Spotlight: Arrey Bate – The Journey Of Cameroon’s Leading Internet Entrepreneur-Cum Journalist
Five years ago, he was a non-techy naïve student at the University of Buea who depended on his parents for a monthly allowance. As with any success story, the journey has been rocky yet Arrey has carved a name for himself on the internet space in Cameroon. Today he has built a following of thousands of entrepreneurs online and has been featured on the BBC, British Council, Fox, NBC, and CBS. He grew famous for his work on social media and for initiating AB Afrikpreneur, a community for entrepreneurs and career starters across Africa.
Among several achievements, Arrey Bate has been listed among the British Council’s top 100 young journalists worldwide, listed among GLC2021 top 100 young leaders from 30 countries, the official winner of the 2021 Global Leadership Challenge by Oxford University and St Gallen Symposium, and written a best-selling internet book.
Whenever he talks about his journey, Arrey has a popular story for dropping out of the University to begin his company ARREYB Media from his student room with a phone and laptop his elder brother gifted him. Right now, his passion is to help entrepreneurs and career starters build themselves and their businesses through his journey and inspiring stories — but has it been a bed of roses all through?
Getting Off On A Rocky Start
The journey started for Arrey in 2017 while he was in his second year of University. At the time he had an around $18/pm feeding allowance he decided to move from–to start a company with his student laptop and a phone which his elder brother gifted him. That was how ARREYB Media was born
As a non-techy naive student with no skills in social media, Arrey said he couldn’t make any money from it in the first year
When the Cameroon Anglophone crisis started in 2017, he was fighting tooth and nail to survive amidst the heavy gunshots, random shootings, and arrests
So each of those days, he needed to feed, make ends meet, and make sure he survived the crisis. ‘’Sometimes the shootings will pause for some hours, and we had to rush out to stock the house with food or basic house groceries. I couldn’t rely on my parents because they lived about 228 kilometres away from me, and if my allowance came, I usually had around $18 (10,000FCFA) a month’’, Arrey Bate said.
When he started to brainstorm, social media seemed like his only hope at the time. He wanted to learn how to fish for himself and find a way to foot bills but the big question was ‘how was he to start?”
That 2017 Arrey dropped out of University and during that time he started a blogging business but it was very hard to get people to advertise on his website or even make a space for banner ads.
Building On The Journey
When Arrey talks about the experience, he shares how he tested many things, and if someone said this will make him money online, he’ll jump on it desperately without a second thought.
Most of the things he tried didn’t work but with all the trial and error, a few of the real secrets that did work started to compound on each other over time. Each new trial helped him to discover another thing which led to another and another.
The experience became one of Arrey’s biggest lessons on his journey–consistency. The biggest piece of advice that Arrey Bate pushes is that for every young entrepreneur and career starter, after picking a journey to focus on, spend the next one thousand hours or one thousand days of your life working and building on that dream consistently. It’s what he later coined in one of his writings ‘The 1,000 Rule’.
That was how he started to find his voice online. With consistency, building on real-time experiences, and investing to learn from others who had gone ahead, Arrey said what seemed completely impossible before (living off his social media), was slowly becoming a reality.
Today ARREYB Media runs a news website www.arreyb.com and a marketing agency called ARREYB Is Marketing www.arreybismarketing.com. ARREYB Is Marketing is currently helping entrepreneurs and small business owners from several countries to generate consistent clients online through Facebook Ads, Instagram ads, Sales Funnels, and email marketing.
Being invited and interviewed live from the BBC headquarters in London, listed among British Council’s top 100 young journalists worldwide in 2019, listed among top GLC2021 100 young leaders from 30 countries, and writing a best-selling internet book in Cameroon has been one of his successes as an Internet entrepreneur since 2017.
This equals several conferences and workshops which Arrey and his team have organized, training more than 2,000 young entrepreneurs and youths–and starting a community for entrepreneurs and career starters across Africa called the AB Afrikpreneur.
Building On The Struggles
Arrey Bate and his team have built a marketing agency called ARREYB Is Marketing but the story behind its creation is the most striking part
ARREYB Is Marketing currently helps entrepreneurs and small business owners from several countries to generate consistent clients online and produce spine-chilling RIO through Facebook Ads, Instagram ads, Sales Funnels, and Email marketing… But how did all this start?
When he was writing his first book ‘How To Make Money, Build Right Relationship On Social Media’, Arrey said 57 copies were pre-ordered before the release date. On the actual day of release, he found out they only sold 7 copies
‘’I nearly went crazy that day. We had actually budgeted for ads and also used at least 7 social media influencers to join the launch. So we were sure to hit hot sales. The book was getting attention online but not making the sales and money that we wanted’’
So the entire month, he tried everything he could to sell more copies but only had a total of 16 copies sold (after the book release). So he quickly hired a friend and asked him to walk him through (on zoom) what they were doing differently at their own business.
‘We made clicks after clicks to our funnel and rebuilt a new sales system for the book from scratch. We set some ads on Facebook and Instagram and saw an almost instant 4X increase in sales that week. I wrote back and thanked him again for holding my hand and showing me this secret’.
The process led Arrey to sell over 3,000+ copies of his book.
But it didn’t just end there!
He tried the same strategy on one of his friend’s businesses and they had huge results which excitedly made him to try another. One of them was a university which he helped get students for the next academic year, another was an academy, and another was a fashion line. All of them had incredible results.
That was how he journeyed into marketing and since then, Arrey and a small team have been helping several entrepreneurs and business owners to generate clients online. Their clients allow them to professionally build their sales funnels, run their Facebook and Instagram ads to bring a flood of sales–while they sit back and collect the orders.
In all the journey, Arrey likens his role in the business to that of a hawk. He commonly says he has a “hawk eye” over his business, tries to stay consistent, and is always on the journey of building and improving himself.
https://www.facebook.com/ArreyBateOfficial/?ref=page_internal
