Starting an eCommerce business is not an easy feat I tell you, especially in a country like Nigeria. I made a lot of mistakes and lost a lot of money. I wish I knew these things I’m about to share with you before ever starting an eCommerce business in Nigeria. So, pay attention to everything I’m about to share with you. If you want to save yourself from making the same mistakes I made and save yourself a ton of money.

(1) Not everything you learn online about eCommerce is Applicable in Nigeria

I think one of the biggest mistakes I made as an entrepreneur while starting my eCommerce company in Nigeria is trying to apply everything I learned online. Firstly, I watched a lot of Youtube videos, mostly from Davie Fogarty. And, I read a lot of articles online to arm myself for the tough journey I was embarking on. But, here is where I went wrong. what I ended up doing was taking all that amount of rich knowledge and applying it to the Nigerian market. And, boy did I fail terribly. It is important to note that there is nothing wrong with these ideas though. The problem is, applying them in Nigeria without refining them. Because, the Nigerian consumer market and behavior are very different from countries like the USA, Australia, the UK, etc. So, what did I do? Here’s what I did instead and I recommend it to you.

I refined the ideas to fit the Nigerian market
And I’ll give you an example. When I was starting my eCommerce business in Nigeria i.e https://tumblecase.com/. Everything I learned online at that time pointed toward starting with a Shopify store. And in my opinion, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t advise anybody starting out in Nigeria to go in that direction.

You see, one of the biggest problems we Nigerian entrepreneurs have is the lack of knowledge out there. There isn’t enough online from veteran entrepreneurs that new entrepreneurs starting out can learn from.

But, long story short, I started with Shopify. Eventually, I was paying about USD$80 in charges monthly to keep the store running. That’s about 48,800 Naira monthly at the rate of 610/1USD at the time for a new business! At some point, I couldn’t keep up with the expenses. In the early stages of course I wasn’t making enough money monthly to cover those expenses.

That being said, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with starting out with Shopify though if you have the resources. Shopify has a basic fee of about USD$29 monthly. That of course excludes fees for apps that you might need for your store to run smoothly. These fees might not seem like much to people living in other countries but to us Nigerians considering the high exchange rates and all you know why this might not be sustainable in the long run.

I couldn’t keep up and eventually, I discovered that I could run my store at a cheaper rate with another platform. And this brings me to the point of starting out with WordPress (Woocommerce) to save costs which we’ll talk about later. In conclusion, what I’m I trying to say? All I am saying is that most of the information online is not suitable for the Nigerian market. So when you learn things online, make sure that you’ve refined them to suit the Nigerian market. On to the next recommendation.

I consulted with local experts
This is another very important thing I did and I think is often overlooked by Nigerian entrepreneurs. I think we spend so much time looking for knowledge online from American YouTubers and blogs. We overlook the abundance of knowledge that is all around us. In fact, it was as a result of conversing with some locals in this space that I realized it was cheaper to build https://tumblecase.com/ on WordPress instead of Shopify. So, read more articles about starting an eCommerce or online business from Nigerian blogs and YouTubers even if there aren’t so many out there. Because who better to teach you about starting an online business in Nigeria than someone who has done it?

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https://top5ers.com/5-things-i-wish-i-knew-before-starting-an-e-commerce-business-in-nigeria/