Everything You Need To Know About Starting An E-commerce Business In Africa For Beginners:

Over the previous months and years, a lot has changed about how E-commerce businesses have been done in Africa. I’m going to be revealing to you the secrets of how to start a profitable E-commerce business. This is not the same pattern of what you used to know. Nowadays, people make lots of money from E-commerce from thousands to millions. I’ve made a couple of millions of Naira doing E-commerce business in nigeria and within other African countries.

So in this article, I'm going to reveal to you as a beginner step by step on what you need to do and how you need to proceed so that you can profit from this same E-commerce business.

You can make anything between 500k to 2 million Naira and above, if you do what you have to do correctly.

• Let's start by understanding what E-commerce is.

E-commerce is simply selling of products and services through the internet. That's the general understanding of what e-commerce is, but when it comes down to what we are doing, what we are doing is simply providing solutions to problems through products, so we sell physical products to people, and these people pay us money in exchange. Now these products can be health products, products for fitness, it can be gadgets, it can be kitchen equipment or utensils. It can be phone care products, it can be home care product, it can be self-care product, it can be any kind of product. It can be enhancement product also. Whichever product that you find to sell, I can assure you that if that product is working, you will make lots of money.

So now, let's go ahead so you understand everything about e-commerce and then you can start your own e-commerce business today and start making some good profit.

The first step is to find a good market to sell to. This is very important. You have to find a good market to sell to at this point. What you are looking for is a problem to solve. Gone are the days when E-commerce was just a kind of hustle, now it's a BIG BUSINESS. People are making millions monthly doing E-commerce.

So after getting a good market to sell to, you can decide to sell to the health market, gadget markets, automobile market, car accessories, mobile gadgets. You can sell kitchen utensils like blenders and stuffs like that. In 2023, I sold blenders and made 10 million Naira selling blenders alone.

So you can see that there's lot of money in E-commerce, if you know what you are doing so find a good market to serve. If you want to sell shoes, skin/face care products, hair care products, whatever you want to sell, find a good market to serve.

The next point is to find a working product for that market. If you want to sell kitchen utensils, like microwave or blender, find a blender or microwave that is unique and working. Don't sell common products. If you sell common products, people are not going to buy. Reason is, they can easily walk down to the store nearby and get that product. So why would they buy from you online at a very ridiculously high price?

If you want to make money doing e-commerce, don't sell common products, sell products that are unique and hard to find, but should be working. So when you are looking for a working product, what you are doing is simply providing solution that truly works. For instance, if people are looking for solution to cure their acne and you have a product that can help them have a smooth and beautiful face, they will pay you money to have it.

So find a Unique Hot Problem Solving Product.

Next step is to assemble the marketing materials that can use to promote this product. Now this includes pictures, videos of this product. For instance, you can go into the market. There should be different markets in your vicinity right? If you want to sell jewelry go to the markets, you'll find different products there, discuss with the sellers, the business owners, the direct dealers, the suppliers, discuss with them. They will let you make videos, take photos. You can buy one of the product if it is affordable, so you can use it yourself and see how it works.

Make different kind of videos from different angles. Take photos, decide what marketing angle you'll use to sell the product. Once you've done this, you now have marketing materials. This is what you're going to use to promote that particular product.

The next step is to create your sales funnel. You need to learn how to create a sales funnel. It's either you use a website funnel or you use whatsapp. These are two different ways. For website funnel, you're creating a sales funnel using page builders, page builders like tri, architect or elemental. These are page builders that help you build a landing page. Like a website, it is easy, it is simply drag and drop.

A page builder has a better advantage over whatsapp because for page builders, even when you are asleep, you can be receiving orders, because the page builder is there to represent you. You put all the information about the product, you put the picture, the images, the videos, other peoples reviews, how the product works, the price and how people can order for the product. So, by the time you wake up in the morning, you must have received different emails.

These are people's orders that have dropped while you were sleeping so with a website sales page, you are selling one to many, because you are just one person and many people are seeing your adverts and they are placing orders. You don't have to be there to make sales. But with whatsapp you are selling one to one, because you have to be there to answer the questions, to answer the enquiries, to attend to them, to call them, to beg them, but in a sales page, you are not there to answer anything. The sales page has all the informations, all the questions and answers, how they can place their orders, everything is there. It makes the work easier for you?

Some people run away from creating a sales page because they think it's techy. It is not techy, it will save you a lot of time. It will save you resources, it will save you headache and it will make the business simless for you. So if you don't mind please take the time to learn how to build a sales funnel.

After your sales page is ready, the next thing is to run advert. Yes! run advert with those videos you made, with those pictures you took. Run adverts on facebook and on Instagram. Promote your product, because this is the key to making money on e-commerce.

If you have a good product and nobody knows about it, nobody's going to buy from you so run ads to promote your product on facebook and Instagram. This would help more people get to know you. This would help more people get to reach you and buy from you. So as someone that wants to make money from e-commerce, you have to learn how to run advert.

In this E-commerce course that was recently updated, there were talks about adverts for e-commerce on different platforms. Both for sales page, whatsapp, instagram and all of that. Simply check it out here

Next is to understand how to work with delivery agents. This would help you ensure fast and effective delivery. Effective delivery of your products. You must work with delivery agents because, for instance, if you live in Lagos and then someone in Abuja place orders for your products, how do you deliver it? You don't live in Abuja. This is where delivery agent comes in. You must learn these things, if not you'll be frustrated by the way.

Moving on, you have to understand how to work with delivery agents, for instance, I live in Lagos and I get orders every day from different parts of the country. I don't have to be in those places, but my delivery agents are in all of these places, so once I get an order, I simply contact the delivery agents and give them the customer details. They will call the customer and deliver the products, the customer pays them because it is payment on delivery as a starter. It makes the work easier. Once the customer pays, they will take their own cut and give you the balance.

That's the business, so understand how to work with these people.

Next point is you should understand how product distribution works, because you have to be distributing product across different states or key states where most of your orders are coming from. You have to understand how these things work. You have to understand distribution, product distribution and all of that.

When you start running advert and getting orders, you will begin to discover the states that are giving you more orders. Then you have to focus more on distribution across those particular states, that is where your money is coming from.

Focus your energy on where your money is coming from, learn product distribution. You live in lagos state, you are getting orders from Kano state, then you distribute. Send some products to the delivery agent who stays in Kano state. He'll be the one to cover Kaduna, Kastina and those perimeters. So you need to learn product distribution, It is the key to suceeding in this business.

Next is to learn the out of order follow-ups. You must follow up the orders. This would help to ensure you are getting a good delivery rate. You have to follow up on the customer who placed the order. You also have to follow up on delivery agent. This would help you reduce the number of failed delivery and also increase the speed of delivery. When customer places an order, call the customer or let your call agent call the customer to confirm the order, to confirm availability and to inform them your delivery person will be on the way to deliver. Then, once you drop the call, then you call delivery agent to go to the customer to deliver. Follow up so you know what has been delivered and what has not been delivered, and you can keep your record as business concerned.

You have to focus on getting good with the basics. Now all I've been explaining are simply the basics, so you have to keep improving your results. Get good at the basics, improve your results.

What are the basics?

✓Product research and product discovery

✓Setting up funnel

✓Having a supplier,

✓Learning how to run ads,

✓Learning how to work with delivery agents, product distribution, follow-ups.

These are the basics. If you know the basics, it would help you advance and do bigger numbers. This is where you begin to do like over 100 million Naira annually through E-commerce.

Everything you need to know to excel in E-commerce business in Nigeria and beyond is right here.

It will guide you exclusively.