Don’t just browse for fun, sell your product on line!

Have you ever wondered what the myriad of youths who visit the internet or access Facebook on their phones do with the connection? Easy, discuss exchange small talk with one another, check out profiles of loved ones and discuss the latest trends in music and fashion! It is amazing that the internet that has become a powerful marketing and business development tool is being underutilized in this part of the world. Just think of about these figures: In Nigeria there are about 43,000,000 people on line. A majority of these people use Facebook, twitter, Google and Yahoo. These are their first portals of access when ever they engage in the browsing activity.  Elsewhere in the world the internet is being used as a tool for marketing and promoting business opportunities. In some countries, business is actually carried out on the net. The question in Africa is with a population that is over a billion today, why are we being left behind in this modern trend of doing business? Our access in Africa is growing by the day: Telecoms companies are selling modems on street corners in many parts of the continent and what do those who snap them up do with them?
The youths' well spring of imagination and creativity that is unrivalled among any other age group is wasting away in Africa. Whenever you go into a public cyber café all the youth seem to be doing is surfing the web to get into relationships. I have had  a few single ladies approach me on line for friendship although I see nothing wrong in this as long as they approach the right people.(I am way over the hill and happily married!) I believe that we as a generation are not challenging our youths enough to use online access for creative business ventures. There are numerous opportunities available.
Blogging for instance is a great opportunity to make money. It may not be instantaneous but a committed blogger can make money if he or she has an interesting choice of content and can make it a habit to upload material on a regular basis. Google is ready to partner with anybody who has the knack to upload interesting content on a regular basis. An associate of mine has two blogs that contain nothing but photographs. He has a string of photographs on scenery in Lagos and Accra. So anyone who wants good pictures on Lagos and Accra can actually go to his blog and see them. He has had media groups write in to use some of his photographs, the idea is if he continues with his photoblog and gives it enough publicity on line he would eventually make money out of it!
If you are marketing any product or service, the internet is an ingenious medium to market the product or service. Social Medium like Facebook actually enhance free promotions of any service or product you provide and your audience is unlimited according to the people you can attact to your page. Another young friend of mine covers entertainment on his web page. Reporting events in Ghana , Nigeria and the world over, gradually he is  acquiring a reputation for being the hub of entertainment in Ghana. He has traveled out of Ghana to two major music festivals as a result of his web page and has appeared on television in Ghana where I believe he would soon have a regular segment.
One web based business that is making waves the world over is avenuestowealth.com another is quibers.com. Both clubs are discount, holiday and investment based. They encourage internet multilevel marketing and sell amazing products at large discounts.  So the question remains if there are a small group of people making a lot of money from internet based activity what is happening to the energetic restless youth who spend more hours on line than the adults?
Every body has a product or service to sell and the big question is what stops that person from selling that product or service on line? Often when I speak to company executives I ask them if they have a website. The common answer is: "yes, we do". But when you get to the question: how interactive is your website, then the answer comes slowly and hesitantly. The reason is because a majority of the websites that are available in this part of the world are inactive or totally "uninteractive" if I may use the word. Aerocontractor, a Nigeria based airline has been able to revolutionize air travel booking by using the internet. Passengers are promised cheaper fares if they book their flights ahead of time and this has encouraged passengers to plan their trips and advance the service provider cash, while they believe they are saving cash in the process.
So far we have only highlighted two major means of making money via the web. There are several others. The main objective of this piece however is to encourage us, whatever we do, to find a way to enhance our marketability by using the internet, instead of just socializing on it. A couple of months back a young man imported a large consignment of black berry mobile phones. He wished to dispose of them as soon as practicable, so he put an ad on one of the web clubs mentioned above and within two weeks he was asking that the ad be withdrawn! Why? He had sold out the consignment and was still being inundated with orders via telephone long after. There is something attractive about getting a discount and something more attractive when an enquiry is made via the internet or the telephone. A recent survey realized the number of operable mobile phones in Nigeria as 98,000,000. That is a large audience. Now there are very few companies that have succeeded in capturing a worldwide audience via the internet or telephone. We have mentioned a few, but that is not to say we can not get a bite of this market, especially in our home country. Microsoft is one of the companies that has been able to capture a world wide audience.  Their activity is spelled out adequately in their mission statement.  “A computer in every home, with Microsoft software on it."  It could seem asking for too much to want to address a world wide audience and market a product that is in demand all over the world, but there are people that are doing it! Authors , speakers, Pastors, automobile salesmen, radical thinkers, inventors. The list is numerous. Wouldn’t you want to join them?  If your answer is yes, start with your product or service to day and start marketing it online!