Birth and Death of Bulk SMS Business in Nigeria

Birth and Death of Bulk SMS Business in Nigeria

Bulk SMS business experience its birth in 2012, and experience it diminishing return in 2015-16, a lot of factors contributed to the birth and death of the business which nobody can blame anybody for it. This should serves as a learning point for anybody who wishes to go into any online business most especially any business promoted beyond the value. I believe Nigerian are smart set of people who always jump on the bandwagon of opportunities from whatever and wherever it is being presented to us. but we should also be cautious of jumping into bad businesses and investment opportunity or too good to be good opportunity. My experience learn from all years of developing various SMS solution has helped forged my new business model for a bulk SMS business and led to the creation of my own SMS solution meant for Personal and Business SMS needs at https://www.sms2profit.com

I launched this simple website (https://www.sms2profit.com) in October 2016 (Almost a Year), the product started as a side project in 2012 when everyone was going into the bulk SMS business. I developed my own custom bulk SMS plugin for a WordPress site which was a request from a client to help build a bulk SMS portal. The System was deployed but like most bulk SMS business of 2012, it never survived its second year. I shared the SMS sending code on my github page, and ever since then their has continuous call in for support or modification to the code.

Cause of Death of Bulk SMS Business

The gold rush of bulk SMS business ended in 2014 precisely, The major cause of demise of most bulk SMS business of then is that they violated the simple rule of Nature “Always Survived”, among the major cause of the death of the business are listed below:

1.  Lack of Know How: most of the people who went into the business just want to send bulk SMS and make some money without understanding the nature of the business (maybe they don’t care) 
2. Easy Market Entrance: Thanks to SMS Portal Creator (SPC) vendor who develop a solution that makes it easy and cheaper for anyone to float a SMS Portal in less than 24hrs and without drilling hole into their bank account. This lead to the proliferation of the business (All you need to do is install Joomla, buy the software and you are in business), and eventually lead to the next point 
3. Tough Competition: Since their is no regulator of entrance, or state law forbidden anyone in starting online business in this country (I think its high time our law maker look into this, I am willing to be part of the contributor to this)  this lead to a high competition in the market this lead to the death of most of this business (Supply out-weight supply), most SMS consumers like Churches were able to float their own SMS service meaning they don’t require the service of the small operators, their was competition of price and this eventually lead to poor services, Customers lost trust in SMS service providers. 
4. Lack of Technical Know How: Most owners of this bulk SMS portal lack the technical know how of this business, most only have background in checking email and using Word Process Software, just few even understand how the internet and the world wide web actually works (I don’t blame them though, we geeks need them as business partner) so immediately their is any technical issue they consults with their software vendor which I believe have a great tech support service. But some problem might be as a result of server configuration, CMS (Joomla), other components and plugins being used, or even users errors. They will definitely require the service of an expert, which most cannot afford except those married to a web developer (Not Sure). I charge from 15,000-20,000 Naira upward to help install and configure WordPress using ready made plugins and theme. Creating a custom extension for the system is another ball game entirely, which entails complete charges entirely. 
5. Black Box Solution: SPC is a proprietary solution and with legal agreement between the software creator and users which limits the users from altering the base code, unlike free and open source solution which mostly gives you unending opportunity to extend the base code to the extent of  your imagination. This created limitation too to the software developer who has the capability to extend it too.

Although their are still lots of bulk SMS portal out their still doing fine, and many more kept springing up everyday. But the rate of springing up has drop drastically, instead of focusing on selling bulk SMS. I floated a solution that help businesses do more with bulk SMS. If you are considering running a SMS marketing campaign, SMS voting, two way SMS service, to generation & distribution Marketing Coupon Code. The aim is to help business promote their business with bulk SMS, although it was started as a Nano Start-up, it’s fast growing beyond a Nano Start-up (Although I still operate it in the start-up domain).