkz!.

Ur guarantor's letter shd b a document by anybody of proven sound character and respectable social standing,vouschafing dt U wd b of gud character during ur stay in d skul nd offerin 2 b cntactd if d otherwise bcms d case. Sm1 lik ur pastor,ur imam,ur former principal,boss or even ur parents,or evn me...lol!