Social Networks are extremely addictive and bad for you and I. I am loosing my discipline !! Not only me, even some of my friends are lamenting, as they have grown from spending 2 hours a day browsing the Internet to spending more than 6 hours parading social networks, from one network to another, depending on which connects them to friends, to which allows them to share their pictures and even to which tells their friends and colleagues what they are up to at that particular moment. The variety of what you can use social networks for today, is alarming.

Social networks developer’s themselves don’t make it easy on you, as they have spent millions of dollars and would continue to do so, into building a platform that glues you to their sites and help them convert the dollars into more dollars, hence making their shareholders happy.

A social network like Facebook, allows you to stay  updated with your networked relationships.  Twitter on the other hand allows you to communicate on what you are doing at a particular moment to your followers, and  I can see that many members are already using it as a chatting platform, to blabber their thoughts away and get responses to the blabber. I doubt that the developers had such usage in mind, during development.

How many Hours do you spend on social networks?

Do you spend more than 2 hours a day on any social network? If you do, then you surely need help. You can start by helping yourself make a list of things you gained through spending such an amount of time on a social network and comparing it with your daily goals in life.

I spend approximately 2 hours on week days and perhaps more on weekends, that I have been missing my book and magazine reading timetable.  I  spend most of my time reading up on picture commentaries, following up on status post, and even the links in facebook. I feel sorry for myself, as I have started deteriorating intellectually, on a daily basis, thanks to this social networks. Don’t get me wrong they have their justifiable usages and perhaps applications, but certainly wasting my precious hours in them, is not one.

I don’t learn anything new on this social networks, hence they are more of an instrument to waste of my time than a platform to actually benefit from.

How to avoid wasting your precious time on social networks?
1. Have a list of things to do online and assign time to them.
2. Don’t go drifting into checking every status and picture commentaries you see on this networks.
3. Use the logout button once your time expires, I mean it. Staying logged in would lure you into checking out something else.
4. Make a list of why you visit this social networks and ensure that you actually benefit from the lists.
5. Ensure you follow 1-4 religiously.

There are some usage of  social networks which doesn’t fall under this category such as
- Business Networking
- Public Relations for Businesses
- Marketing
- Organisational Collaboration
and even
-Keeping in touch with distant friends

Do you feel or think otherwise? Let me know through your comments…

In my previous entry, I covered Internet shops in Nigeria and how disappointed I was at the fact that there aren’t many to cover.

To Run a successful Online Shop in Nigeria, requires an in-depth understanding of the Market and its Consumers. I learnt this the hard way in the past 5 years or so. The Nigerian consumer behaviour and the market dynamics is very different from what you would experience in the USA or even in the UK.

Havent said the later, Are Nigerians really ready to Buy things online?

The good news is, Yes, Nigerians would buy from a local shop that does it right and have a personalised approach to selling the items to them. Here is how to develop a successful online local shop in Nigeria for Nigerians.

The Product

The product you want to sell must be at the right price. The product must be available, cheap in comparison to local shops and of good quality. When choosing a product to list, ensure that the product cost price + the logistic cost is less than the cost of the product in the shop.

Your ultimate formula in determining whether a product is worthy of listing is
PRODUCT COST PRICE + LOGISTICS COST PRICE <=  LOCAL SHOP PRICE

Not all your products would make you a profit,  Products that would allow you to break even would support the selling of your inventory to reach your profit goals..

Do’s
1. Product Inventory: Ensure you have a supplier that can deliver your listed inventory at the right price regularly.
2. Product Description: Ensure that your product description in thorough, you don’t want to spend time answering questions about the listed product rather than just selling and providing after sales support.
3. Promotions: Always have weekly promotions even if it means selling it at cost price, that would allow you to lock in customer loyalty over a long period of time.

Dont’s
1. Lose Focus: if you want to sell electronics, don’t start listing under-garments and prepaid cards, stick to your niche and create another platform for the other products. Product Listing overload is not for the Nigerian consumer.They get confused easily.
2. Over Price: Don’t sell your products for more than the selling price at the local shop. No Nigerian consumer would buy a product for as little as 1 kobo more than the price they would get it at their locality.
3. Don’t choose a product that would not break even.

Most Nigerian consumers if not all, would not patronize an online shop for convenience. They would rather patronize an online shop for the pricing of its product. Hence having the right product at the right price would surely ensure a success.

Payments
Methods of payments in Nigeria has been a problem for a while, but the good news is internet banking, bank deposits still work fine. If you can afford the GTB Interswitch, do get them, but they are highely unreliable. The Most reliable way to accept payments in an online shop in Nigeria is through bank deposits, and bank transfers.

Logistics
Shipping your items within Nigeria is quiet cheap. The best approach would be to have special arrangements or contracts with the logisitics companies so that you would be able to lock in the cost of shipment with them.

There are a few local courier services like

Citylink Courier Nigeria Ltd
Air and Sea Freight, haulage, warehousing, parcel express, cargo handling and clearing etc.
Website: http://www.citylinkcourier.com

City Flex Express
Total logistics solution
Website: http://www.cityflexexpress.com

DHL Worldwide Express Int. (Nig.) Limited
Website: http://www.dhl.com.ng

The Identity
Your shop identity plays a very important role in getting customers to patronize you. No Nigerian would patronize a shop that has no identity. There are two ways to solve this problem, the personal approach or the corporate approach.

The personal approach entails writing a detailed page about yourself and putting down all your contact details. This type of identity declaration creates trust.

You do not need a registered company to start an online business in Nigeria, but if you can afford a registration do so, and there comes the corporate approach, where you introduce your company with all the details about your company.

Sales Platform
The sales platform is where you sell the products in your inventory. This involves a little investment on your part. You would need to get a Domain name for your shop and also a hosting account to host the domain name.

Example of opensource shopping cards are Opencart, Oscommerce and Zencart

There are many reliable web hosting and domain registration in Nigeria that would help you in setting up an opensource shop for as little as 6,000 Naira a year. One example of such companies is Nairahost, which is a leading provider of web hosting and domain registration in Nigeria.

Security
Security is also a very important and crucial component to ensuring the success of your online shop. To begin with, I would encourage the buying of a SSL Certificate to secure the transaction process. Consumers feel more comfortable shopping in a shop that has an SSL Certificate, in fact most consumers would not purchase products from a website that has no SSL Certificate. Most Hosting providers would install it for you for free after purchasing it.

Shipping and Returns Policy
This is the section of your website where you explain your policies regarding the shipment of purchased products and the kind of warranties your product has. This is a must as it creates a confidence in your listed products.

Marketing
Don’t spend money advertising on Google or Yahoo or even any advertisement network, this advertisement networks would not be able to deliver your advertisement to Nigerians, and it would be way too costly, for you to convert  enough sales to cover the cost of the customer acquisition through this channels.

So what should you invest your marketing budget on?

a. Search Engine Optimisation
- Ensure that your shop is searchable in major search engines, this is a must, there are a few SEO experts in Nigeria, that would charge a reasonable fee in ensuring your shop is search engine friendly and your content are properly indexed in search engines.
b. Paid Review Blogs
- There are many popular Nigerian blogs that would make a coverage on your blog for free, but many would do a thorough coverage at a fee.
c. Specific Blog ads slots
– Some Popular Nigerian blogs have a space for advertisement, like mine, you can enquire from the owners on how you can get your shop advertised by them.

And Lastly consistency, weekly promotions, regular newsletters to your existing customers on your new products and renewing the domain on a yearly basis would ensure that you not only become successful running an online shop in Nigeria but a profitable one.

Consultation

I provide free consultation on internet solutions and business systemization, but I charge on the implementation stage, if required of me. But  I would happily guide you through the setup of your online business for absolutely free. So Feel free to use my contact form if you are interested in my free consultation.

It has been a long time and well I have been quiet busy trying to make a living. I woke up on the right side of the bed and decided that,  I should start blogging again. I do hope this would be for good.

A lot has happened since the last time I blogged, but today, I can’t help but mention a very interesting development in the dotcom industry in Nigeria. Two start-ups were launched, providing the same solution and that not been shocking enough, registered using a similar name or rather the same name with an addition of  “S”.

I present to you nairalist.com and nairalists.com.  Nairalist.com was registered on  25-Dec-2008, on Christmas, while Nairalists.com was registered a month or so later on the 01-Feb-2009.

Nairalist.com which was the first to launch uses a craiglist inspired concept to present classified advertisement targeted to Nigerians and friends of Nigeria; it was developed by Seun Osewa, the owner of the Nairaland forum.

Nairalists.com which surprisingly was launched one month or so later,  presents the same concept, a similar name, and an aggregated content from Nairalist, launched with an improved version of Nairalist.com with also a similar presentation style. This move was really shocking not only to the community but to the owner, who launched a legal campaign against the founder.

The question that plagued my mind then was, Did Nairalists.com infringed the copyright protection of Nairalist.com? It was apparent that the community contributed content was aggregated, but that act in particular is questionable; as  Nairalist.com does not own the content submitted by its members.

What then was the crime commited by Nairalists.com?

I discovered that Web pages fall under the concept of “Trade Dress” . This concept refers more broadly to a product’s physical appearance, including its size, shape, texture, colour(s), graphics, and other characteristics.

The U.S. Supreme Court established the standard a person wishing to protect certain trade dress must demonstrate to win in court.

1. First, the trade dress must be distinctive, either because it is inherently distinctive, or because it has acquired distinctiveness over time through public recognition.

2. Second, the trade dress must be non-functional.

3. Third, and finally, the trade dress of the defendant (person being sued) must be likely to cause confusion as to the source of the product or service.

4. Whether a Web site is inherently distinctive would seem a judgment call. Most Web site designers are shooting for a unique look, yet, that can make it easier, or harder, for any one site to stand out.

For popular Web sites this will be of less concern, for they may acquire distinctiveness, that is, recognition by the public, through their popularity. Many of us, for example, might recognize immediately the Yahoo or E-bay home pages.

The requirement that trade dress must not be functional looks at its impact on the competition.

Source:Can I trademark my Website

Now where does Nairalist vs Nairalist fall? (Below is the script of the conversation I had with an American attorney at Traverse Legal)

Brian Hall:
How May I help You?

Kayode Muyibi:
I am writing an article about two websites, and I was wondering if I can ask a few questions regarding trademark?

Brian Hall:
sure

Kayode Muyibi:
The subjects are www.nairalist.com vs nairalists.com

Kayode Muyibi:
Nairalist.com began a classifieds site , a month later nairalists.com was registered by another party for a similar service

Kayode Muyibi:
Now the question is, does Nairalists.com infringe any copyright or trademark law?

Kayode Muyibi:
Do note the difference in the names, as in the “s” that follows in the Nairalists

Brian Hall:
it depends, domain name rights are directly tied to trademark rights. If the owner of nairalist.com can establish trademark rights (either registered or common law) then the registrant of nairlists.com may be cybersquatting

Kayode Muyibi:
Then where does the trade dress clause apply?

Brian Hall:
Trade dress usually does not apply in domain name matters

Kayode Muyibi:
It applies to websites design? aesthetics?

Brian Hall:
it may, but those items tend to be considered as part of trademark infringement and the overall likelihood of consumer confusion analysis

Brian Hall:
trade dress is more akin to the particular packaging of a good, or architecture of a restaurant, etc.

Kayode Muyibi:
if a consumer confusion argument can be made, does nairalist have a case?

Kayode Muyibi:
1 month?

Brian Hall:
Again, it depends, what does nairalist mean? how long has it been used in commerce? are there third party fair uses of it in a descriptive or generic sense? these are the types of questions to consider

Kayode Muyibi:
yes, they have the same services but a little differences in their features.

Brian Hall:
1 month is an awfully short period of time to establish common law trademark rights under us law

Brian Hall:
we assess matters like this daily, identify the case law and provide a more detailed recommendation if you are interested in the future

Brian Hall:
good luck

Kayode Muyibi:
Thank you for your time. Thats about all for now.

My Thoughts

I am not a lawyer, but it doesn’t take a lawyer to understand that Nairalist.com does not have a case against Nairalists.com. But What do you think? Let me Know through your commentary.

ROOM INCOME with a slogan, Earning a living from your bedroomis a new blog that highlights the work from home industry, post jobs, and also gives advice on relative things like writting a resume, working from home etc. Its worth checking out.

The good news is, it provides everything for free, so you can now work from home. If you have been always warry that online data entry jobs etc are scam, then surely it is worth a visit. Visit now, and dont forget to bookmark it.

According to PC WORK AT HOME, most people interested in working from home seem to be looking for Data entry jobs. He futher reveals that no genuine data entry job will require you have to make upfront payment. He finally informs us that the hourly rate for data entry is very low, and there is a lot of competition for the few jobs available.

Here is a list of some companies that you might want to check out, if you are looking for a data entry work.
Read More

Have you being looking for a “work from home” job? If affirmative, what you would normally find out jobs available in retrospect, would either be data entry jobs, customer support or even technical maintenance job. Nevertheless the most common one available is the data entry jobs, where they ask you to pay before they give you information regarding the job. Well today you are in luck, because I am going to give you the free information that could help you get the job without the need to pay for the information.

I actually paid for this to check it out, but here it goes, from the reply from the agent to the job related information…..

Their First Mail

As mentioned in the data-entry ad, the post that I inquired about requires you to have a PC with internet access, a legitimate email account, basic internet knowledge and minimal typing skills. You can chose to work full-time or part-time. Since you will be working with virtually millions of clients from all parts of the world, you can chose to work the hours you would like to work and chose how many data sets you want to process.

You will need email access and an email account as that is where all the
data sets will be sent to. You do not have to contact anyone; all contacts will be made through email. You will be processing data sets which will be explained in details in the complete set of training materials. There is no binding contract to sign nor any target amount of data sets to be completed.
Read More