Grow Your Online Business Into A Convertible Automated Vehicle (Part 2)

You can read the first part here. If you’re in information business then you’ll find out that creating content is an on-going job as well. You might be thinking whether this is something possible to outsource. The answer is – a definite yes. If you are constantly creating E-books and articles, then I advise you to get ghostwriters.
I know this advice is being popularly echoed in forums or among business associates but there is more to getting ghost writers and I want to talk more about this. You see, ghost writers are somewhat considered marketing weapons for a lot of successful Internet marketers. So if you want to approach them and ask for ghostwriters contact, they might be reluctant to give them away. It’s just like saying, “Hey man, may I know what’s the secret blending recipe to Colonel Sanders’s Kentucky Fried Chicken?”. So that being said, I advise that you can get ghostwriters from any sources either through referrals who are open enough to give the context to you or search on forums and places like Elance.com is definitely a good place to begin with as well. Once you get these ghostwriters, train them in the way to do the art of your business so you can have a certain protocol or formats for your books and train the writers to write for you on a consistent basis. But please be sure to check the ghostwriters work initially especially because some ghostwriters are quite notorious for plagiarizing works and they might rip it off from existing content. These are the types of writers that you don’t want to have. Firstly I advise or suggest that you test their content by uploading it online and then go to www.copyscape.com. Once you test it out, see if there’s any other duplicated content on the Internet and you’ll find out whether these ghostwriters are giving you genuine content or not. Then there is also video creation which seems to be growing more popular nowadays. If you’re not really keen on doing it on your own, I recommend that you create videos on youtube or get a video creating software or site where you can get your own videos done for you and you can quickly brand it as your own. If you want it to be totally automated where it comes to outsourcing, you can also get customization done for you.  Now for people who run blogging, you can get guest authors instead of paid-to-blog people. Because people who are being paid to blog, I know this is quite a popular method of getting people to write for you for a fee but normally these people are motivated by money rather than passion. I don’t quite encourage this type of blog posters on your blog. It’s best to always get guest authors and offer them a back link or exposure since these people are quite regular authors as well. These guest authors you’re getting must be experts or avid writers themselves. Another way you can use is RSS feeds so that you can get automated content generated in your blog as well and you don’t have to focus a lot on continuous product creating so frequently but you want to focus more on marketing. So this is something I want you to know as well. Now all those being covered, I’m going to discuss what you should never ever outsource. It’s good that you’re approaching the automation process in making your business as automated as possible on the Internet. There are just some things that you can never outsource to people because it might jeopardize your business and put it at higher risk. For starters, you should never give other people and anyone access to your merchant account details. It’s ok to trust an in-house treasurer or manager or even a family member but never ever outsource this over the Internet to someone else because there is always a case of careless placing of the private details or even risk having being leak out or what if your virtual assistants are scandalous by any chance? So these are the things that you definitely want to avoid and you can risk having your life time earnings all wasted if someone has access to your Paypal account and the person steals the money from you. Another thing you should never outsource is your mailing. The only person who should be doing the mailing is yourself or an in-house employee that you can trust. But never outsource it over the Internet.  Also when it comes to promoting your products, you should only leave this promotion effort to train affiliates and joint venture partners. Never get an employee or a virtual assistant to do the promotion for you because they are not train marketers. They are only trained to do jobs that are repetitive or handling customer queries or even closing the sales at the most but they are not trained to do product promotions. Otherwise they would have been Internet marketers rather than virtual assistants. This is the truth and I hope that I’m not putting it too bluntly here. I also highly urge that you would never use a middle man between your dealings and other joint venture partners. I’ve seen top gurus who’ve used middlemen to deal with other joint venture partners and o a contrary effect, the joint venture partners are more offended because nobody likes talking to the middlemen. They want to talk straight to the main person himself. So never use a middleman for your business no matter how busy you are. Because you can never afford to be too busy for your partners who are helping you in your business.

How To Start And Run A Profitable Car Hire And City Wide Cab Service in Nigeria

There is a growing demand for car hire service whether for airport shuttle (pick up and drop off) or intra city car hire by visiting businessmen, executives or tourists within a city such as say Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan or Lagos which are key destinations for business travelers to Nigeria. 

The Car hire service can be classified both under transport and tourism sectors of the Nigerian economy because of the very nature the services are delivered and to the target market which are mostly foreigners on visits to Nigeria.

The Market and Opportunity

The market for car hire service is quite huge worth over N10 billion in sales (based on present and continuous basic research in Nigeria) and it is very flexible as you can combine several related ventures with your business enabling you to have more than one source of income. 

It is a little difficult to compute the exact figures for this market, but according to a report monitored on a Nigerian Newspaper about 10% to 15% of Nigerian business travelers now use car hire services whereas not less than 400,000 people visit Nigeria annually for business and most of them have a budget to cover their stay while here in Nigeria. 

Part of that budget would go into airport shuttle service and car hire service which many hotels have taken advantage of. Once you arrive in Nigeria as a visitor and have booked a hotel to stay in, naturally you’d inquire about cab services within the city you’re visiting but not all hotels can provide this service and even those who can, may charge much or may want to focus on providing core hotel services that they’ll rather outsource the service to more competent companies. 

Some companies already having this advantage include the popular Uber, Bolt and others, while in the motorcycle business is Gokada, Opay and others. That is where you come in as a savvy business person of which there is enough profit to go round.

The Car Hire Industry in Nigeria – Regulators, Operators and Associations

The main operators in this business airport shuttle service, car hire and cab services who on behalf of clients provide mobility and convenience to tourists and business travelers within key cities in Nigeria.

 One of the requirements for anyone intending on doing this business is registration with relevant government regulatory agencies such as Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) for airport shuttle. 

If you want to operate a cab service you need to be registered with the regulatory state government agency for intra city transport and that varies from state to state within Nigeria. It is also advisable to join the Taxi Drivers and Cab Operators Association within your resident state. 

Alternatively you may want to instead partner with reliable taxi drivers to provide this service instead of operating a taxi yourself. 

Some Challenges in Car Hire Business

• Armed Robberies and Car theft – there have been reported cases of armed robbers holding car hire and cab operators hostage while they perpetrate their crimes within the federal capital territory for instance. Although these are isolated cases they have a way of preventing the business from running smoothly whenever they occur plus your company's reputation may take a hit if your clients are unlucky to be robbed while using your service.
• Bad Roads - this can affect efficiency and cause some inconveniences for your clients, Know your way around it.
  
• Uncooperative customers - Some customers are very difficult to work with. They might make unrealistic demands or set unreasonable targets for you to meet.
• Dishonest employees - some may go behind your back by giving out their own numbers instead of the company's number to potential clients and pocket the money they receive from such clients without informing the company.

Startup Costs

• Fairly Used Salon Car (preferably Toyota, Nissan or Peugeout 2008 model or later) – N1,500,000
• Office Space – N250,000
• Furniture – N150,000
• Marketing – N50,000
• Other expenses (including car tracking, insurance, operational costs etc) - N300,000
• Total – N2,200,000

The profit payback period is about 8 to 9 months depending on how well you manage your sales efforts.