Helping you pay the bills
Starting on the 27th of July 2009, Wambere and I will launch the Biashara30 learning program where we will work with 10 people and teach them what we know about making money online. The program will be 100% free and will end in a project where the group (or everyone individually) launches a structured internet business.
Are you going to sit there and let this opportunity just pass you by? Why?
More and more moms are now starting their own home-based businesses and we say – good for them!
As the Internet unifies the world, as geographical boundaries disappear,
online money making ideas for work at home moms or WAHMs are on the rise. If you are an educated, talented, experienced professional mother, with at least basic knowledge of using the computer, the Internet is your playground! As more and more women in Kenya open up to the idea of being financially independent, becoming a mother may dampen their plans, albeit temporarily. Staying at home to take care of your child can be a tough decision and one that could have had damaging effects on your career. But now all you mothers can start your own business from the comfort of your home. After all, there are plenty of money making choices for work at home moms online now-a-days.
Online Money making ideas for WAHMs
Freelance Writing – A fantastic way to sell your skills and experience when you want, how you want, and without too much stress. Yes, whether you are good at storytelling, writing informative, research-based content, or simply have a way with word, you can sell your writing skills to people who require them. You can demand your price, choose your delivery period and start earning money. A great place to start is GetAFreelancer, Guru or Elance.
Selling Something? – Do you make crafty things like kiondos, carvings and suchlike? Or do you know where you can get them cheap? Why not sell them online? There’s nothing to lose, you don’t need to be a computer whiz to set up shop. Try etsy .
Graphic Design – Every business require well crafted graphics for promoting and representing their product/service from time to time. Not even businesses, kawa people need posters hata! If you are a skilled hand with graphic designing then this is your best online money making idea. A great
place to start is GetAFreelancer, Guru or Elance.
Virtual Assistant – You used to be a secretary, or receptionist, or personal assistant? Or can you do everyday office administration duties (like filing, reading and responding to emails, etc). How about data entry? You can do it online by becoming a virtual assistant. Have a look
at this site virtualassistants.
Teaching – Are you really good at something? Anything..like singing, dancing, designing, etc, this is the best time to fulfill this dream and then use it to make money online! Yes, if you sing like a nightingale why not start your own singing classes? How about teaching dance to kids and other moms in your neighborhood? Simply send out flyers and advertise in the local media to get started. Better yet, get a website at Nickel Pro and offer online classes – just make a video of yourself teaching and re-use it (read re-sell it) hundreds of times.
It’s important for you to understand that you may make mistakes initially. Don’t get disheartened by these mistakes. However, once you have decided what you want to do, make sure that you organize your life and time accordingly so that you are able to reduce stress and have a more productiveday. After all, planning, organizing, and managing are the 3 cornerstones to any good business and you already know this because you are a smart, intelligent and experience professional woman.
Most people who launch a website with the intent of making money from it usually follow the following set of steps:
This strategy works for hundreds of sites out there. However, it is not the only strategy out there and it is not the easiest or most profitable either.
There are two ways of making money from a website: you can make money from your site or because of your site. Earning from advertising is only one of the many ways to make money from your site. The other ways are probably too many to count but here are some ideas: subscription fees, affiliate marketing, selling goods and services etc.
How can you make money because of your website? Well, I’ll give you an example: Like Chapaa is barely two months old now and it is currently not making me any money directly (nor was it ever meant to) but, believe it or not, I have had people inquiring whether I offer consultancy services…
Do not limit what you do with your website. Especially not to just advertisements. There are so many other things you can do with a website. As we’ve seen, you could earn money in a variety of ways and you can also do any one, or all, of the following:
So far, we’ve had an introduction into the art of making money from domain names. We’ve learnt what domains are, and we went deeper and learnt about domain extensions and saw that choosing the right extension will improve a domain’s value. However, the really valuable part of a domain name is not the extension, it is the second level domain. You may recall my example of sex.com being significantly more valuable than sex.net. The domains, however, derive their value from the word “sex” – which is the second level domain in both cases.
Domain keywords are what make up your second level domain and, indeed, they are key. They account for almost all of any domain’s value.
It is possible for the keywords of a domain to contain absolutely no relevant words and still be valuable (e.g google.com, squidoo.com) but this happens after a lot of time and effort from the domain’s owner(s). Google.com is valuable because of the google brand – on day 1 of its registration, its value to a domainer would have been pretty close to nothing. However, other domains (like sex.com) are valuable from day one. Why? This is because the word making up the domain (e.g. sex) is inherently relevant. It is a key word. Keyword based domains have an inherent value and are much more easier to sell as a domainer.
Successful domainers usually have a portfolio that mostly consists of keyword-oriented domains since these have more obvious value and appeal better to search engines.
Researching Keywords For Your Domains
An easy way to come up with valuable keywords for your domains is to follow trends, seasons, fashion and major events/happenings. For example, many domainers made lots of money by taking advantage of the opportunity presented by Micheal Jackson’s death. Another example: I know of a domainer who quietly buys a portfolio of summer related domains (barbeque, camping, etc) during the cold months and then sells them at a profit when summer finally comes. He lives in the USA though – where this is possible.
Another approach to getting valuable keywords is found in SEO concepts. I mentioned before that domainers have to be SEO-conscious and I repeat it again: as a domainer you have to understand how SEO works. Domain keywords are a huge part of search engine optimisation and should be picked carefully and always with SEO in mind.
Researching search trends is a good way to assess the potential traffic of a domain as well as to get ideas of how valuable that domain could be. The basic idea is simple: analyse search engines like Google and find out what people are searching for (their search terms are your keywords) then develop those keywords into keyword-based domains.
How do you do this? Fortunately, there are several tools available:
Tools To Analyse Search Trends:
Google Trends – With Google Trends, you can compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most.
Google Insights For Search – With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.
Digital Point Keyword Suggestion Tool – This is a handy little tool will show you the results of your query from both Wordtracker and Overture for determining which phrases are searched most often. Enter a search phrase to see how often it’s searched for, as well as get suggestions for alternate (but similar) keywords.
Other tools
Keyword Discovery
WordTracker
NicheBot
Google Keywords
SEOChat SEO Tools
Lycos 50
Generally, keywords that receive a lot of search engine traffic would be more valuable and you therefore want to get those. However, competition should also be put into consideration. For example, if you found a keyword that gets searched only about 25,000 times a month (which is low) but there is hardly any competition, it would be a good keyword to develop a domain (or domains) around. The Adwords Tool is useful in analysing competition.
Getting Your Domain Name
Researching search trends will leave you with a list of keywords. You know want to get a nice, brandable domain name based on these keywords. How do you do it? Well, you can sit down and brainstorm. Or you can use a domain name generator like DomainsBot. Domainsbot allows you to sort domain suggestions based on extension, availability, and by synonyms. It’s a fantastic tool
Other tools:
Nameboy
Domainfellow
Raining Names
E-gineer’s Domainator
SnapItNow
This article is part one of a series of articles that will fully explore making money online from domain names. The other articles in this series are:
1. Introduction
2. Domain Extensions
3. Researching Keywords
4. Domain Name Registration
5. Domain Name Parking
6. Selling Your Domain
Be sure not to miss any of these articles by subscribing to Like Chapaa (free) or signing up to receive free updates by email.
The domain name extension is the tail end of the domain name and is predefined by ICANN. You know, the part that comes after the dot. For example, the .com or .org. Once upon a time, there were just a handful of different domain name extensions to choose from. The choice used to between .com for commercial organizations, .net for network services such as ISPs and .org for non-profit organizations. On a country by country basis, many countries offered domains based on the two-character ISO country codes, such as “.fr” for France, “.ke” for Kenya and so on.
Then the picture became more complicated, with more and more domain names and alternatives springing up until we were left with the mess that is the current domain name industry. And it’s going to get messier with new domains coming in 2010.
It would, however, be unnecessary to go through the history of domain name extensions so I’ll only cover the bare basics. Extensions come in two forms: Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) – which includes .com, .net, .org, .gov and some others; and Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) – like .co.ke, co.uk, .ca etc. Note that a ccTLD is usually worth significantly less than a gTLD.
TLD stands for TOP Level Doman. The .com, for example, is the top/first level. What are the other levels? I’ll illustrate using an example. In www.jobs.problogger.com, the .com is top level, the second level is “problogger” and the third, and final level, called a subdomain, is the “jobs”. Same case for likechapaa.com. The “likechapaa” is the second level domain in this case.
As Domainer, the first and second levels are the only ones you need to worry about. However, there have been rare cases of very valuable third level domains. An example is the massively popular del.icio.us. These are few and far between, though – you can afford to focus on the first and second levels exclusively.
The Value Of domain Name Extensions
Undoubtedly, the .com extension is the most valuable TLD and domains with this extension usually sell like hot cakes and at premium prices. Seventy Eight (78) of top 100 domain sales this year have been .com domains. Another example: sex.net was sold for $450,000/- a couple of years ago. Sex is a very popular word and the sale was a good and tasty one, right? Well, get this, Sex.com sold for $14 Million.
I would say that the domain values are usually like so:
1. .com
2. .org /.net
3. Everything else
Keep in mind that there are a ton more domain extensions (including our own .co.ke) but once you go beyond the gTLDs it is not easy to figure out which domain is actually worth more than the others.
As a domainer, it is important to keep up with what ICANN is up to as the domains industry is largely shaped by ICANN policies. Sometimes, ICANN releases a set of new TLDs and jumping on them could be very lucrative. When the .mobi extension was released, some clever guy registered mortages.mobi and later sold it for a sweet $10,500/- less than a month after that TLD was open for registration. Could this be you some day?
This article is part one of a series of articles that will fully explore making money online from domain names. The other articles in this series are:
1. Introduction
2. Domain Extensions
3. Researching Keywords
4. Domain Name Registration
5. Domain Name Parking
6. Selling Your Domain
Be sure not to miss any of these articles by subscribing to Like Chapaa (free) or signing up to receive free updates by email.
Looking for OLPC News writers. OLPC News is the premier independent community following the One Laptop Per Child project, and we’re seeking Africa-based bloggers to cover XO laptop deployments around the continent, and around the world.
Are you a Relationship expert? Examiner.com, a Quantcast Top 100 website, is growing and looking for FREELANCE WRITERS (we call them “Examiners”) to share local insights, knowledge and experience. It’s a great way to cover what you love and communicate what’s happening in your city.
Are you a fan of TV? If you love watching TV, this is the perfect opportunity for you. This opportunity is for affiliate TV show data superloggers who can work from home with our emerging start-up, Moogi. As an affiliate superlogger, you will be responsible for a TV show of your preference. (You can elect to log more than one show) An affiliate TV data superlogger is similar to a wiki master, but instead specializes in generating rich informational data specific to TV shows.
Can you write for the web? Can you take jargon filled technical copy and turn it into an engaging read? Do you understand the role good editorial plays in a brand’s ‘personality’? Can you write snappy headlines? Can you get people to register, sign-up, click the ‘read more’ link? Got some samples you’d like to share? Ok then. Lets chat. We need your help in the run up to a re-launch of our business site. You’ll get all the technical content you can stand and slightly less time than you’ll need to make it interesting.
Bathhouse Experience? We are currently accepting submissions for inclusion in a non-fiction anthology covering gay bathhouse experiences both domestically and internationally. Writers are encouraged to fictionalize exact names and locations to protect the privacy of others, though stories should be based on personal experience, either direct or indirect. Writers will be compensated $50 per published piece.
Freelance Writing Jobs. At Suite101, our focus is our commitment to supporting freelance writers. Whether your goal is to publish articles, earn more income, hone your writing skills or create new career opportunities, Suite101 is here to assist you every step of the way.
Cell Phone Writer. Do You Love Gadgets, Cell Phones, and everything related to Mobile and Wireless? Mobile Maven, the Cell Phones.org blog, is looking for a full time blogger to blog about everything that’s going on in the wireless industry.
Appfrica Labs Seeks Web UI Designer. Appfrica Labs (appfrica.org) is looking to hire a part-time Web UI Designer for a number of our forthcoming web apps and a number of data visualizations. The position will pay based on experience and may turn into a full-time offering in a few months.
Flash Developer. Covenant Communications is seeking freelance flash developers for contract work. We are seeking candidates who have impeccable programming skills and a good eye for motion design and interactivity. We are seeking developers to help us create next level Flash projects for our company and clients.
Finally, Some Hot Freelance Jobs
Need help?
How to get an online job.
How to avoid online scams.
This post is a weekly feature – we post a list of online, work-from-anywhere, jobs every single week. Be sure not to miss the next list of jobs. Subscribe to Like Chapaa today, or sign up to receive free email updates.
Make Money Online Through Domaining
A lot of people desire to make money, online or elsewhere, but they think that starting your own small business requires a lot of start-up capital. This is incorrect. You can start a business with next to nothing and thrive. Domaining is a prime example of how you can do exactly that.
What is domaining? Domaining is the art of making money online through domain names. But what are domains? I assume everyone reading this has had at least some experience with how the internet works. Probably you have typed www.something.com into your browser at some point. You have? Good. That which you typed in is a domain. A domain name, quite simply, is what you type in to your browser when you want to visit a particular website.
I won’t bore you with all the hard-core tech. stuff behind how domains work but, at this point, a little more technical stuff is necessary. You are able to access every website because it is hosted on a computer, just like yours, which is set up so that the public can access its files and folders online. Such a computer is called a server. Very basically, the internet is a network of many servers and we access them through our computers, mobile phones, and other devices. Every computer or device that is on the internet (whether is is a server or device used to access the server) has a unique address on the internet. This is called an IP address. Normally, an IP address is something like: 216.239.51.99.
Therefore, to access a website you need to get your browser to go to the IP address for that website. Now, as you may have noticed, it’d be quite a task to remember even one single site’s IP address, let alone the tens of sites that one may visit in a day. The domain name system was creating particularly to solve this problem. Instead of remembering a bunch of numbers, you remember just a simple “name”. For example, it is much much easier to remember www.google.com than it is to remember 216.239.51.99.
Another key benefit of the domain name system is that domain names are transferable. If you were to move a website from one server to another, the IP address has to change – everyone who accesses that site will have to use the new IP address. But having domain names changes this. You can move your website from server to server with the domain name staying the same. What does this mean? This means that you can transfer domain names, as well as whole websites, from one server to another easily and quickly. Or, in chapaa-speak, you can sell your website or domain name very easily.
Domainers
Domainers are people who take advantage of the domain name system and use it to earn money online. And guess what? Anyone can profit from this business – your gender, age, education, race/tribe does not matter one bit! You just have to work hard and smart. Don’t get me wrong though, this is NOT a get rich quick scheme and not everyone who reads this will make even a single cent online. A very common misconception is that web money is easy to get – that’s not necessarily true. You have to work just as hard as you would elsewhere. Only difference is that you can do it from the comfort of your home and at your own pace and time.
Ready to start? Good. This article is part one of a series of articles that will fully explore making money online from domain names. The other articles in this series are:
1. Introduction
2. Domain Extensions
3. Researching Keywords
4. Domain Name Registration
5. Domain Name Parking
6. Selling Your Domain
Be sure not to miss any of these articles by subscribing to Like Chapaa (free) or signing up to receive free updates by email.
How Do You Make Money From Domain Names?
Basically, you can make money from domains by selling them, or parking them. Selling them is pretty self explanatory – you buy cheap and sell high. Many people sell domain names through established marketplaces such as sedo, flippa or Pool.com. Still others sell them privately. For example, read about how people made millions selling domains related to Michael Jackson following his death. Or have a look at the top 100 domain sales this year – you can make thousands (of US dollars).
Domain name parking is a little more complex. Simply put, it is creating a really really simple, one page website on your domain name and loading with with advertisements. When people visit those domains and click on the adverts, you earn money. Selling domain names is a quicker way of earning from domains but parking (if done right) is a more stable, hands free way of earning from domains – it is passive income (you don’t have to do anything but receive money 😀 ).
To be a good domainer, you will have to apply a healthy mix of selling and parking.
A Note On SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving chances of people finding your websites from search engines such as Google or Bing. Higher chances of people finding your website through search engines means higher traffic (number of visitors to your website) which usually means higher earnings for you. It would be impossible to be a successful domainer without learning and applying a little SEO.
Although domainers do not often get to delve deep into the SEO realm, you should be aware that domains that would naturally do well in search engines (SEO-friendly domains) are more valuable. I’ll definitely be writing more on SEO but you can get a head start by going here: SEO Book, or SEOMoz.
Now that you know the basics, it’s time to move on to the next step. Be sure not to miss any of these articles by subscribing to Like Chapaa (free) or signing up to receive free updates by email.