Archives for March 2010

Actually Getting An Online Job

March 30, 2010 by 1 Comment

Getting an online job is hard. Very hard. This is because the competition is stiff. This post is an extract of an email in which I explain how to best prepare yourself so that you can actually get an online job.

First off, please do everyone a favour and only apply for jobs that you are actually qualified to do. Do not bid for a web design project when all you know is how to use Microsoft’s Frontpage. Keep in mind that you are competing with experts in their fields. You must also be an expert, or at the very least very good at what you want to do. Whoever is going to pay you is interested in your expertise and experience.

Even if you know your stuff backwards and forwards, getting the first few gigs online will be extremely hard. This may be due to many reasons but I think it helps if you understand what potential employers are looking for:

  1. They need to hire someone who is skilled at what he does
  2. They need assurance that you are trustworthy and reliable
  3. They need the best price

The first two are the hardest to achieve. In our experience, people looking for online jobs really need to create a portfolio-like document where they will attempt to address issues #1 and #2 above. A portfolio is a job-hunting tool that you develop which gives employers a complete picture of who you are – your experience, your education, your accomplishments, your skill sets – and what you have the potential to become – much more than just a cover letter and CV/resume can provide. You can use your portfolio to showcase a point, to illustrate the depth of your skills and experience, and to show off previous work and accomplishments.

In you portfolio, you need to talk about yourself as regards the job that you are applying for and market yourself as having the skills and experience to do the job to a high standard of quality. Specifically, you need to include:

  • A list of similar jobs that you have done in the past. This is important in that the potential employer can see that you can actually do the work and that you have the experience and wisdom of having done it before.

    What do you do when you do not have a list of past jobs done? You may be asking this if you are absolutely new to the whole idea of freelancing. Hmm, well, no one said you have to give a list of jobs that you did for other people, did they? If you are a writer, why not write a few articles in your spare time and put them in your portfolio as “samples of work done”? Same thing goes for web designers, artists, etc.

  • A list of testimonials. This is a list of people who you have worked with in the past and who can vouch for you and say that you rock! How do you get testimonials? Well, always try to ask for them after every single gig. Not many people will refuse to give you. 🙂

    How can you get testimonials if you are new to freelancing? This is tough. Your best bet is to do some jobs for free for people on condition that they give you testimonials. Do not make the mistake of writing fake testimonials.

Cover Letter
You have your nice portfolio, which is like your CV/resume and you are all set, eh? Well, not quite. Never forget to send out a suitable and meaningful cover letter with each job application.

When applying for an online job, most people just write a one or two line application that generally reads, “see my attached portfolio”. This is wrong! A cover letter should always accompany the portfolio. It should be used to introduce yourself and why you are emailing. It is also a unique opportunity to showcase your unique personality or traits that could not be put in the portfolio. Always write a good cover letter.

That’s all you need, really. Put up a good portfolio and tailor it to suit each and every job that you apply for. And write a nice cover letter for each gig you apply for. Sooner or later you will get a job. Once you get the first one, you’ll find it easier to get more. Before you know it, you’ll be rich like her.

The Importance of A Website
You do not need a website to get an online job.

However, most of your competition does not have websites. Why not stand out? It will certainly make things easier on you. I always take people more seriously if they have a site. Why not put up your portfolio on the site? It can open many more doors for you…

Incidentally, Nickel Pro does offer a simple website package perfect for this use.

The thing about online job sites
Most online job sites have a “rating” feature where all the freelancers are rated according to how the job providers like them/their work. When you are starting out, you will find that some of your competition have hundreds of 10/10 ratings. Such people will easily win bids instead of you because you are not rated, being new. This makes life for newcomers very hard indeed. How do you overcome this? I do not know. Sheer diligence should work. Just keep trying, as long as you do everything right then you must succeed, at some point. Everything that you sow, you must reap!

Good luck.

PS. If you wish, you may hire us to help out in this. We’re experts!

Filed Under: Make Money, Small Business Tagged With: ,

Pain and Suffering

March 29, 2010 by 8 Comments

I used to work at one of the so called “Big Four” accounting firms. A place described as one of the best workplaces in Kenya. True to this, the pay at this company is extremely good and the work is challenging and enjoyable. I remember once I had almost a year of first hand experience at running and managing a pharmaceutical company – the experience was…breathtaking, enjoyable and helped me learn so much. However, I did not like my job very much. In fact, I barely liked it. We worked extremely long hours, for one thing. At the end of the day, I guess, the thing I disliked the most was….taking orders. I just had different ideas about my life. I did not go through school and university so that I could spend the rest of my life doing jobs that I did not like. What kind of life would that be? So I quit last year. It has been hard, very hard, and more than once I have thought of just going to beg for my old job back. But I wholeheartedly believe that quitting was the best decision I ever made.

I still struggle, I struggle a lot but I’m generally happier now. Everything I do now, I do for me. And everything I earn, I earn for me. Your boss does not care about you the way you care about yourself, you know? You may be making millions of shillings for your company but how much do you take home every month? I feel that a lot of people work their jobs because they have to. We go to work because we have to; we have to pay the bills and feed the baby; we have to survive. I do not know if I am a lost soul but, with everything in me, I feel that life should be about more than just surviving. The average human spends a lot of his or her days on earth working. Is it really meant to be that that those days should be un-enjoyable, uncomfortable, regrettable or even contemptuous? I strongly believe that this is not how it is supposed to be.

If what I am doing with Like Chapaa and other things fails and I have to go get a job like everyone else it would hurt me greatly. My self pride would be destroyed. If I had to go and beg for my old job back, my zeal for life and self belief would be forever gone. I cannot imagine such pain. One of my friends had to do something like that recently. I cannot imagine how it is like for her. 🙁

We get a lot of emails at Like Chapaa. And way too many of them are from people who are suffering. Some of the emails we get are by people who are not even asking for something – they are just writing out of frustration or just to ‘release’. People who want a better life and believe that a better life is possible yet they do not know how to achieve it. Good people. Intelligent people. Skilled and talented people. People who do not deserve to be cornered and oppressed by life. Dear readers, it hurts me to say that there is a lot of pain and suffering in this our land of Kenya. A lot of pain and suffering in this world.

We try to help all the people who email us. We really do try. In fact, this very reason is why we set up Like Chapaa and why we started Biashara 30. But there’s only so much that we can do, you know? Sometimes I wish I had a million dollars so that I could help everyone who needs help. But I am no superman. And it pains me when I get yet another email and I know that I will not be able to offer much assistance to that particular individual. I’m happy with the progress made by Like Chapaa and Biashara 30 but the sad fact is that what we have done is just a drop in the ocean of what needs to be done.

Dear readers, how do we make our efforts more effective? There is a lot of pain and suffering in this country. We want to do everything in our power to lessen this pain. It is a big huge goal, eh? What do we do to achieve it? We need your help.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

When Makmende gets a nature call, he hangs up!

March 23, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Well, well, well…things are definitely changing around here. I believe Kenya has its first internet sensation and truly viral video.

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably already heard about Makmende. Had you heard of him before last week? It all started when Just a Band released one of the most innovative Kenyan music videos ever made. What followed after is…well, Makmende took over everywhere on Twitter and Facebook. According to this, makmende.com got over 120,000/- hits in just over 60 hours thanks to brilliant SEO and online marketing by Blue Monde.

What does this mean? It means that Just A Band’s video has been watched and discussed by tens of thousands of people on Twitter and Facebook and Makmende is the buzzword at the moment. Kudos to everyone who was involved in this.

Why don’t you do something similar for your business, your products?

Watch the video, Makmende Amerudi!

You can read all about Makmende here.


The title to this post was lifted off Twitter.

Filed Under: Internet Culture Tagged With:

Improve Business Using Your Website

March 23, 2010 by 2 Comments

Most people have websites these days (and most sites are not well done, really). Most websites are used to market a company’s products and services. Almost all websites are just offering information about the company, goals, target group, products and more. Why stop there? Did you spend all that money on the site to see it lie there?

By using a website creatively, you can automate many of your tasks in no time: it can process, retrieve, and transmit data, it can keep track of billions of pieces of information on a single server.

Here are some things you can do with your website to improve business:

Build your mailing list – it is essential to get names and emails and create a database which is extremely important for online marketing campaigns.

Provide valuable information with sequential auto responder – add value to your website content and don’t limit yourself only to presenting your services or products, but attract your clients by offering valuable content directly to their e-mail. These newsletters can provide pre-programmed content and at the same time stimulate the visitors to return to your site to see the latest offers. Of course, you won’t offer them the whole details, but make them go back to your website and find out more about your offer.

Create an online payment system – it is much easier and it can save you and your clients a lot of time for and will allow you to gather e-mail addresses and track leads. Not to mention that you will have clients from all over the world! Explain all the details about online payments, making sure it won’t be a hard time for you clients.

Another important thing is to measure your marketing efforts – check how many visitors you have, how many of them buy your products and how many open your newsletter e-mails. These are valuable indicators to think about, as they can show you how efficient your business is. Make sure that your shopping cart includes trackers, which are very helpful because they automatically calculate your click-throughs and conversion statistics.

The sad truth is that after paying hefty amounts for a website, most people just sit back and let it sit there. Why did you pay so much for it in the first place?

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With:

What If?

March 22, 2010 by Leave a Comment

I spent the weekend with a lively group of people and we talked a lot about the state of e-commerce in Kenya (more on this in a later article). Things seem to be really really picking up – for example, Nickel Pro has built more online shops this year than the whole of 2009 (and we’re only in March). However, as fast as things seem they are moving, great huge stumbling blocks remain. There is still no reliable, convenient way to process online payments in Kenya. 🙁

One thing that we discussed at length was the state of old media (particularly newspaper companies) in Kenya. In more developed countries, newspaper industries are dying because of the Internet. Many of these companies have good and useful websites but no one has found out how to efficiently make money off news sites. This means that the newspaper companies are facing a declines in sales because less people are buying the physical newspapers – preferring to read news online yet the online news is not monetized efficiently. What a predicament, eh? The news business is in trouble!

What about Kenya, though? Well, I think that this situation will take time to be apparent in Kenya. The impact of the Internet on newspaper sales is probably minimal. But for how long? Newspaper companies should be wary – especially with the fast uptake of of the mobile web in Kenya. It won’t be long before people, en masse, start consuming news primarily through their mobile devices and PCs.

Can we do anything to speed this up?

What if you poached the leading writers from all our major newspapers? You know, akina Mutahi Ngunyi, Sunny Bindra, Chris Hart…even Oyunga Pala. Take twenty of the best and most well known writers in the country – writers with fans who never miss reading them. Pay them handsomely to work exclusively for you and set up a website that is well designed and works very well on the computer and on mobile devises. Now, everyone who wants to read their favorite writer has to come to you. Hopefully, the newspapers will not find replacements quickly enough.

The question is…..will you succeed in shaking up the industry? Will the new business make you lots of money? How will the public take it? What do you think of this idea?

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

Brainwashed!

March 19, 2010 by 9 Comments

A while back, I wrote about 8-4-4 robots. Specifically, I wrote this:

Do we go to school so that we can be able to get a job? Am I missing something here? Don’t we all go to school so that when we come of age we are able to build a good life for ourselves and become valuable citizens? School is important, very important. But not as important as most people think it is. The important thing is to learn all that you can and how to use it to achieve your goals and/or make a good life for yourself. As it happens, ’schooling’ is not the same as ‘education’. As Mark Twain once said, don’t let schooling interfere with your education.

I’ve been thinking about this subject ever since. Do you remember learning to factor quadrilateral equations in high school? x2 -32x +12? Or calculus? Why were you taught this? Have you ever applied it in your life or work? If you are not a scientist or engineer well, you probably forgot about all that…. But why did they spend hours drilling you on such clearly useless content? Why does school teach things that most people never use? What is the purpose of school?

I believe that, as it is right now, education systems are designed to produce employees. I remember being given assignments to write English compositions while in Form 3. The teachers did not like it if you did not write in accordance with certain moulds or styles – you did not have the freedom to write what you imagined. Why is this? At school, you were being trained to be a compliant ‘cog’, someone who could mindlessly follow instructions as opposed to seeking out innovation and surprise.

Seth Godin puts it best, “I love math. I love the idea of working with numbers, of inventing cool ideas that click. But memorizing factors of 32? It’s clearly an effort to teach you to be taught, to instruct you in compliance, to follow the curriculum.”

That’s an excerpt from Seth Godin’s book, Brainwashed : Seven Ways to Re-invent Yourself.

Years ago, when you were about four years old, the system set out to persuade you of something that isn’t true.

Not just persuade, but drill, practice, reinforce, and yes, brainwash.

The mission: to teach you that you’re average. That compliant work is the best way to a reliable living. That creating average stuff for average people, again and again, is a safe and easy way to get what you want.

Step out of line and the system would nudge (or push) you back to the center. Show signs of real creativity, originality or even genius, and well-meaning parents, teachers and authority figures would eagerly line up to get you back in line.

Our culture needed compliant workers, people who would contribute without complaint, and we set out to create as many of them as we could.

And so generations of students turned into generations of cogs, factory workers in search of a sinecure. We were brainwashed into fitting in, and then discovered that the economy wanted people who stood out instead.

When exactly were we brainwashed into believing that the best way to earn a living is to have a job?

Download the book for free and learn how you can liberate yourself: [download id=”28″]

Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. Godin is author of multiple books that have been bestsellers around the world and changed the way people think about marketing, change and work. His newest book is Linchpin.

What did you think of the book?

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

Email Marketing

March 15, 2010 by 6 Comments

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

  • sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
  • sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,

(Source: Wikipedia)

Email Marketing is often ranked second only to search marketing when it comes to online marketing. If you are doing online marketing in any capacity then you need to incorporate email marketing.

This is all well and good but, sadly, in my experience I have not come across many Kenyan businesses that understand how to do email marketing the right way. Indeed many “email marketers” in Kenya are nothing more than spammers. Just last week I had a gentleman ask me, “How do you get emails of people working in large corporates?” The plan was to get those emails and then “market to them”. This is nothing but spamming.

To spam is to send unsolicited messages. They key concept of email marketing is to get permission to send emails to your audience. Spamming is wrong and illegal in some countries.

So, how do you do email marketing properly? I like to think of it as a three-step continuous process:

  1. It all begins by finding suitable email marketing software. This is software that you can use to manage your subscribers’ list(s) and which enables you to send emails on a large scale. You cannot use akina Gmail to send to more than a certain number of people at the same time. I recommend MailChimp. Websoft looks like a nice Kenyan alternative.
  2. Devise a strategy through which you will get people to give you their permission to send them emails. The most common and current way of doing this is to offer people something for free – but to get it, they need to give you their email address. Numerous internet marketers give away something like a free ebook, white paper, or report.
  3. Develop compelling, interesting and/or useful content and send it out to your subscribers. Make sure you do this very well: if need be hire a professional to do the email layout for you. Do not forget to include a call to action in your email.

As long as you keep on sending out wonderfully interesting/useful emails and keep on increasing your email subscribers, you will get results. It will not be long before you see your sales increase. Email marketing is powerful.

An emerging Kenyan variation to the above is sending your emails to the massively popular Kenyan Groups on Yahoo or Google such as Young Professionals. These groups communicate primarily by email and often include thousands of members. It is an easy way to reach a large number of people. However, some of these groups do charge for advertisements.

Whatever you do, do not spam. I keep on getting emails from sijui akina Mlalahoi or Baraza la Taifa and I have no idea how I got onto their lists. I don’t have to tell you what I think of such groups and the people behind them.

That’s it, you are ready to go and start email marketing. If you need any help, you can hire Like Chapaa to handle things for you.

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: