Years ago, Bill Gates, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Incorporation, said that if your business is not online, soon you will be out of business. Looking at the current trend, Gates’ observation is not far from the truth. Many flourishing businesses are done online via websites, and social media platforms, including, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn, Emails, Skype, Zoom, Telegram, and so on and so forth.
The likes of Jumia,
Alibaba.com, Aliexpress, Amazon, and many other online stores, earn their
incomes strictly online. Also, multi-national corporations like Chevron, Mobil,
Shell BP, MTN, GLO, AIRTEL, 9MOBILE, five star hotels, airlines, transport
companies and media organisations that are already making millions of naira
daily offline are also running their businesses online. They are online because
they realise that being online is indispensable.
Now, if five star companies
and multi-national corporations that are already “going concerns” are doing
business online, then, it becomes much more indispensable for small and medium
scale businesses to be online. There is no legitimate business you are doing
offline that you cannot bring it online. If you are a taxi driver, shoemaker,
mason, cleaner, hairdresser, barber, engineer, doctor, lawyer, landlord,
hotelier, restaurateur, etc, you can get your business online. It will not cost
you an arm to get your business online. You don’t even need to have a physical
office to get your business online. The important thing is that you should
provide value for people. If you are offering quality product or service, even
if you are living in the forest, people can reach you through your contacts –
email, phone number, WhatsApp, Skype, Zoom, Twitter, etc, and get from you what
they want.
The beauty of the internet is
that it provides equal opportunity for all to live large like a company,
institution or multi-national corporation without spending much to be online. You
can advertise, promote your products/services and reach the whole world. And if
you are providing quality/value, people will contact you from every part of the
world.
Getting
Online
In many cases, what it will
take to get your business online is the amount of money you pay your
telecommunication service provider for internet data. If for instance, you get
on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Skype, Telegram, etc, to market your product, you
don’t pay a dime to create an account on those social media platforms.
In some other cases, you will
pay some little amount of money to get your business online. If for instance
you need a website for your business, you will pay a website designer to design
one for you. Thereafter, every year, you will be paying the webhosting company a
fee for your website’s domain name and webhosting. The fee represents the cost
of continual use of your website’s domain name and the cost of keeping your
website hosted on the internet.
However, there are many
platforms you can use which you will not be required to pay for domain
name/renewal and webhosting/renewal. The platforms handle that for you. Prominent
among the platforms are Wordpress.com and Blogger.com. if you want to have a
free website for your business, you will only pay a website designer to design
one for you, using either Wordpress, Blogger or any other free platform to
design it.
Inquiry
For more inquiry on how you
can have website for your business, you can reach us via:
Email: sun4luv5@yahoo.com
Phone: 07046828045; and
07061016859