Archives for March 2010

Taxi Driver In India Uses Youtube to Find Customers

March 12, 2010 by Leave a Comment

So, I read this over at Alootechie and felt that I had to share it with you, dear readers.

Apparently, Divesh Mishra, an Indian taxi driver was worried that his business was going down. This was in January 2008 when the Indian travel industry was experiencing a downturn. Divesh knew he had to do something to keep his business going.

“I wanted to advertise about my services but could not do that as I did not have much funds,” Mishra said. “This was the time when I met a friend from Singapore. He was one of my customers and I discussed my problems with him. He then suggested me to upload a video on YouTube. Though I knew about internet, I had never heard about YouTube before.” (Source)

The rest, as they say, is history. Divesh’s video has been viewed 24,000+ times and he reportedly gets hundreds of emails a week – from foreigners asking about his services for when they visit India. According to Mishra it was amazing to get such response and this made him understand the power of internet. “It was a wise decision as I eventually understood that I could not have reached those consumers if I had advertised on some other media. Internet helped me to reach out to foreign customers,” he said.

Embracing the internet changes lives, and businesses. What about you, though? What are you doing to tap onto the opportunities provided by the internet?

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Small Business Tagged With:

8-4-4 Robots

March 11, 2010 by 2 Comments

Are you a product of the 8-4-4 system? Well, whether you are or you are not you have probably heard about this: “8-4-4 produces robots”. Is it true? It is said that the 8-4-4 system of education has a workload so heavy that that students go through school without getting a real education; it is said that the system produces people trained to cram and follow instructions but not actually think on their own. I’m an 8-4-4 product and so I am not sure that all this is true.

If it is true, then the 8-4-4 seems to be perfect at producing … employees. Since the dawn of the industrial age, the bulk of employment opportunities were available in “factory-type” jobs. Jobs in which the employee is a faceless ‘cog’ among many. The 8-4-4, it seems, is perfect at producing cogs. However, one may argue that all education systems everywhere produce ‘cogs’.

Why do people go to school? A while ago I heard about a pair of parents who had quite the strange reaction to the wonderful news that their daughter (who was still in college) was starting a business. The parents were furious that their daughter was starting a business instead of focusing on her school work (she was in university) and promptly put an end to her entrepreneurial ways. “Finish school, get a good job and then think about starting a business,” was the advice given.

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.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: ,

To the left to the left

March 10, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Running your own business is immensely fulfilling, but it can also be tedious. You have no weekends, no public holidays, no annual leave. You will probably never retire, and you can’t quit or walk away when you get frustrated or bored. You worry even in your sleep, because there is no boss or subordinates to blame when things go wrong. The buck starts and stops with you.

But I’ve realised that getting a breath of fresh air is easier than you’d think. All you have to do is shift positions, change direction, step to the side.

Think about your pre-business desk job. When you felt drained, all you had to do was facebook for a few minutes [only a few minutes mind you] and your mind would be alert. You’d find some long-forgotten picture tag or some silly new game, and suddenly you’d be smiling through your chores.

In running your biashara, the same rule applies. I’m not recommending you go hang out on facebook; you can end up spending a dangerous amount of time there considering there’s no annoying boss to stop you!

I simply mean you should change tasks. When you’re running your business, you generally handle everything from finances to door-to-door sales. Even if you have employees to do all this for you, you find that your eye is all over. After all, this is your baby.

And this is where the trick lies.

If you’ve been dealing with difficult clients all day, take a break and look through the books. If you’ve been filling out your tax returns and your eyes are swimming in numbers, stop for a second, pick up your cell phone, and make a courtesy call to a client.

If you’ve been shaping up the code on your website, jump to the comments page and work on your response. If you’ve been taking inventory at your warehouse, run to the computer and work on the receipts. All it takes is a simple sideways step.

I’m not very good at multi-tasking [actually, I suck at it. I can’t even talk and skate at the same time!] and I’m (usually) a very focused person, so I like to finish one task before I move on to the next. I’ve been working on an editorial assignment all day, and after 12 hours, the full stops were starting to look like commas, and the small caps are lost in the text. I thought about taking a break to read a novel, but I figured I’d never stop. I looked at the pile of laundry and the dishes in the kitchen [I’ve nothing left that’s clean!] but that didn’t hold much motivation.

So I started to think about the other assignments that are due today, and took a break to do a little writing. Four articles later, my mind was refreshed, my deadlines were met, and I could do my editorial work easy peasy.

Granted, this may not be possible with all businesses, but if you stretch your mind far enough, you can find a slightly different section of your work to take your mind of things, even if it’s as basic as shifting from counting your thousand-bob notes to stacking your ten-bob coins…

Crystal Ading’ is a professional author, editor, rock lover and mother. Her work is available through www.threeceebee.com.

Filed Under: Small Business

Outsourcing to India

March 6, 2010 by 8 Comments

I’m sure you’ve all heard about the noble cause of the Kenyan government to make Kenya an offshore outsourcing destination. Companies like Kencall are, currently, the face of these noble and valuable efforts. I have been thinking about Kenya as an outsourcing hub and I still wonder, can we really make it a reality? Yes, companies like Kencall do very well but will Kenya ever be as big as countries like India when it comes to offshore outsourcing? I think not.

Last week, I was talking to some people who are interested in starting an egg (mayai) business. They want to sell eggs on a large scale. Do you know it is cheaper to import eggs from Egypt than it is to produce them locally? And that’s just one product – pick any industry in this country and you will quickly realise that producing goods locally if often several times more expensive than it is to just import them. What does this mean for us, as a country wishing to grow our producing and manufacturing industries?

You would think that imported products are cheaper, but those that are locally manufactured are of a better quality, yes? Well, this may be true in some cases but more often than not, it is not. A trip to Nairobi’s industrial area would leave you shocked at just how much of what we consume locally is outsourced – from packaging material to the whole manufacturing process. The people who outsource would like to use Kenyan alternatives but it does not make business sense to do so. Why pay more for something of a lesser quality?

What about services? We’re good at that, at least, eh? Well, not really. Undoubtedly, we have a very educated and extremely skilled workforce. But, it is still cheaper to get things done in India, or elsewhere. Case in point: Kenyan ‘technology’ firms (software producers, web design, web development, etc etc) often require to hire additional programmers, designers, etc to handle small tasks. The local labour force is very well equipped to handle these tasks. However, the local labour force is also nearly five times more expensive than offshore (often Indian) options. Who would you choose to go with?

Now, this post is not meant to bash Kenya and Kenyans. I’m a Kenyan too. 🙂

I’m just simply wondering: how can we compete with India as an outsourcing destination when we ourselves outsource to India? As a people and as a nation we have to ask ourselves: what are we doing wrong? Why is it cheaper to import sofa sets from China (and taking shipping costs into account) than it is to make the sofa set locally? Why is Kenyan stuff so expensive? Can we ever compete with economies like India or China? I do not know the answers to these questions. Do you?

What I do know is that the following are some of the things we need to address:

  • The infrastructure in Kenya is good, but hardly good enough. We still have frequent power losses and water shortages, not to mention many other things
  • The cost of doing business in Kenya has to be brought down
  • Our mentality as a people needs to change. The average Kenyan businessman is greedy – he would much rather do one job for a profit of 50,000/- than 10 jobs for a profit of 25,000 each

What do you think?

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

Hustling Is Over. Now You Can Sell your Music Online.

March 4, 2010 by 7 Comments

How much do Kenyan artists, musicians and those wannabes who feel like celebs make from their efforts? With piracy trends on the upward, making money as an entertainer here in Kenya seems to be a hard call. Waiting to get an invitation to perform or curtain raise for others may not be the best way to make serious ‘bucks’ for the so called ‘wasanii’. We have seen them complain that Kenyans don’t appreciate local talent. We have seen them floss with the little they make –is this really a celeb`s life?. If you are reading this and you are musician or an entertainer listen carefully because what you will discover will open your eyes and do something.

Let me ask how many local artists Jua Cali, Nameless, Wahu, Redsun etc market their music, tickets and events online? How many if I ask have a website or a face book fan page.

So why do many local celebs fail to market their music online? Why do they go down the traditional route of taking it their music to the radio stations? Now it’s to live the life you deserve.

If you are an artist its almost criminal if you don’t have a website and its almost suicidal if you don’t have a list: a collection of email addresses (of your fans, leads and purchasers of your music) .Your website is where you send all of your prospective customers. Your website must contain details on how to purchase your music, both online and offline. I would also recommend having a ‘sample’ piece of music for clientele to listen to for free and to be able to download the a sample.

Ring tones have made Cellulant and mobile planet richer by the day and you too should have ring tones (as a product) of your music online. Sample this just by selling 30 ring tones a day at Kshs 30 brings in (27,000 kshs) every single month. And that’s with very little sweat because everything is automated. Once you have a website running you can get sponsors via co-branding rights. Lets say we have Jua Cali as our artist who has a website running and receives 20,000 visitors everything month. Jua Cali can get sponsors(convincing sponsors to brand the website becomes easier since we have some traffic already) and advertisers(by selling advertising spaces ) to his website .The money he gets can supplement what he makes offline. If you combine the income from ring tones, online CD sales and sponsorship revenue then Jua Cali could be living the real celeb lifestyle.

And where will he get these 20,000 visitors?

1. Via Search Engine Optimization-Marketing the website by improving its rankings
From my research, the term “Jua Cali” (I know it may mean the other Jua Cali out there) alone receives 4,000 searches a month .Other important terms like ‘Kenyan music, (searched 20,000 times a month) and ‘Swahili music’ (9,900) all point to a lucrative undertaking – note that these are buyers and business leads. See other popular search terms from the table below. Even if he gets 20% of these visitors to his website then the chances of conversion are quite high. It seems crazy to miss out on this. Doesn’t it?

2. From YouTube and other video hosting sites
This is the new way to market your music online. You Tube has simply taken the world by storm, not only from a viewers perspective but from a marketing perspective also. Similar to video clips that you see on MTV you are able to create your own video of your music and upload them on YouTube.

3. Facebook and Twitter
Facebook, twitter and the Social media represent the new way to market your music. Facebook alone has over 1/2 million Kenyans and from Alexa.com, facebook is in the top ten of Kenya’s most popular websites. As an artist who wants to make serious inroads, facebook and twitter should become the focal point of your marketing efforts. Alongside your website you will need to create a fanpage updated daily. Let the fans know about your next event, upcoming album, collabos, where to get the tickets. The point is: engage and interact with fans and you will surely never run hungry.

4. Forums
Forums are an old and popular way to marketing your music, and it still works today. Not only can you specifically market your music in the forum, you can also market your music by just posting messages about anything related to music. For example, if there is a discussion about the kind of music you sing then post your comments and put a link at the bottom of your post to your website. So not only do you market your music, you also marketing to the right group of people, music lovers!

It’s time to sell your music to the world.

To your success,
Kihato Mwangi

Filed Under: Make Money, Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With: