How to make your internet café profitable always.

Patronage of internet cafés has dropped drastically recently. This is mainly due to the fact that customers can now conveniently do their browsing in the comfort of their homes. With the drop in the price of smart phones brought about by the entry into the market of Chinese, Indian and other low priced smart phones in the market.

One of the main revenue driving activity of the internet café is the use of facebook. Now most people can use their smart phones to access and use facebook without going to the café.,

Another reason for low internet café patronage is the affordability of printers. People can now buy small HP, 3 in one printers for use at home, eliminating the need to visit an internet café.

So with all these factors working against the café owner, what other ways can the owner turn to in order to remain profitable.

Provide other services you will normally not find in a café. There are many of these services that can make your café even more profitable than just provision of internet access. Some of these are; 

a)      Sell scratch cards. There are many exam scratch cards that are for sale now. If you can find a cheap source for buying these cards you could make a lot of money selling them to students who need them. There are WAEC, NECO, JAMB, NABTEB etc cards. If you can sustain these card selling aspect of the business, your café will very soon be known to be a reliable place for purchase of exam scratch cards.

b)      Become an agent for some other companies. For example, you could be an agent for mobile money companies like PAGATECH LTD, EKO BANK PLC, GTBANK PLC etc. being an agent allows you to provide subscription services like DSTV, STARTIMES TV, GOTV etc.

c)       You can also sell scratch cards for companies that are colaborating with the various Electricity Provision Companies in Nigeria. 

d)      Provide instant passport photograph. This is one type of business that is very easy to operate. All you need do is buy the passport machine, learn how to use it and you are good to go. One of the more popular instant passport  machines is the HITI machine. Which goes for about N30,000.00 .

e)      Provide bulk sms service. This is one service that most cafes do not offer. So when you exel at this service, your café will be the go  to place for bulk sms. The bulk sms service is useful for mass informing a lot of people when there is a coming wedding or birthday celebration. Also political parties could use it to run cheap multiple campaigns to the electorate.

f)       One service that is mostly overlooked for an internet café business is the sale of stationeries. When running a cyber café, you will have people coming to ask for things like envelopes, files, rims of A4 paper etc. if you can manage your stock of these items, your café could become a primary place purchase of these stationeries.

  

These are some of the services you could provide to make your internet café more profitable in these trying times for cyber cafes. One other benefit that your café gets for providing these services is the flow of traffic into your café. With this flow, more people get to know your café and you will find that the