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Lots of people want to come into Business Today by exploring the influencer route and they don't really think about what it is that it it takes to get there. That's one of the reasons why in the last couple of weeks, maybe the last 2-3 weeks, I'm sure you guys have noticed that I've been putting out a lot of content saying that if you're going to get into the business game, then perhaps the influencer route is not the easiest route that you should take.
Now, the reason why I'm making today's recording, by the way, forgive me, you know, I'm making today's recording out and about and then I don't have my fancy new microphone, so I'm just using, I'm just recording directly into my phone. So, you know, there's going to be a lot more noise than usual spilling it, spilling into the recording. Oh, by the way, for those of you just listening for the first time, my name is Tavishma Ayedi,
former lawyer turned business consultant. And over here on the podcast, I like to solve business problems. So that's what I do here almost every other day. And today we're looking at the question of why coming into business doing the influencer route perhaps might not be the best option for you if you're coming into this space brand new. So excuse me. So let's see. OK, regular listeners of the podcast might remember the time in, I think this was definitely over a year ago and it was something that I did with this business incubation, this incubation hub.
Incubation hub, what was it called again? Avon, Avon incubation hub based in Abuja. Now at the time that I did this event, Avon was an incubation hub, but now they have since changed the business model. Now they are primarily a Co working space. I mean, they've always had the Co working space, but now that's their primary thing. And then the offshore talent for foreign companies, foreign companies abroad, you know, America, UK who are looking for remote talent based in Nigeria to work for them.
So if you're thinking of making some extra change, you know, this is 1 avenue that is available to you if you have skills and if you have time, there are businesses in Nigeria that are thinking that we have access to talent. And there are some people who don't mind working for, you know, $500 a $1000 because you know, now that you know, an IRA is crap. So even if somebody they raise you just $500 every month, by the time you take you do the multiplication, you know that $500 is going to make sense.
So that's exactly what they're playing on. So, you know, 500 dollars, 600 dollars, $1000, you know, blah, blah, blah. That's how some people make make a living. In fact, I have heard, I don't know the guy direct, but one of the guys that I was trying to get ATV show through was talking about how his neighbors that that's and that's how they live basically I think is 222-2000 dollars or something like that. That's how much they earn.
So remote work to $2000, multiply it by Niger currency and you can see that nothing kind of makes sense anyway. So back then, Yvonne was a business, a business tech hub and an incubation hub. So people who wanted to start out in business would go there and then resource people like myself would come and give sessions on all kinds of things relating to sales, to marketing, to branding, to tech support, to business planning, to, you know,
you know what, all those sorts of things. By the way, my own specialty is sales. So I didn't talk about any of that other stuff. Now, there was one lady in the class, let's just call her Oniega Owen, not her real name by the way, but I say Onyeka Awendo because the girl and her sister, actually, when you look at two of them, they just like they just as in when you see them, you get Onyeka vibes, if you understand what I'm saying.
That's for those of us Nigerians who are old enough to remember Onyeka Awendo, the elegant stallion, a pop musician who did songs like One Love and Yo Go Go, Yo Go, Yo Go Go. I ain't can I Bishop, You know that that song, any basically let me not sing it again because every time I sing that song, my wife just she rolls her eyes. She's like, can you please stop destroying my my, my mother's language because my wife is hafibo.
So yeah, that Onyeka Owino. So these girls, my class when I was talking to Abuja based businesswomen on marketing. Yeah. So the two sisters gave me Onyeka vibes. So one of them was going to come into wasn't quite sure about what she wanted her business to be, but she was making, she wanted to come into business doing the influencer route. And I remember at the time telling her that, you know, was difficult. Apart from the difficulties involved.
There's a lot of time that is involved in cultivating an audience because I've said it time and time again. But let me say for those of you who are listening for the first time, if you want to hammer as an influencer, the way that you're going to do that is you're going to cultivate an audience. And you have to cultivate a sizable audience because these platforms have very high thresholds before you can monetize. Let me give you an example.
I don't know the thresholds, but let me just give you an example. Currently, I have about 4300 and something subscribers on Spotify. And guess what? I have not hit the threshold for monetization. Let me repeat for those of you who are thinking I will monetize my audience no problem. I have over 4000 subscribers on Spotify and the last time I checked, I am not even close to the threshold for monetizing. So just bear that in mind when you will say, oh, I'll create an audience and I'll begin to monetize.
So Spotify high threshold, YouTube high threshold as in everybody the threshold day high. So stop thinking that you're going to start putting out content today, in March of 2026 and then another 3-4 months. You go don't blow, you go no hammer because you've amassed an audience. In fact, that's the reason why in the older episode, I did, I think I made the episode maybe 2 days ago when I was talking about FA Carta, the Nigerian stream FA Carta and then his boy, what's his boy's name again, I can't remember.
Anyway, so just go listen to that episode and you see what I'm talking about. Because for him, it also was a long, long period as well. So you the, the thresholds are very, very high. That's number one. Then #2 the conversions are very, very small. So like when people typically typically send out e-mail campaigns, the conversions that they expect are between 0 and 3%. Now what that means is for somebody who wants to do e-mail marketing every time, then they blast e-mail.
You just send e-mail out like that between zero and three. People out of 100 are those who will take the next step or who will end up buying. Let me repeat conversions. Average conversions nowadays are between zero to 3% on e-mail. So in the influencer space, I don't know what the exact figures are, but just know that it's very, very low. So even for somebody like me that has an audience of 4300 and something, it does not mean that every single time I release a product and I say bye, it does not mean that 10% of people will buy, meaning I'll get 400
orders. It doesn't work like that. Conversions are very, very, very low. Now, these are some of the reasons why for those of you coming into business, you want to pick the influencer out. You are picking a very, very hard route to get into this space anyway. So I said all the things that I had to say for those ladies, Abuja based business women that we did the session on marketing through Avon Incubation Hub or at least it used to be an incubation hub at the time.
So also one more thing, production value. Now a lot of you who want to create content nowadays, you guys focus on very, very high production value. What that means is you guys want your audio to sound right, you want your videos to look right, you want your photos to be you know colored right, composed right, everything you want everything to look professional. Now you guys are starting with a very, very high bar and it is too much of A high bar to start off your business journey with because when you want to make things that are of high production value, it takes a lot of time or it takes a lot of money.
Now for this particular lady in particular shows dropping stuff on YouTube and she wanted high production value. So what that meant was she either had to edit this thing by herself or go and pay somebody, I think at the time like 10K. I'll be like 15 K to edit every single video. Now ladies and gentlemen, let's run the math. You say you want blue Abbey, You want to be an influencer? No problem, YouTube is your ticket, Abbey.
No problem. You want to be paying somebody 10K per video? OK, how many videos do you think you're going to have to drop on a weekly or on a monthly before you amass an audience? Run the mouth in your head. How long is this thing going to be sustainable for now, luckily for this young lady at the time, she never marry her and her sister to today. You know she never marry no problem. So any money where she did drop is not going to be coming from a place of you know, you know,
it's not going to be picking school fees, it's not going to be diapers, it's not going to be, you know, stuff like that. But even as a single lady, to be dropping 2020303040405050K every single week on top say you won't become influencer, how these are some of the questions that you need to ask yourself. Anyway, I told her at the time that look, babe, the way you're going about this, you pick the hard route. And to be honest, I foresee you're going to give up and you know, show us full of vim vigor that know that she's here in the game that she will make up.
She will make us all right, no problem. So lo and behold, I'm chatting with her a couple of days ago. I'm like, hey, what's up, Happy New year, how you been, blah, blah, blah. You know, that kind of talks. What's up now? I found the YouTube thing and unfortunately she don't give up. She don't crash, she don't crash out of the game. So also, what are you up to? Oh yeah, I'm back to medical practice, you know, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah. And this is one thing that I want to stress for you guys listening here today because sometimes there's some of us talk. You will feel as if you know when they try, you know, tarnish your horseshoe or they try key. Our dreams no be so. Some of us in this game, we have a wealth of experience and we see some patterns and we see some things happen. That's the reason why we're able to drop some insight. Sometimes you can see the future before you do.
And also speaking is just a very simple something. Nigeria is harsh, all right. Nigeria is harsh. The economy is not smiling. This tenable economy is not friendly for anybody. If you want to be an influencer and you want to be doing this high production value thing, you're going to have to do this for a long time and it's going to involve either a lot of time or a lot of money before you blow. And the honest, the truth of matter is you can't keep involving, say involving.
You can't keep investing hours upon hours upon hours in creating content. Meanwhile, you know they see any positive return. Now, when I say positive return, I don't mean audience. I mean in terms of naira and Kobo, our parents mean well. But how long will your popsy be comfortable that you didn't say house? You do record video. You do record video. You do record video. 8 months, 10 months, 12 months, 2 1/2 years. They never see anything tangible.
I hope you guys can see what I'm saying. Was the only lady OK? No problem. You know you're still popsy, so popsy you know will chase you. But then you know, upkeep day involved now, upkeep flexing, moving up and down and they just got a bomb money on top beauty YouTube videos. As in for how long? For how long? So I'm not a prophet, but I saw the end from the beginning because I just ran the math. So for those of you who are thinking of coming into the business space, you want to use the influencer route, I beg run the math.
It's a very simple thing. Even the good book says it. Who starts to build a house without stopping to check first whether they have enough resources to finish or else they will start, they will hook and then people go begin, they laugh them and say, see, they started to build. They did not have enough money to finish. So it's a very, very simple something. So on this podcast, when I talk about getting into the business space by learning how to trade or learning how to sell a service, I'm not trying to cramp your dreams.
I'm just being realistic here. I've want to get into this game. We need to pick the route where we can start seeing some small naira and cobo, you know, quick, quick, quick and some simple traction. The influencer route is hard. If you want to go that round, fine, no problem. Just make sure you budget the time or budget the money that will be required to get you there. For those of you who are listening to this name brand new, after you don't listen to this episode, skip back two or three episodes.
Listen to the episode that I made about the Nigerian Twitch super influencer FA Carter. Don't listen to the episode on FA Carter and you will hear from another person's mouth what is involved. I'm not an influencer, so maybe you say what I'm saying, you know, I don't have the experience. No problem. Go and listen to the people who have the experience. Go and listen. You hear from them live about what was involved. So budget at the time or budget the money.
Now I'm making today's episode because I don't want any of you to reach out to me. We have a chat. I tell you what's up, what's involved and you say no, I will do it. Now I go make up, I'm a grinder there also no problem. And then in the end I say hey, what's up man? How you doing now, your Twitch channel and how far? And then you say, bro, I don't want you guys to be in that situation. So please take stock. Take stock from the beginning before you begin.
Those of you who want to be an influencer, I understand it looks all nice. It looks all cool, looks all cosy. People listening to your podcasts, people watching your videos, you know, walking around feeling like a celebrity, but you know, nobody. So it takes a while to build. So think hard, think fast before you begin. Now, if you want to be in touch with me, just like the Onyeka, the Onyeka window again, not her real name, the Onyeka.
You know, sisters. If you want to be in touch just like they were, then you can call me. Send me a text message or a WhatsApp message on 08064662140. You have questions about business, reach out. Let's have a chat. Yeah. So that's it. Thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you all some other time.