Tell us about yourself
My name is Ogbonna Ohakwe,I schooled in Nigeria. I had to do everything myself. I came from family of four. I am passionate about technology, building startups, businesses. I love creativity and I love people who try to help the community around them. I like people who try to fight unemployment in Nigeria. They help people earn money either through salary or commission.
What are you currently working on?
As it is now, I have couple of things I’m working on and what I intend to do is to use my little startup to empower Nigerians and Africans so that they can earn extra income online and also help their daily activities when it comes to online payments. The name of my company is Bigtink Digital Creation which has other subsidiaries. The one I started before helps Nigerians to buy data online, which is InstantTopUp, I just launched mobile app on playstore and the one I started this year is called SellPass which was launched in January with my team members (Kelvin and Chioma). SellPass is a digital course hosting and an affiliate marketing platform where people in any field can post/host their digital courses to reach more people across the world and we have affiliates who sign up and start selling those products. The next thing I’m working on is a payment system unlike Payday, Opay…. That will help people get a US bank account and help people get a virtual card so that they can be able to pay online anywhere they are in the world. SellPass is progressing, a lot of people earn from it daily by selling products and we pay our affiliates and vendors twice a week.
Fantastic. What motivated you to start SellPass?
The first thing that motivated me is hunger for success. Growing up in a middle class family is not an easy thing. I was already doing something online and I saw that there was a huge problem that people are facing in Nigeria like lack of Jobs and low salary payment. So, I thought of what I could do to help people and for them to earn extra income online. SellPass is not only for Nigerians. The whole world can earn from there and people can bring their products and sell and make money.
Worth reading: How Tobi Is Building CDcare: A Startup That Helps Africans Easily Pay in Bits For Their Needs in a Way That Suits Their Lifestyle.
Another reason for building SellPass is to help people around me and in my community because the government can’t do anything for us. We need to help ourselves and be profitable. I have two teams in SellPass, we discuss about growth and how we can help people.
We have about 7,000 people who has subscribed to SellPass and we’ve been able to help Nigerians and Africans to make money using the digital world.
This is incredible. What has worked for you to attract customers and retain customers? What have you done specially to attract people?
The market space is very brutal. If you sleep you will not get a share in the market space. We have lots of competitors both in Nigeria and outside Nigeria. One thing that makes us unique is that we allow Non Nigerians to access our platform. We have two unique selling points, the first thing is accessibility worldwide. SellPass is accessible anywhere you are. We have four payment systems. The second thing is that we pay twice a week. Most of the affiliates in the market system pay once in a week. Most of our affiliates are making close to $600 to $5,000 monthly and it’s still growing. In marketing you need to strategize and be brutal. The market is not stable and what we try to do is to help people make money wherever they are.
Since you launched, what is your revenue like the revenue that you’ve transacted so far?
We started making sales even before launch. Our income kept on growing and we have close to $10,000 to over $50,000 on revenue, product sales and affiliate commission. The revenue kept on growing. We have two platforms one is the digital marketing platform the second one is the course hosting platform. The revenue comes from different angles.
I want you to explain how your platform SellPass works.
How SellPass work is extremely very easy. So far as you can read and understand English language. Very soon SellPass will be translated into many languages because we want to help people around the world to make money.
There are different ways in which SellPass can be used. For example, we have people who have skills, who are experts in their fields, people who have different products that people also need, but they have problem selling it online or getting it in front of people online, that is when SellPass comes in. We have a simple system where such people can follow and get they products listed on SellPass marketplace and our high performing affiliates can help them sell it and they start to make money. While at the other hand, people make money by selling products we have inside our marketplace as affiliate.
SellPass is not totally free; it is a premium platform where you pay an amount of #10,000 yearly to register on the platform to become an affiliate. There is also a course on our platform that helps a beginner that doesn’t know anything about internet marketing or how internet business works. It’s a beginner to pro course that helps those that wants to go into affiliate marketing, internet marketing, Facebook advertising, Instagram advertising. Also, whenyou register on SellPass there is a community on Telegram where you can ask various questions.
SellPass is not a get rich quick scheme, is not a crypto currency investment platform or a trading platform, which means, you can’t register on SellPass and money will start coming to you. You have to sell something (a product) to be able to make money using SellPass.
This is amazing. I want to ask Ogbonna, how do you fund SellPass?
Its personal funding. We are three founders at SellPass, we raised some funds within ourselves to build the platform to this stage and what we are trying to do next to build a platform that will help people make even more money online from the next update and the things we are building on the platform.
Awesome. Where do you see SellPass in the next 5yeas?
Okay, Firstly, i want to raise millionaires in Nigeria and Africa. In the next five years I believe there will be a lot of competition in the market space what I think will help us scale through. We will be able to raise close to 100,000 millionaires across the world. Another new technology will come up that will challenge the market and I believe that SellPass will be able to withstand the challenges.
What is your greatest business achievement that you’ve had till date?
My biggest business achievement so far is my first e-commerce startup. When I launched, I didn’t expect many users to come up. We had about 500-600 users in the first two weeks. I see great potential in the aspect of eCommerce and FinTech. I have spoken to lots of people, organized seminars, gone for seminars to teach people about internet business and how to use it to make money.
Incredible. What are some of the most influential book that you’ve read or podcasts that you’ve listened to?
In my library I have close to 100 books and my favorite is Brian Tracy, everything I’ve learnt about marketing is by Brian Tracy. He is my mentor. I’ve read some books by Brian Tracy like The art of selling, Focus, Vocal Points, Goals, Excuses. I listen to a Podcast daily called Seven Good Minute where I learn about finance, how to make money and a lot of things. I have watched several videos but there is particular one called Impossible is nothing by Obong King, that video is everything.
