If you are Nigerian, then you probably have an idea or have heard the term “blood money”. For the naïve or innocent, I will do a brief introduction.
Blood money is money assumed to have been gotten through diabolical means. When you see people get quick wealth without any traceable enterprise or venture, you begin to ask questions. What I do not know is how it works. If you are interested in tales, maybe you can read tales written on it.
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I have heard people in joking admiration or even slight envy describe an extremely wealthy person as having blood money. I can say that Nigeria’s number one blogger has blood money for instance. She has built her business to a certain height and she is reaping the financial rewards of her hard work.
Money referred to in this article would have to be in near astronomical sums to merit the blood money title. It has to seem big enough that there is no way you can hide that you are wealthy. Nigerians, in reference to this sort of wealth, might say its owner has blood money.
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So, for the purpose of this discourse, blood money refers to money so much as to present difficulties in counting it. I want to have blood money and I am in the process of making one.
I do not understand the pattern of the dibia or baba but I do know that there are patterns and industries capable of producing wealth. Therefore, what I am going to do with this article is to show us the pattern and point us in the right direction. We are not just going to point you in the direction, we are also going to show you how you can get a sustainable business model.
Every generation gets its own opportunities and each decade comes with at least two mainstream opportunities which if properly exploited will create revenue streams that’ll build wealth over time.
The cocoa farmers of western Nigeria in the 60’s and 70’s were wealthy men by all standards. They had blood money and were among the first set of investors in commercial real estate.
In the late 80’s, the then Head of State, General Ibrahim Babaginda further deregulated the banking sector and issued banking licenses that saw the rise of a new generation of commercial and merchant banks. Many banks failed, but the owners of the ones that survived today have blood money (so much money you can’t count).
Another deregulation happened in the telecoms industry though it wasn’t as encompassing as in the banking industry, but the beneficiaries of that deregulation have blood money today.
There was also a near blood money status in the downstream oil and gas sector. Money was made by the players/product importers/marketers but not without several controversies and heavy losses.
Now take a leap to the less formal-structured businesses, the transport guys – the guys who are responsible for moving people from Lagos and Abuja to eastern and south-southern parts of Nigeria. These guys also have blood money even though they may not be known outside their industries, but they sit on large pots of money.
What is the big deal for this decade? What is the money minting machine for this generation? Internet-based businesses! That’s the next blood money industry. In fact, people already have blood money from it. The handwriting is on the wall making newspaper headlines daily: DEALDEY GETS ACQUIRED FOR AN UNDISCLOSED AMOUNT! HOTELS.NG RAISES $1.2 MILLION FOR BUSINESS EXPANSION! And so on.
How To Make Blood Money Today
1) As A Platform Aggregator
DealDey, Entrepreneurs.ng, etc. all aggregate a specific product or service on their platform and make them available for clearly-defined target markets.
What product or service needed by Nigerians can you create a platform to sell?
2) Taking Offline Online
Products and services traditionally sold offline can be taken online. Printivo allows you to design business cards, flyers, mugs, and other print products online and they will print and deliver to you. This is a basic printing service taken online and with the way they are expanding, they are ranking in some revenue.
The market gaps are still immense and you don’t necessarily have to do something new, it could be you taking your current service or product offering online.
3) Support Services
Business support services are a necessity for web-based businesses. There is a large and growing service industry supporting web-based businesses. These include logistics, web development and management, digital marketing, content creation, accounting, product photography, copywriting, data analysis, public relations, warehousing, consulting, etc.
This means that you mustn’t own the platform. You can find a service that these web-based entrepreneurs needs and tap into it just like what happened in the US during the gold rush.
Opportunities Are Dressed In Overalls
During the gold rush of the 1800s in the US, many left their homes in search of gold around the gold deposit areas. Some found gold, many didn’t.
There was a guy who was in the same space but wasn’t digging for gold. He noticed the miners worked under intense conditions and they needed durable work-wear suitable to their working environment. That was the birth of the brand LEVI’S. That brand still exists to date.
Most times we do not notice opportunities because they are dressed in overalls.
Moral Of The Story
Learn how to compete. When you see people rush towards an opportunity, gold (in the example above) in this case, be the smart one selling them what they need for their business – shovels, wheelbarrows, clothing, food, accommodation, insurance, torch lights, etc. This is exactly what ReDahlia does, selling support services and solutions to entrepreneurs.
They all spend money on these things regardless of the outcomes of their gold search. The support services usually have fewer competitors, are less capital intensive and have high-profit margins especially when you have the first-mover advantage.
Revenue Model Is Important
The idea of starting any of these blood money making businesses seem really brilliant and achievable. However, where the challenge lies is in ensuring that they survive over the years.
A lot of people have started web-based businesses and have packed up. One of the reasons for the failure as we have observed is that they did not think through their revenue-generating model. So we will not conclude without letting you know the various revenue-generating model for online businesses.
Revenue Models For Online Businesses
1) Freemium platforms
These platforms provide free services. Put in another way, you don’t pay any money to use them. Examples include Entrepreneurs.ng, google.com, wikipedia.com, linkedln.com, etc. The question then is, if you don’t pay to use them, how then do these platforms pay their bills? There are three ways you can make money from a freemium model:
a) Traffic Monetization
Visitors of your platform are assets. The more people the platform can attract, the more valuable the platform becomes. As the number increase, you then can attract advertisers who your audience is their target audience.
Also, you can earn through Google Adsense (google the term) and through selling advert space directly to advertisers. The more niched your platform is, the easier it would be to run the latter. Otherwise, just let Google do the work for you.
b) Paid Upgrade For Other Services
This method is used mostly by apps and websites who offer free services with limited features and for a small subscription amount, you either unlock new levels or run the apps in advert free environment. With this model, your basic service offerings are free and you upsell users for a small fee.
c) Donations
It is fast becoming a monetization option where you thrive on people’s tendency to support noble causes. When people see that you are delivering value and that it is a social cause, they will donate to support the initiative. Wikipedia grew its business via this approach and ran Microsoft’s Encarta out of business.
2) Marketplace Platforms
These platforms act as connectors between buyers and sellers of a particular product or service. This has been used by disruptive businesses like Uber and DealDey, therefore, can be described as one of the most successful models for web-based businesses. The two major monetization approaches will be:
a) Traffic Monetization
Just like the freemium model, the platform hopes to become valuable enough to their clients so they can charge them for their use of the platform or hopes of monetizing through adverts.
This means that as the platform becomes valuable, it can charge sellers a listing fee for listing their products on the platform or they can charge viewers membership fee or run targeted adverts.
b) Commissions, Listing Fees Or Both
For this monetization approach, you make money by charging a commission, listing fee or both. In running this model, you must have the structure to manage and conclude transactions on your platform. Other platforms charge a listing fee only and no commission.
3) Store Platforms
The traditional stores are now migrating online. You have a lot of online stores selling a range of products and services. Store platforms have three offer variants:
a) Solely owned products/services
Under this approach, the platform produces and owns or pretends to own all that is sold on it. It gives you the most control on inventory, logistics, and delivery.
b) Combined Products/Services
You will be running this model if we assume you make shoes and sell them online, but also sell other brands of shoes in addition to them.
c) Third-party products
In this scenario, you simply sell a product or service that you don’t own or manufacture. This puts a few things out of your control although you still have more control than if you were running the marketplace model we described.
These are revenue models for you to start running a thriving web business. I don’t guarantee it will be easy, but I guarantee the success and fulfillment that building these businesses will bring you would be worth the try.
The New Blood Money Magnet
There are many web-based businesses and more are springing up in Nigeria and just like the banks in the 90’s many of these web-based businesses will fizzle out. Few will survive of course, and among these few, some will be listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange and across the world in 5-10 years. Others will be acquired by international tech companies looking for foothold in Africa.
The owners of the surviving online businesses will be the new blood money magnets.
2 thoughts on “How To Make Your Own Blood Money The Right Way”
Nice one
Thank you.