Getting Started Online From Nigeria

A. Get Your Head Right

Firstly, right from the start, you need to get it into your head that AdSense, affiliate marketing or any other genuine online business ARE NOT “GET-RICH-QUICK” schemes. Hence, we need to do a lot of work especially at the beginning. You need to understand exactly what to do and how to do it. So read through this material several times to ensure that you have educated yourself enough to start. Don’t hesitate to ask for help. Attend worthwhile workshops and training sessions as you can afford them.

Secondly, it is possible that you do not make any money in the first month. That is okay. There could be a number of reasons for that, which you may not discover yourself. Hence GET A MENTOR!

Thirdly, you must set your income goal and determine the strategy for realizing your goal. How much is your monthly income? When do you want to make your first dollar? What strategies in terms of internet access, own PC versus Internet café, etc do you want to use? How much time do you want to put in this business – remember it is a business otherwise forget it. What will be your regular routine? Make sure you consider these thoroughly before you start.

B. Organize Yourself

This step is crucial for organization purposes. You require a number of tools, registrations and the like. So get the following ready:

1. A Notebook for the business, where you will write down everything from registrations to niche market info to usernames and password to emails, etc.
2. Get 2 or 3 email addresses from Yahoo.com and Gmail.com
3. Get your DOM account or at least the name you will use to open one later.
4. If you have your own PC, create a special folder on your PC for your Affiliate marketing information. In fact, you should use different sub-folders for each niche.

C. How To Get A US Address and Phone No

As a Nigerian doing business from Nigeria, you will be discriminated against by most of the online sites you will need to work with. This is mainly due to the fact that a few Nigerians who have been involved in “419” activities have given us a bad name and necessitated our being singled out as potential scammers. Most websites would rather not have anything to do with Nigerians than risk losing their money to 419ners. However, Nigerians have found a way out of it. We use a Virtual Address and Phone number for registration and money collection purposes. There are many ways of doing this – getting a trusted friend’s or relation’s address or buying virtual address on the internet. But one of the companies that has been found to be reliable and has agents in Nigeria is Graphcard.com. Graphcard.com provides you an opportunity to get a USA address and telephone number, a virtual debit card you can use to pay for your online services and can also ship your goods from overseas to Nigeria. They can also help you send and receive money to and from any part of the world. The process for registering and getting your US address and phone number is as following:

Step 1: Register with VTN and Fund It

VTN is a network that provides quite a lot of services that are useful for your online business. For now, we want to use it to fund our Graphcard account. The procedure for registration and funding is as follows:

• Go to www.virtualterminalnetwork.com (VTN) and complete your membership application form. It is free to join.
• Fund your VTN account. It involves paying some money to Bank PHP and confirming your payment with your teller number when you login to VTN. You can also buy ePin from the bank and use it to fund your account. The full procedure is in the members’ area when you login to your account