I Made More From One Product Sale Than 2 Years of Client Work

My friend called with an idea.

"Guy, I'm thinking of building an app where people can request money from friends or strangers. Like for giveaways and gifts and stuff. What you think?"

We spent two hours on that call. I broke down how peer-to-peer payments work in Nigeria. Suggested features that would make it sticky - the social aspect, the giveaway angle, how to make it fun instead of transactional. Told him what would resonate with Nigerian users and what wouldn't.

"Thanks man. This really helped."

A few months later, I saw his launch post. Abeg app was live. The interface was clean. The features were smart. I recognized some of the tweaks I'd suggested during our call.

About a month after launch, the announcement dropped. Abeg was sponsoring Big Brother Naija 2021 as the headline sponsor. ₦2 billion deal. I watched the app explode from a few thousand users to 2 million during that one season. PiggyVest had acquired them before the show even started, and the app eventually became Pocket by PiggyVest. It's still running today.

That same month, I was building my fifth website for a client. ₦350,000 project. Good money by freelance standards, and the client was happy with the work.

But I kept thinking about that phone call. I'd spent two hours giving detailed advice on building a product that ended up with a ₦2 billion sponsorship deal. Meanwhile, I was charging ₦350,000 to build websites.

I've tried building my own products over the years. LetsFarm was an agritech investment platform that COVID killed. Finmex was a crypto exchange I spent six months on before abandoning it. I actually sold FeedCoyote and an edtech platform, which felt good. LetsBet and LetsEat - a betting site and food delivery app - never made it past the planning stage.

The pattern was always the same. I'd start building them when client work slowed down. When the pipeline was empty and I had time to think about my own ideas.

Finmex was 2017. Crypto was exploding everywhere. Binance had just done their ICO and the market was going crazy. I figured if I built an exchange, people would come use it.

I started with the trading interface and it looked good. Then I realized I needed order matching systems, so I built that. Then wallet infrastructure became necessary. Then custody solutions. Then KYC systems. Then I needed to figure out liquidity providers. Every single feature I finished revealed ten more features I hadn't even thought about.

Six months passed and I was still building. No revenue was coming in from it. Meanwhile, clients kept calling with actual paid projects. The exchange sat there half-finished, consuming my nights and weekends while I handled paying work during the day.

Eventually I stopped working on it. Not because finishing it was impossible - I probably could have done it given enough time. The problem was simpler than that. I had clients paying me actual money right now, and the exchange was this uncertain thing that might make money at some undefined point in the future.

Money today always wins against money maybe-later.

FeedCoyote worked out differently. I actually finished building it, launched it, and got some real users. About a year after launch, I sold it. That single sale brought in more than two years of client revenue. Two full years of managing website projects, dealing with clients changing their minds mid-project, chasing down payments, and handling revision after revision.

All that work across 24 months made me less than I got from selling one product I'd built mostly on weekends.

The problem is how the decision feels in the moment. A client calls and says they need a website. They'll pay ₦350,000, with half upfront. That money hits my account this week. I can pay my team on Friday. Cover office expenses. Sleep well knowing the bills are handled.

Compare that to a product idea. That's six months of building, minimum. Maybe people want it when it's done. Maybe they're willing to pay for it. Maybe it makes good money eventually. Maybe it just becomes another LetsBet - something that seemed like a good idea but never went anywhere.

Saying no to ₦350,000 landing in your account this week is really difficult when the alternative is spending months building something that might never pay you anything.

So I keep saying yes to client work. I tell myself I'll focus on products when things slow down, when I have more time, when the agency is more stable. What that actually means is that products only get attention during the gaps. The slow periods. The in-between times when I'm not serving clients.

Clients get my best time and energy because they're the ones paying right now. Products get whatever's left over, which usually isn't much.

My friend's app went from that two-hour phone call to a ₦2 billion BBN sponsorship to being acquired by one of Nigeria's biggest fintech companies. He owns real equity in something that's still growing and making money.

I have a portfolio of websites I'm proud of, a lot of happy clients, and a folder somewhere on my laptop with half-finished product ideas that I'll probably never go back to.

Next: The contract that saved me from a client who refused to pay ₦2.5 million.

#ProductBuilding #AgencyLife #Nigerian #Entrepreneurship