CASE STUDY: How I Made Close To 1Million In Sales Within 3 Months Of Selling Online!

My first experience with e-Commerce was selling my business consulting and internet marketing services through this blog, you can read about the results here.

Then in January 2013, I came across Kaymu.com.ng while it was still in its early stage trying to break her way into the Nigerian e-Commerce terrain.

It didn’t take me long to see the market potentials of such a platform where sellers can be connected to over 60 million Nigerians online.

I instantly became a kaymu evangelist. This is partly due to my passion for entrepreneurship development in Nigeria and my successful experience with e-Marketing.

How It Began!

Being an entrepreneurial blogger and coach, I follow up startups both in Nigeria and globally to see how I can help spread the word about their new business venture through unusual interviews with the founders, and that’s how I was introduced to Lukas Zels, the MD of Kaymu.

And as I’ve come to be known for, I asked my typical ‘big picture’ question;

“what’s the bigger purpose for kaymu in Nigeria beyond the obvious –naira and kobo?”

And he replied;

“to empower Nigerians through eCommerce by building the safest and easy to use online marketplace community where genuine buying and selling can take place.”

As it turned out, the meeting ended with me becoming the official brand evangelist [PR consultant] for kaymu. My task was pretty simple; put kaymu to test and share your experience with the world.

My 1^st Month Selling Online

I own a boutique business where I sell both male and female clothing and shoes. So I decided to create my own shop online to test run kaymu and listed the shoes on the platform, this was in February. Oh and if you are wondering why I listed only shoes and left out the clothes? Well, shoes are far easier to snap than clothes. Before the month ended, I was able to sell one shoe despite 5 orders, only one buyer followed through to pickup and paid cash –N3000. This wasn’t so bad since Kaymu opened to the public in February.

My 2^nd Month Selling Online

Towards the end of February, I decided to expand my shop on kaymu to sell in another promising category other than fashion –phones and tablets. Since I didn’t sell phones and tablets, this was made possible by one of my e-Marketing clients who proposed a partnership. I help sell their phones and tablets online through kaymu and earn commissions on every sale.

So because of this collaboration, in March I sold one Blackberry Z10, an iPad4 and a Tommy Hilfiger shoe for a total of N223,000. Not bad huh?

My 3^rd Month Selling Online

April was the best month ever, all of the marketing initiatives where falling into place and people were becoming more confident in the brand due to the number of successful deliveries and safe transactions recorded. So in April, I sold 7 Smart phones and 5 male shoes for a total of N613,547!

The total?

February – N3000

March – N223,000

April – N613,547

Total = N839,547

Why It Pays To Sell Online

• Besides the number one obvious fact that you get to reach a whole lot more people through an online shop, the most significant reason for me is the 24hrs 7days a week operational nature of an online shop. There’s practically no closing time online, you can be making sales while you sleep!

• Reducing overhead costs is one other reason why selling online is so super smart. You don’t have to bother about shop space, on the internet there’s unlimited shelf space. The amount of items you can sell is unlimited. As you just saw me explain, I expanded from just selling male shoes to selling smart phones and tablets and it didn’t cost me additional rent!

• And my personal favorite, growing your brand has never been easier. Online you connect with millions of people you would never have been able to sell to offline. And the bonus part, they become your customers as well not just kaymu’s customers because they buy from you directly not from kaymu.

• Safe transactions is another advantage you get by selling on kaymu. Unlike other free classified sites, kaymu is much more than a free classified site. It is an actual e-Shopping mall where you can buy from so many trusted retailers who have physical shops offline. On Kaymu, you are buying from real businesses not just some random individual who has something to dispose.

Over to you

You’ve read my story and as many naijapreneur readers have come to know me for, I hardly share what I haven’t personally applied. My own approach to marketing is simple; “don’t tell people what you will do, show them what you’ve done. Why? Because results sell faster than words!”

If this isn’t sufficient prove that Nigeria is in the early days of a heavy eCommerce boom, then you can choose to ignore this article. But if you are among the few wise ones, you will get in now while many are still contemplating and begin to reap the rewards of selling online. Here’s an invitation, click here to start!

PS.

If you need help getting started with e-Commerce, send me an email with the subject “e-Commerce coaching”. I will be putting together a workshop very soon that will help crack the e-Commerce code and only the first 20 people who send me this email will get a 20% discount on the workshop fee!