mekaboy:

THE AREA IS EVERYTHING- EVEN IF YOUR SPEED IS SLOW IN AN AREA WHERE PEOPLE CANT AFFORD A PC, THEY WILL WAIT .

WE KNOW WHEN MTN USE TO SELL LINES FOR 20K, NOT EVERYONE COULD AFFORD A LINE, THE GSM CALL BUSINESS WAS BOOMING, PEOPLE PAID AS MUCH AS 90 TO 10 NAIRA A MINUTE TO MAKE CALLS. BUT TODAY WHO STILL GOES T MAKE CALLS WITH A PAY PHONE? THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT IS HAPPENING TO CAFE BUSINESSES.

VERY FAULTY ANALOGY. Do you know that there are places in many states in this country where people travel distances to make calls? What I see here is that there are many people who do not travel the length and breadth of Nigeria to know their country.

There are very few states I have not visited in Nigeria. This helps me a lot in my business because I know areas where there is a great need for services like cyber cafes. Many areas! I say that with plenty of emphasis.

When setting up a business, viability of a location is something that every business owner should consider. Why would you open a cyber cafe where there is hardly power supply? Power supply has improved in many places and i can tell you that I know several places where cafe owners will not spend up to one hour in a week running generators.

Where I am now typing this, the light has not blinked in 4 days.

I feel many of the problems being listed here by several persons are over-hyped!

One thing I have noticed about Nigerians is that we are too pessimistic. If something is not working for a few, then that thing must be bad. I seriously beg to disagree.

mekaboy:

STAY THERE OO, DONT MOVE. SO BECAUSE OF POWER SUPPLY AND INTERNET CAFE BUSINESS I WILL TRAVEL TO JOS OR KANO TO SET UP CAFE ABI ? TOMOROW THEM GO BOMB ME AND MY CAFE .

THINGS CHANGE, TECHNOLOGY IS GETTING CHEAPER, WHEN INTERNET BECOMES MORE AFFORDABLE TO PEOPLE IN THEIR HOMES WHY WILL THEY GO TO CAFE ?

THE AREA MATTERS, BUT YOU ALSO HAVE TO CALCULATE THE COST OF RUNNING THE BUSINESS IN THAT AREA, HOW CLOSE IS IT TO WHERE YOU RESIDE, IF U TRAVEL LIKE U SUGGESTED TO ANOTHER STATE TO OPEN CAFE, IF THERE IS EMERGENCY HOW DO U GET TO THE CAFE, OR WILL U RELOCATE BECAUSE OF AN INTERNET CAFE ?


THE AREA MATTERS BUT AT THE SAME TIME TECHNOLOGY IS GETTING CHEAPER.

THOSE THAT HAD PHOTO LABS ARE ALSO EXPERIENCING PROBLEMS BECAUSE OF CAMERA PHONES AND DIGITAL CAMERAS THAT CAN SNAP AND EASILY PRINT OUT PICS .

Again faulty analogy.

I can point to several photo labs that are still raking in cash like there is no tomorrow. There are two in Abuja I know. One of them has opened three branches in 2 states in 2 years.

When you keep living in manufactured untruths, you will be bound by them.

An internet marketer once said: the only limitations are the ones we place on ourselves.

There are cafes that are seriously booming. Perhaps you do not know that technology is also advancing in that area, as there is now technology to run several systems from one central processing unit. It cuts start-up and operating costs (lesser power consumption, etc), and provides better admin control. There are other value-added services that can be run in cafes. I have knowledge of several of them, so if you want to keep living the lie that cafe business is dead in Nigeria, good luck to you.

@ stagger pls mention these value added services one can offer? am seriously in need of making more money from my cafe

This is what should happen: since cafes made money from people sending and receiving cyber email, does it not makes sense now that they should begin to send physical mails and parcels of less than 10kg. Infact this is what will truly develop nijar. This is how it works i want to send a phone to my cousin in enugu from lagos. I go to my local cafe and check it in 2days later my cousin recieves an alert that he should come to his local cafe in enugu and pick up his parcel. if you want to join the network and you have a cafe contact dialcentre@ymail.com thanks

Cargoed:

This is what should happen: since cafes made money from people sending and receiving cyber email, does it not makes sense now that they should begin to send physical mails and parcels of less than 10kg. Infact this is what will truly develop nijar. This is how it works i want to send a phone to my cousin in enugu from lagos. I go to my local cafe and check it in 2days later my cousin recieves an alert that he should come to his local cafe in enugu and pick up his parcel. if you want to join the network and you have a cafe contact dialcentre@ymail.com thanks

Brilliant.

This was part of my future business model.

Cargoed:

This is what should happen: since cafes made money from people sending and receiving cyber email, does it not makes sense now that they should begin to send physical mails and parcels of less than 10kg. Infact this is what will truly develop nijar. This is how it works i want to send a phone to my cousin in enugu from lagos. I go to my local cafe and check it in 2days later my cousin recieves an alert that he should come to his local cafe in enugu and pick up his parcel. if you want to join the network and you have a cafe contact dialcentre@ymail.com thanks

Do you have a courier license?

@samorin we can alwayys work together. Its not as had as you think.

@stagger i have one question those selling recharge cards do they have NCC License or do internet cafes have ISP licences.
in that same way you dont need you will represent the current courier licensed holders but it will be done in a more efficient and inovative way.

You don't have to wait for oyiboman to teach you how to post letter na wahoo.

.

Cyber Cafe business has been rendered extinct since the past 3-5years. Home internet and mobile phone access has taken most of the customers away. On top of that, there's a lot of competition. Look left and right, there's a cyber cafe. What do you expect?

HELLO THERE, AM ABOUT OPENING A CYBER CAFE AND I NEED A CREDIBLE PERSON TO MANAGE IT FOR ME, ANYONE OUT THERE WITH EXPERIENCE SHOULD MAIL ME ON temiseoduma@yahoo.com


NOTE THAT BEFORE I HAND OVER THE CYBER CAFE TO THE PERSON,I'LL MAKE SURE I TAKE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF PAYING THE RENT ANS ALSO PROVIDE THE NECESSARY EQUIPMENT NEEDED TO RUN THE CAFE BUT ON THE OTHER HAND,THE PERSON AND I WOULD DELIBERATE ON THE AMOUNT I WOULD RECEIVE MONTHLY, IN OTHER WORDS,WE WOULD DECIDE ON A SPECIFIC AMOUNT HE WOULD DILIVER TO ME MONTHLY

The problem with Nigeria and Nigerians when it comes to business is that nobody wants to think outside the box. Everybody wants to do what tom, Joystick and harry and is doing.

Cyber Cafe is still a profitable business in Nigeria for 2 reasons. '
1. It will take a long time before there is light in Nigeria
2. it will take a long time for everyone in Nigeria to have internet access in their home

So if you open a cyber cafe in Nigeria, it will be profitable as long long

1. You have the best customer service possible, there is no customer service in Nigeria. Most business in Nigeria lack this
2. Use the latest technology, which means your computers are fast
3. Include a eatery/ resturant/ snack place
4. Have a business section where people can fax/ copt/ print/ bind presentation
5. Including a learning center on typing, microsoft programs computer courses

These are just some of the things you can do to set your cyber cafe apart .
Learn more about the different kind of business you can start in Nigeria at Shikenan.com

This topic is very interesting and from my reading through I see many negative talk about cybercafe. Having run the business for over 10-12 years here is what I can tell you.

It has become less revenue yielding than it used to be. However it is still profitable. What most people don't do is to adjust quickly to the change in revenue drop. As revenue dropped so also has cost of running dropped. That is why the profit is still there. Take for example Bandwidth payment. Before the Starcomms of this world we use to pay 180k per month for bandwidth. Starcomms dropped this to 7k per month in one fell sweep. For sometime people reduced their cost of bandwidth but retained the high revenue. It was a matter of time before the revenue too dropped as individuals started getting their own Starcomms. Though starcomms dropped revenue drastically, cost like fuel consumption and constant maintenance of system for virus never dropped. So, obviously profit became thinner and in some cases went negative (loss). I think this happened with most people. New entries into the market were the worst hit. Those of us who had mustered up clientele were still able to survive for sometime. I cant remember the number of new entries that closed around me.

So it was clear we had to bring down the cost of the other two factors. So we worked at that. We experimented on so many things until we arrived at some categories and models of Thin Clients that rescued us from power and constant maintenance. Though they brought their own particular problems that could crash the business instantly, we were able to solve it our particular way since we were programmers.

So yes, the business is no more profitable if you continue the old way. If you bring down your fuel consumption and maintenance cycle to nil then you are in good business. Unfortunately this gospel I have preached to both new and existing cybercafes. Existing ones always change to the systems. It's the new ones that don't listen. They have a thousand engineers telling them to go the old way and here I am, a lone ranger, telling them to go the other way. I have always failed with them but been highly successful with those who have been running one before because they understand when I breakdown their problems to them and then give them the solution. How I wish I could get new ones to understand it before their mis-step. I guess they will have to learn the hardway.

So, yes the cybercafe business is unprofitable if you put it together the old way. You will struggle to survive in the first six months. But it is very profitable when you bring down both fuel consumption and constant formatting (maintenance) of systems. You will not wait three days before you start seeing a good margin that will only increase. So my verdict is SMARTLY BUILT CYBERCAFE IS VERY PROFITABLE.

We build this Cafes for people now and run 15 of them all over the country. You can reach me at

08052633663 or info@surfcity-networks.com
Website www.surfcity-networks.com

This topic is very interesting and from my reading through I see many negative talk about cybercafe. Having run the business for over 10-12 years here is what I can tell you.

It has become less revenue yielding than it used to be. However it is still profitable. What most people don't do is to adjust quickly to the change in revenue drop. As revenue dropped so also has cost of running dropped. That is why the profit is still there. Take for example Bandwidth payment. Before the Starcomms of this world we use to pay 180k per month for bandwidth. Starcomms dropped this to 7k per month in one fell sweep. For sometime people reduced their cost of bandwidth but retained the high revenue. It was a matter of time before the revenue too dropped as individuals started getting their own Starcomms. Though starcomms dropped revenue drastically, cost like fuel consumption and constant maintenance of system for virus never dropped. So, obviously profit became thinner and in some cases went negative (loss). I think this happened with most people. New entries into the market were the worst hit. Those of us who had mustered up clientele were still able to survive for sometime. I cant remember the number of new entries that closed around me.

So it was clear we had to bring down the cost of the other two factors. So we worked at that. We experimented on so many things until we arrived at some categories and models of Thin Clients that rescued us from power and constant maintenance. Though they brought their own particular problems that could crash the business instantly, we were able to solve it our particular way since we were programmers.

So yes, the business is no more profitable if you continue the old way. If you bring down your fuel consumption and maintenance cycle to nil then you are in good business. Unfortunately this gospel I have preached to both new and existing cybercafes. Existing ones always change to the systems. It's the new ones that don't listen. They have a thousand engineers telling them to go the old way and here I am, a lone ranger, telling them to go the other way. I have always failed with them but been highly successful with those who have been running one before because they understand when I breakdown their problems to them and then give them the solution. How I wish I could get new ones to understand it before their mis-step. I guess they will have to learn the hardway.

So, yes the cybercafe business is unprofitable if you put it together the old way. You will struggle to survive in the first six months. But it is very profitable when you bring down both fuel consumption and constant formatting (maintenance) of systems. You will not wait three days before you start seeing a good margin that will only increase. So my verdict is SMARTLY BUILT CYBERCAFE IS VERY PROFITABLE.

We build this Cafes for people now and run 15 of them all over the countryOuse have changed the fortunes of tens of Cafes this wayouTou can reach us at

08052633663 or info@surfcity-networks.com
Website www.surfcity-networks.com

^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Owning a cafe is no longer a monopoly
The profit margin is extremely low and adding ancillary services only bucks that up slightly
Face it dude, cafes are dead in most upwardly mobile urban centers

i have been in the cafe business for over 5years now(since 2007).have enjoyed so much thru it cos my cafe is situated opposite a university.now i must tell u that the business in nose diving ,reason been the modem is very cheap and affordable.I sensed that staying in the business for so long without looking for an alternative source of income would seriously hit me financially if i did not do something urgently,so i decided to look for something else to do along side.something that could give me daily income even on a sunday.i then ventured into poultry farming in 2010.i started with 200 birds,after 1500,then 2,800.now the farm has grown and we have 4,300 laying birds on the farm.the business is sweet if u have knowledge and perseverance.YOU MUST BE PATIENT AND READY TO SPEND.Almost all i was making from my cafe for the past 3years was going into the farm,my family(wife and kids) felt the brunt.This is just a word of advice to my colleagues who own cyber cafes,dont get cut in between,try and diversify.let the cafe run,look for other areas of interest that are highly lucrative and can sustain you for a long while(NOT A BUSINESS YOU RUN INTO AND THEN RUN OUT). businesses you can grow old with.

Starting a Cyber Cafe Business with a business Plan In Nigeria...