Inspiration
There are 34million unemployed Nigerians. 67% of Nigerians live below the poverty line. When government and organizations try to solve these problems, they focus on areas like Agriculture and vocational skills. The youths end up acquiring skills but when it comes to time for them to monetize the skills they struggle to find capital to acquire the tools/resources needed because SME financing is not accessible in Nigeria. As a result, I wanted to find a way to help young Nigerians generate enough (additional) income using easily accessible tools/resources such as smartphones, to get them across the poverty line?
What it does
TNC Stories lets users read addictive 5-minute stories made up of short text messages. Text messages appear every time you tap on your phone screen and the messages form a story. Users can create stories and earn money when others read them. Users can also engage by leaving comments and reacting to stories with emoji. Stories are available in several categories such as humour, horror, drama and others.
How I built it
As an experienced UI/UX developer, I needed to collaborate with a developer I could trust and so I reached out to my friend and together we worked to build the solution.
Challenges I ran into
There were several issues but the particular one that stuck out was how to build the logic that apportions money to users when others read their stories. We needed to get it right so it was fair to everyone.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
5,000+ downloads with 4,200 active users. 6.5 minutes average session duration per user, over $1,200 paid out to users and featured 3 times on top trending list for Nigeria in the Google Play store. All of this was achieved in less than 6 months.
What I learned
I've learned the importance of putting your work through rigorous testing. It might seem tough or unnecessary at the time but it definitely helps in the long term.
What's next for TNC Stories
Next step for us is to complete our pilot by the end of this year and roll out the full application with even more features allowing users to earn more money and hopefully, we can even help more people.
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