I have received many feedbacks on the ‘Getting paid” post from the community. After scanning few, the questions are along this line – “How do you position to get people/firms to pay for those services?” This is my answer: to get people to pay you, make them to see a business and not you (the person). If you can structure to have that distinction, between you and the business, you will get paid.
See it this way: if your landlord calls you to come and fix his computer, he expects you to do it free. Yes, the same landlord that collects rents from you and never gives you waivers. But your computer skill is free and should be accessed for free. (Get the context, I am not saying you should not help people or support your community). But if that landlord contacts a company for the same job, he will expect to pay for that service.
Personally, I have a non-profit, African Institution of Technology, which has a decent annual budget to do many things in African universities. Everything we do there is FREE. Simply, I advocate that you have a mindset to support communities and not just live on packing more money. Yet, it is important to know when you need that payment to actually make it happen.
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To move from You to a company in Nigeria, all you need is a Business Name. It costs N5,000 (last quarter, government did bonanza by cutting it from N10k to N5K for Business Name registration). With a Business Name, you can position your service as coming from a company to get people to open their wallets to pay you. But when you parade all as YOU (the person), you will run out of luck.
Develop a strategy around this and work on it. What you are doing already is work. It does not have to be within NNPC or Dangote Group or Federal Ministry of Finance to be called work. Just ask to be paid when you want to be paid! Good luck.
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