Hello! Who are you and what product are you building?
Hey, my name is Jeremy Ikwuje. I run Monierate.com with my cofounder, Olayinka Omoniyi. We make it easy for anyone sending money to Nigeria or trading currencies to compare the best exchange rate in the market.
Our current goal is to become the go-to platform for comparing African currency prices.
The majority of our users are Nigerians living at home and abroad. Each uses the platform for different reasons. Those living abroad may use the platform to check for the best rate before sending money back home. Others visit the platform to compare the available rates for buying or selling their stable coins (USDT) across various exchanges. And some may want to stay current with the current exchange rate information.
How did you come up with the idea for this product, and what problem were you aiming to solve?
I live in Nigeria. Since 2021, each time I want to make payments online, I need to exchange my local currency for dollars or crypto due to a restriction placed on Naira debit cards. This restriction was placed by the Central Bank of Nigeria.
So if you live in Nigeria, to make payment online you would need dollars or Bitcoin. This requires you to stay up to date with the current exchange rates.
I was always opening different exchanges to compare rates. If I don't do this I may likely be paying more for a dollar and that means relatively getting less dollar. In Nigeria, the difference in exchange rate between two financial services can be as high as 10%. So if you bought $1,000, you likely paid for $1,100, and you will only notice this difference if you take your time to compare.
However, opening different platforms to compare rates is time-consuming and mentally not desirable for me. So I wished there was a central platform where I could easily see and compare the rates of each of these platforms.
That was how I decided to build monierate.com to make it easy for Nigerians to compare the best exchange rates. This is similar to Monito, and Wise Compare, but with a focus on the African market.
Give us a step-by-step process on how you built the first version of your product.
Programming is among my hobbies. And I think I'm good at it. As a programmer, I love to build products to solve some of my problems.
So the first thing I did was research all my favourite fintech apps offering NGN to USD conversion to see if they have an API to get their exchange rates. Luckily enough; some of them do have an API; and within a weekend I wrote some scripts to get and store the exchange rates of these apps.
In the beginning, I was the only one using it, and I technically used it via a developer tool called Postman.
But after a while, I felt I should put it up online since it was really helpful. Who knows, people may like it, and I can grow it if they do.
However, before putting it up online, I ensured I was building something people wanted.
So I quickly built the simple user interface with Sveltekit. The backend was TypeScript. And that was it; I deployed the initial API server on Render and the front end on Netlify free.
How did you launch the product?
I knew from day one growth would come majorly from two sources: SEO and Referral (or Direct) visits.
People are either going to come to the site via Google or clicking the link directly from friends or typing it on their browsers.
So I do not need to make a loud announcement; I couldn't because I don't have a decent following online except for my network of friends and a few communities on WhatsApp I'm on.
I just began letting my friends know about the new site. First I posted on my WhatsApp status; then I made a list of friends and sent them a personal message. Some of my friends like it and they began to repost and share with their friends and community also. My cofounder, Olayinka saw it; took it seriously and became my cofounder.
The first week; the site had about 100 visitors. I was excited.
Many people who found the site sent it to their friends and I was getting some messages from friends saying they love the website.
That gave me the courage to keep working on it.
How did you land your first customers?
So with a cofounder at hand; we decided to split the work. I will focus on building this thing to a good point and he will focus on design and business.
Luckily for us; a mutual friend posted it on his status and one of the guys building a crypto app called Cash-In saw it and reached out to us to list their exchange rate among others on our site. We charged them $60 for the platform rate listing and $20 for a sponsored blog post.
That was how we landed our first revenue.
How have you grown your business so far?
Growth for us is web page traffic - the number of people who visit the website monthly.
As I wrote earlier, SEO and referrals have been the two major channels we have relied on for traffic on the website.
In May 2024, almost a year since we launched, we recorded 200K monthly page views. And about 40% of those traffic came from Google.
If you make something people want, and you tell Google about it, they will show it to people who need it and these people will tell other people, and then it spreads gradually.
We began experimenting on social media this year, although we are still passive about it. We do not see social media as a medium of traffic but as media just as a website or newsletter is. So our experiment isn't to bring people to our website but to grow our social engagement.
Give us a breakdown of your revenue and financials.
In 2023 (from May when we launched to December, we made $200 in total revenue. Last year (2024) we made about $6,500.
On average, the website currently makes about $700 per month. Much of this revenue comes from strategic sponsorship and platform rate listing. We tried Google Ads but we had to remove it because it takes a lot of real estate to make a good amount.
We run a very lean team. We spend less than what we make and reserve the rest in Bitcoin.
In the future, we plan to add more revenue streams through horizontal product offers and services.
What does the future look like?
The next 1/3 years look normal. We have a list of things we want to add and improve in the product. In the next 12 to 18 months we aim to achieve $5K / month. We do not like to be ambitious with this product, as we do not need to get rich through it, the goal for monierate.com is to make it a self-sustaining implementation and exit it for a new owner.
Three most important things you have learned that have been helpful to you since launching this product?
First, you want to start by making things people want. You can do this by or a combination of the following:
- Make things people are searching for
- Make things people are paying for
- Make things people are spending time on
The next is to tell people about it and get the word out there as much as you can, one moment at a time. This is where things get boring or interesting for most builders. It can get boring if people are not converting; or get interesting if they love what you are doing. But you do not know until you get the word out as quickly as possible.
Lastly, find a way for money to come in. This is easier if you build a product people are already paying for. For instance, if you build a product to help businesses get more customers, they will pay you (if you charge) not only because they need it but because chances are they are already spending money on marketing.
As the money starts coming in; manage the money well.
The best way to manage money since 2013 is to spend less than you receive and use the rest to buy Bitcoin. This keeps your product afloat.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to build their own product or already started building?
It takes time to build anything good. If it is worthwhile, it will take a while. Build the things you thought, said, or wrote that you are going to build. The earlier the better.
I built my first product at 19, and I will still be building at 79.
God's grace.
It doesn't matter much how old you are, you can build your own thing and let other people use it. For money or moment.
Where can we go to learn more?
You can visit our website www.monierate.com to learn more about our product. Also, I’m on X, you can connect with me there.
Thanks.