The Business Man

Introduction I was visiting a friend who makes cakes the other day and I saw a very beautiful Cake she made with the Arsenal Football Logo as a big design on the cake. I was really impressed with how it looked and I asked her how she got the design so well. She showed her design stencil and guess what, she bought it for NGN1,500 ($10)!. Can you imagine that? I mean I cut that design myself! Description  Finished Design Stencil   Manchester United Logo on Cake  The business part of this is simple. I made some enquiries and I found out that you could find more Popular logos and designs, cut them really well on stencil material and sell them to people who make cakes,make banners, screen printers etc Profiting Estimate Seriously, you the profits here can be insane!, you use a stencil or two (less than $1), about 1hr of your time for very delicate designs, and you go home with about $10!. Multiply that by 10 in a month and you don’t even work every day. What you ne...

Introduction Website design is simply the process of creating websites for people and getting the websites live, online. As a business, it costs very little to learn and start. You can learn on your own free of charge. Free tutorials are available here In the business, you could get paid from NGN10k to NGN100M depending on the extent the website required and your clientele. There are generally two approaches to the business. You could (A) Design websites for cash and or (B) Design websites to address needs or solve problems Lets look closely at both approaches (A) Designing websites for Cash This is the most popular form of this business. You find your clients, design sites for them and then you get paid. What you need - Get a Computer A laptop preferably. This is because you will have to make presentations. A fairly used one here in Lagos Nigeria goes for about NGN60k. - A Business Profile Prepare a company profile. This just a document introducing you to anybody. It should say who...

I just came across a website today where you can get all the information required to start printing GSM Recharge Cards here in Nigeria for the first time, free of charge! Business Prospects Recharge Cards will continue to be bought and sold in Nigeria as long as the mobile phone technology is here. It will always be profitable depending on your market share. Visit the website today for all information to go into that business. www.bizruns.biz The Business Man, her agents and websites are not sponsors, partners or agents of that website. We just love it. Don't forget to be grounded in your business basics before you go into any business. Get all your basic training here

This is another business you can start with very little capital. The business is as simple as getting the materials & distributing / Posting them then collecting your cash. What you need Get a business name. It will help with branding / distinguishing you from others How to get Customers Get your customers by 1) Post Posters of your business. Your advert should say it in a very simple way. For example “We Post Posters / Distribute Flyers. Call 080…… email …..website…. “. Design something that will be quite cheap to produce. No fancy colours- black and white will do just fine. The most important thing in your advert is the size. Make sure the “Poster” part is in very large characters. The idea here is that if your own posters are visible enough for your clients to find you, then you have posted in the right places. 2) Newspapers Do the small/smallest size of advert. It shouldn’t cost you more than 7k. One good thing about adverts is that YOU WILL SURELY GET RESPONSES. You need to b...

Introduction Over the weekend, I was searching for an open space with a friend where we could do some driving practise. After driving around for some hours, I realized something. Lagos does not have open spaces! We went as far as Ikoyi from the mainland, and then we headed towards Mile 2 through Oshodi. It was so striking that the only place we saw was along Oshodi - Apapa expressway, close to Mile 2. It was a space of about 8 plots joined together. We got there only to find out(from some rough looking boys) that we had to pay about NGN500 to practice there. Can you imagine that? They even offered to teach us if we didn’t have a car and then they gave us a little driving manual. This is a good idea if you have such a plot of land lying somewhere. What you need of course you need a manager (who knows how to drive)and an assistant who should also know how to drive. If you have an old car (Manual transmission preferably), it would be great but if not don't worry. People will still ...

As a business person, it is very important to attend trainings and conferences on business and business related issues to help you keep abreast with current trends, technologies and most importantly identify new business opportunities.It also prepares you to start a business and get better at it. Fate foundation is organizing a Training on "Developing and Applying Negotiation Skills in Your Everyday Business: How to Win People and Businesses” . Fee: N3000, Date: 19th May 2010, Venue: Fate Foundation, 1st Floor, Water House, Ijora Lagos., Time:1pm – 5pm For more information on registration and other upcoming trainings, visit their website here: http://www.fatefoundation.com/onlineSchedule.htm.

Introduction Isn’t it a good idea to just go on vacation and still have money going into your bank account? This is the dream of all aspiring business men and exactly what most of the successful business people have in common. The good news is that it can be achieved in almost any business. Most people start a business so as to take control of their life so they can have more time and more money. 80% achieve the second goal but the rest end up making their own business another job. Exactly what they were running a way from! What you stand to gain The advantages of a system like this are countless. • You get to spend more time with people you love, • You share tasks in your business making it easier for all • Other people do the hard work for you • You can then channel your time to other things • You can successfully run up to 5 businesses this way Requirements To successfully implement this concept in your business, you need to be very careful. Doing this incorrectly has ruined a lot o...

Introduction This just as the name suggests, selling information!. This can really be a very profitable business. Well it costs a little money to start but the rewards are very encouraging. What its all about Lets dream a little(Literarily) , what if you find a way of solving a problem for a lot of people? then you put it in a book and advertise it. How many responses do you think you would get? That is the foundation of this type of business - you give people information of exactly what they want. That was the easy part. How do you know what people want? This is the hard part. This part actually accounts for 80% of your success in this business. I have written an article on this subject. It will help you brainstorm. Click here to read it. Similarly, people also search for what they want on the internet. There are a few tools available to help you. Try the Google Adwords keyword tool or Wordtracker for free or Keyword Elite for a little fee. The Paid tool makes it extremely easy fo...

Introduction This is another business that doesn’t require much to start. It’s like this, get a customer (maybe your neighbor), go to his house at the weekend and wash his clothes using his own water, clothes rail and soap! I must say t requires a lot of strength- it is manual labour. The other down side of it is that you can’t charge as much as the drycleaner-you are using the man’s materials!. Getting Customers The process required to get customers in this business is similar to that in the Private Home tutor Business. Please review it here What you need. Just fill up your stomach and try to very humble. I’m guessing you know how to wash clothes. Just like in all business, always make sure you have the right personality. Click here Well that’s about it. From here, you need to decide where you want to go. You may not make a lot of money doing this but if you employ more people, you could make more. From here, you could then go for a full scale drycleaning business. This business may ...

Bulk SMS business is all about sending large number sms messages at very reduced prices. Making money from it depends on which part of the business you want to enter into. If you decide to go for the reseller option(cheaper option), your success will depend on ur market. My brief survey of the providers show a trend; its cheaper to buy my sms units. Check out the pages of some of the dealers http://www.aratext.com/pricing http://www.signonsms.com/price_list.asp http://www.smslive247.com/ http://www.50kobo.com/ http://www.etextmail.com/ http://www.bbnsms.com/ http://www.signonsms.com/price_list.asp The setup is simple, get a website and integrate your site with the sms services from some of the websites or just create an account on any of the sites above and send your sms from their website, this way you don't have to get a website. You then concentrate on getting customers. What is your strategy? how do you get customers to use ur service?...this is the crux of the matter. With the...

This is one of the small businesses you can start with very little or no cash capital. In Nigeria today, one of the most pressing issues is that of securing admission into higher institution. Nigerian publics schools are not doing greatly in this area and the private schools are so costly that they are not for the majority of the population. This means that there will always be a demand for private tutorials. Requirements A Sharp Brain Well, to tell you the truth, you need to be good academically, for this. This will show in the quality of Results your students turn out and ensure people trust you and your business with more students. You don’t even need to know every topic, you could teach just one subject. Business Card / Flyer This shouldn’t be too fanciful or costly-you could do the flyers for now. You could just type your information on your computer and print on A4 sheets of paper. Your aim is to make sure the information circulates as widely as possible not on the quality of the...

Hi I briefly looked at this topic over the weekend. Read more on the personal challenges a Business man needs to go through in starting a business. Read more here http://hubpages.com/t/12f366

The other other day by Alausa Ikeja in Lagos and looking out my window I saw the little park around the State Secretariat. Well it wasn't the first time but it suddenly hit me; one can actually make money with an empty well landscaped and decorated piece of Land! Let’s face it, Lagos or even every where u go, people always want to have an event and would do anything (including pay anything ) for the best event center. It’s very simple to setup Just buy the land, a plot should do for start, plant trees. You could mix it up with pines and umbrella trees. While the trees are growing you could rent Plastic/artificial trees. If you can, you could include fancy lights in the flowers Get a Landscaper to do the flowers. Nothing too fancy for now but it must be beautiful. Do some Concrete seats. But you could start with plastic seats for now The main costs will be -cost of renting chairs (your guest could bring theirs or rent from someone you know) -Cost of landscaping -Cost of land (a ...

Do you know that people always drink? No matter the situation, people especially the young professionals always have a a favorite drinking spot. The best part of this is that people drink even more when things are bad. Just think about it for a minute, do you know how much is consumed everyday in different joints, bars, parties and clubs throughout the country? At the going rate of N200 for a bottle of star, and an estimate using just one bar with 50 guests during a football match ; assuming each guest take a bottle(which is really below real expectations); we'll have 50x200 = N10,000 ! for just one evening. If you spend 1,500 on fuel and all other things being equal the business is lucrative. Requirements 1 freezer(100k plus) and a Standing see-through refrigerator(80k plus) -The drinks have to be chilled, hot beer is dangerous to your health and your business Power supply Forget about Public Power Supply (PHCN), prepare to run on Generators 24/7(between 30 and 50k). If you get p...

A few years back, when I was living with my uncle, I was once asked to go and hire a ladder from a neighbor. When I got there I saw some other people there and on enquiry, I discovered that they all wanted to hire the same ladder. Unfortunately, the owner was nowhere to be found. That opened my eyes to another business opportunity. Renting at N200 per day was quite affordable for the normal cheap ladder. If your ladder is hired twice a week, you have 200x2= N400 and in a month N1600. In a year you will have made 1600x12 = 19200. So assuming you bought your ladder for 15k, you would have made a profit of 4k. It is not a big business but if you multiply it....in 3 locations....with costlier types of ladders..or if your in a very high construction area....it could really pay off. Why I love it is, it is a business you can just start and the business runs on its own. Requirements A good ladder. You could ask a carpenter to make one for you or you could buy an industrial type of ladder li...