Decision making process

So I came to the conclusion that the tech market in Nigeria, though ripe, is quite a difficult nut to crack.

I’ve been in web design since 2011, added the skill of mobile app dev in 2015, sometime around 2017, I did a little bit of AI. In between, I do graphics, motion pictures, copywriting, SEO, social media management and consultation. While I have grown my side businesses to hire staffs over time, coding or building stuff is what gets my juices flowing — so I build.

Seeing how getting contracts has been slow of late, I have often looked outside Nigeria to gain more clients, if nothing else, the exchange rate when converted back into Naira makes more sense.

But there are inherent challenges

1. Spam emails from everyone else around the world has reduced website design and app development into a profession nothingness. We keep getting the mails daily:

We all keep getting these at least 5 times daily from different people.

2. I was considering getting anther domain majorly because my current domain has a Nigerian TLD www.tscgroup.com.ng

There are a few reasons I would need a new domain, top of my list being TSC Group is actually the umbrella company for a lot of other startups and it needs to reflect that rather than portray us as just a web design outfit. The site is already lagging behind in testimonials, just 3 case studies (testimonials) are there out of possible hundreds this year.

The challenges with strictly focusing my web design business on U.S is that I need to work super hard again to get a payment gateway approved again. The last time I set up Skrill just over a year ago, it took them 2 months of back and forth before approving my account. Then I received a $100 payment from a U.S client and by the time it reached my account here in Nigeria, it was just over $40. The charges are crazy.

So I moved on to 2Checkout, took another 2 months to get approval for that account. Less charges but weird policy of holding money back and doing random inspections, inspections that can take up to 21 working days in which your earnings are stuck in your dashboard…and I’m not about to spend the next two months getting another account approved.

For some reasons, I feel a U.S phone number and a domain that doesn’t end with .com.ng will help grossly.

This is what I’ve been faced with for the past few days.

Anyway, after considering all my options, I have decided that instead of spending money on a new domain + spending the next 2 months getting a new payment gateway approved + paying for a U.S phone number, I will go with the minimum viable option =

1. Use my current website — I’ll just develop a landing page within it. This way, I don’t get to start pursuing a new payment gateway and I can deploy more cash into customer acquisition. Also, I already have Amazon Email Sending Service on this domain.
2. I could use sonetel.com to get a U.S phone number without paying so long as their chat widget is active on my website. Easy.
3. Keeping cost low so instead of Google Ads, I’m focusing on Bing ads and still searching for advertising partners that uses pay per sale as opposed to CPM.

For now, my goal is to keep cost low, take advantage of everything- Linkedin $50 ad credit, Bing ad credit…free stuff.

Lets do this.