Archives for June 2010

Outsource Everything

June 17, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Outsource everythingOne of the things I am a huge fan of is that every Business Owner should outsource everything that they possibly can. I know I’m not breaking any ground with this idea (if you want to read a great book on the power of outsourcing, I strongly recommend Thomas Friedman’s, The World is Flat) but what I am advocating is pushing this idea to the max. I look at everything I have to do to see whether it’s something I can just outsource it so that I can free up even more of my time.

One of the first really big projects that we received was for a web application in which we were paid a HUGE amount (our largest project for us at the time). This was a project that we scoped out as taking at least 3 months of our full attention. This is back when we were just testing the entrepreneurial waters and had other full-time jobs. All of our spare efforts were focused on this first product delivery, and we delivered as planned by focusing our efforts on it fully.

That project led to another one that was 3 times as big as the initial project and took us another 6 months to complete. Now it wasn’t for 3 times the dollar amount because of a partial equity deal we were involved in. The problem was that when it was all said and done, we had put in about 9 months, and all we really had to show for it was 1 client, 1 project, and nothing else for our business from the previous 9 months.

We don’t regret that period of time. We had a lot of flexibility because of our situation, we learned a lot, and we spring-boarded from that to working on the business full-time, but there was an important lesson learned there.

I Should Have Outsourced Everything that Didn’t Need Us.

The development of the application that we spent all of our time and effort on should have been outsourced to a development company that could have completed the effort based on the requirements that we had already created. We would have made a lot less profit from those efforts but we could have spent that time (which was A LOT of hours) on developing new business, creating new products, or just being lazy!

The important distinction are those efforts for which we are required and those for which we are not. New product/service development and most marketing efforts require our involvement because it’s very tough to outsource something when it’s not even defined yet. But for something that is relatively basic like web application development, we should have outsourced the efforts.

What Else Should I Outsource?
Honestly, if it is something that would take more effort for me to write up the instructions for someone else to do, then I’ll usually do it myself. Otherwise, I delegate it off to someone else. These are just a few things that we did ourselves until just a few times when we realized that it’s much more efficient to hire someone else to do it:

  1. HTML Updates for existing websites
  2. Contact Generation for Marketing efforts
  3. Direct Mail Generation for Marketing efforts
  4. Service Delivery fulfillment for direct mail pieces in our online marketing system
  5. Follow-up calls to existing leads
  6. Sales Lead generation and adding new leads to our contact list
  7. Web Application development

The Financial Mathematics of Outsourcing
The finance behind outsourcing is pretty obvious and has been discussed many times over so I won’t spend much time on it. Simply put, if you can get someone to do something for Ksh 10,000/- and your time is worth more than that Ksh 10,000/-, it is simply an efficient form of resource allocation. Or to put it another way, it might cost you Ksh 5,000/- to outsource a very menial task to someone and during the time that you might have done that yourself, you could create a new marketing campaign that generates Kshs 50,000/- in new business.

You don’t even have to do anything else during that time. If you would just like to spend less time working in your business, the Kshs 5,000/- might be a small cost for the additional free time that you generate.

You Don’t Necessarily Need Offshore Outsourcing
A lot of people automatically associate (and confuse) “outsourcing” with “[offshoring]”. Offshoring is just one way to outsource your work. You can also outsource it to onshore companies. By far, the majority of our outsourcing work goes to local resources. It’s just been easier for us in most cases to pay a little extra money and get someone we can communicate with easily.

Regardless of where you find people or companies to outsource your work to, you need to start outsourcing everything so that you can continually focus your efforts on building your business.

Photo courtesy of MarkHillary.

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With:

Making Money Online

June 16, 2010 by 3 Comments

Written by guest contributor Jennifer Gorton from Forex Indicators.

If you haven’t thought of putting some of your paycheck into a savings account, there is no better time to start then now. Having a savings account will provide a cache of money that is stored away in case of emergencies. The money can also be used down the road as a down payment for your dream home or renovations of your current home. At the moment, the interest rates banks are offering are so low that the return you are getting by keeping your money in a savings account is minimal. Even though the return is minimal, your savings will slowly build up over time to a significant sum.

Interest rates that everyone is receiving right now might be just too low to justify keeping your money in a savings account. If you feel this way, there are other options available: there are stock brokers that will allow you to buy and sell stock online, charging little in commission. Some banks even offer their brokerage services that will allow you to make commission free trades up to a certain limit. This is a nice service to have as many investors that do not actively trade enough to warrant opening up another account with a different broker.

Having your checking, savings, and brokerage account all with one company makes transferring funds between your accounts easier. You can still keep some of your money in the savings account while adding small amounts to the brokerage account to buy stock. Buying stocks with higher dividend yields than the current savings interest rate might also appeal to you as an investor. With your money earning more, there might be an added incentive to add more of your paycheck to the brokerage account.

Opening up a foreign exchange account is another alternative to a savings account or buying stock. The foreign currency market, or Forex market as it is referred to, is the largest market available to invest or trade. With over four billion dollars changing hands each day, the currency market is a viable alternative that could produce a higher yield. If you are looking to trade to currency markets, be warned it is not as easy as letting your money sit in a savings account. The price of currencies will move quite substantially throughout the trading day and night. The Forex market is open 24 hours a day 5 days a week, so it is possible to trade or make longer term investments at a time convenient to you. The big swings in price could cause the average investor anxiety as your position might be profitable one moment and showing a loss next.

The big swings, however, are the reason that big profits can be made investing in currencies. All Forex brokers will introduce you to the latest strategies and ideas through training videos. The online retail currency brokers have these videos on their web pages for new investors to watch and learn from. These videos will tell the investor what the best Forex indicators are, and when and how to appropriately use them. There are many indicators out there that will help to predict the future price of the currency. If you utilize this, then these big swings in the price won’t give you as much anxiety because you will be able to understand at what time to close out your positions.

Currency positions can also be used by the more sophisticated investors as a hedge for another open position. Say the investor has bought shares of a company that is paying a high dividend, wants to hold the company for a few years, and then collect the quarterly payments for income. If the company is based in the United States and the market starts to go south, the stock has the potential to lose value.

The investor still wants to hold the stock for the dividend, but would like to make sure that the loss in share price is offset by a gain in another asset. If the U.S. market is going lower because of economic issues, he can then take a short position in the U.S. Dollar. If the U.S. economy weakens and the market continues to go down, the investor will profit from being short the currency of the country. He can then continue to collect his dividend payment without feeling as though his stock position is costing him in the long run. All reputable online brokers have investment advisors that are more than happy to talk to you about investment ideas. Make sure you talk to them so you can be confident that your investment decisions will make you money.

Filed Under: Make Money Tagged With: ,

Voices of Africa

June 14, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Voices of Africa is an interesting organisation. I got to learn about them at the iHub during the Nairobi Barcamp, 2010. Basically, they aim to bring ICT to the rural areas of Kenya, mainly by building rural internet Kiosks and supporting other organisations that have similar goals. Through this, they hope to give people in the rural areas the same opportunity as we urban folk have to indulge in ICT.

This video is a presentation done by Voices of Africa during Barcamp Nairobi 2010:

I like how she said that when people ask her what people in rural Kenya would do with the internet, she answers: “What do they do without it?”

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Miscellaneous Tagged With: ,

Barcamp Nairobi 2010

June 14, 2010 by 1 Comment

Did you make it? well, you missed quite the event! There was free food, free beer and other freebies but the best thing about Barcamp Nairobi 2010 was the energy. I’m a lover of all things tech so it was very exciting to see so many smart people working on so many different and interesting things. I am pretty sure that the energy that was at Barcamp is very hard to replicate elsewhere in this country. Please make sure that you make your way to the next Barcamp, for your own sake.

What is Barcamp? I’d say its an experiment in controlled chaos. There is very little order and the main “thing” is that whoever wants to present anything to the audience can go right ahead and do so. Sound fun?

Here are a few of the presented projects that I loved the most:

  • Crowd-sourced courier service – Virn‘s Kahenya presented on an interested idea where, if I got it right, they would hire university students and get them to do deliveries for them during their free time to make up an elegant and simple courier service. They claimed to be able to deliver a T shirt to Turkana in 48 hours or less, for less than Kshs 500/- Amazing, ama?
  • IPO2 – another one from Virn. Details were scant but basically it is going to be a new way to raise funds for your business. It will work a little like Kick Starter but fully local.
  • Shika – this is a group formed by some young and interesting people who come from the slums (not sure which one). Basically, they had gotten funding and studied some computer courses so after graduating and seeing how much better they were, they thought the best thing to do was to give back to the community. They formed Shika which is an organisation that aims to help more people from the slum get computer training. They especially focus on the girl child. A very good idea that they have it to create a freelance hub where interested companies with computer projects would list them there and the newly trained scholars from Shika would then get an opportunity to earn something and get your work done. I wish them success.
  • Map Kibera – Did you know that Kibera is probably the best mapped area in this country? That was all thanks to these guys. Their presentation detailed how they managed to most complete and detailed map of Kibera in less than a year, producing some of the most dense maps in the world!
  • Theft-based Activism – fixing democracy by using democracy’s own exisiting, broken, rules. This was a fascinating presentation on how civic hackers managed to cause crowd-sourced reform and help fix Britain’s democratic institutions. I wonder if we can pull the same thing of in Kenya!

Well, those were my favorites but there were many more. I’ll post some videos soon.

I know you wish you had not missed it, eh?

Filed Under: Internet Culture Tagged With:

Growing A Business Without Money

June 13, 2010 by 1 Comment

Thinking up a business idea and launching it is pretty easy, if you ask me. Running the business and growing it is a whole different story. It is where almost all businesses fail at.

I’m very much in favour of bootstrapping and I discourage everyone who wants to start a business by borrowing. However, we must realise that growing a business with no money is very hard and nearly impossible. When you do not have money to spend on your business, you end up being the chief employee – you do all the work. This leaves you little to no time for doing the more important stuff like thinking up (and implementing) new strategies, marketing, etc.

Businesses that are trying to grow with little or no money face a very steep challenge and, if not careful, may end up always being on the chase for a big break (a well paying client/deal) that will enable the business to normalise its activities. I consider such businesses to be operating more on luck than anything else. However, I think every entrepreneur worth his salt has passed through something similar.

Unless you just want to learn how to operate under extreme pressure, find a way to get some money to get your business up and running. Debt is bad, but it may be a necessary evil.

Filed Under: Small Business

Why Most People Go Wrong In Forex Trading!!!

June 11, 2010 by 5 Comments

I’m going to show you the 5 myths about Forex trading and why they are all wrong. Believing in a fake myth is a huge danger. Lots of traders learned this on the worst possible way…

When you finish reading this small report, you’ll be one step ahead them.

Myth number 1 – If I know how to trade stocks, I know how to make money in Forex:
If you have experience trading stocks and think you can simply apply your knowledge in Forex and make money, you’re going to be disappointed. The Forex market is much more complex. Firstly, the Forex market is open 24 hours a day. This may not seem a big deal but it’s a significant difference in relation to the stock market. As the Forex market is open 24 hours a day, this brings more complexity to a trader. If in the stock market you have periods of higher and lower volatility, in the Forex these differences are even higher.

Many stock traders think the Forex market is easy because it is open 24 hours a day. They think they can trade whenever they want and make their quick bucks. Truth is you can make money in Forex. But for that, you need to have a deep knowledge about this market. You have to know the best time to trade Forex in order to adjust your strategy to this market.

Besides this, the indicators that work in stocks don’t always work in Forex. The Forex market is more complex and, this way, the indicators that you use on stocks don’t work so well here.

Brokers are another huge difference between stocks and Forex. In the Forex market, due to the lack of regulation, a lot of Forex brokers don’t act in their clients’ best interest. It’s a lot more difficult to find a good Forex broker than a stock broker.

Later on this Free mini course I will tell you how to avoid Forex Brokers Scams.

Myth number 2 – Since the market is open 24 hours a day, you can make Money anytime you want:
Once again, this is not true. In order to make money, a trader needs volatility. Although this market is open 24 hours a day, in the majority of the time there isn’t enough volatility to make good trades. This is a big challenge because volatility can appear at any time of the day and the trader can’t be watching the market all the time. He has to adjust his strategy in order to trade only in high volatility periods.

Myth number 3 – There are no trading fees in Forex:
You don’t pay a commission fee when you place an order. Although, you pay the spread, which is the difference between the bid and the ask.

This way, the more you trade, the harder it will be to make money in Forex because you’ll have higher fees. In the Forex market, as in any other market, a trader must avoid the overtrading at all costs.

Myth number 4 – You need to predict what will happen to make money in Forex:
In order to make money in Forex, you need to react to what is happening. This is not the same thing as predict. A good trader simply reacts to whatever the market is telling him. He analyses charts, reads the news and all information he has at his disposal in order to react as fast as possible to market movements.

Myth number 5 – The more complicated my strategy, the best:
This is another myth that has nothing to do with reality on Forex trading. The truth is that usually the simple strategies or systems outperform the complicated ones.

This article was written by Moses, an online forex trading expert. If you would like to learn more about online forex trading, please contact Moses.

Filed Under: Make Money Tagged With:

2 Things to Think About When Making Your Website

June 10, 2010 by 1 Comment

I was look at the visitor stats for this website (www.likechapaa.com) and it surprised me that a good 20% of the people who come here do it on their mobile phones. I always knew that the mobile web was big in Kenya, but I did not think it was big enough to affect my own website so much.

IN a country like ours, making a website universally usable is an important issue and ignoring it may lead to groups of users suffering isolation, rather than enjoying the use of your website. What if Like Chapaa was not available in a mobile-friendly version? Perhaps our visitor numbers would be down 20%. That’s a big and painful loss.

Do you want your own site to be successful? Then you have to think about making it as universally accessible as possible. In Kenya, the easiest way to do this is by:

  1. Publishing a mobile version of your website – Did you know that only about 15% of the world speaks English? I am not sure how many people in Kenya do not understand English but I do know that it is not the first language of nearly everyone in this country. I think it would be a mistake to publish your website and ignore English completely, but it is equally important not to ignore other languages that your target audience may ‘identify’ with better than English. I’d love to see a Sheng or Swa version of Pewa hewa, you?
  2. Publishing your website in more than one language – The number of internet users in Kenya is growing very very fast. The vast majority of people use their mobile phones to access the internet. If you ignore mobile, you may be ignoring at least 20% of the ‘market’. I am sure this is not something that anyone wants to do willingly.

How hard is it to do this?
Fortunately, web design and development technology just keeps growing. The first step would be to find yourself a competent person or organisation to do your website. There are lots of sufficiently qualified people all around you.

The next step would be to ensure that your web developer makes your website using a robust and stable content management system (CMS). Most CMSes have a very simple way to implement a mobile version and additional languages. I recommend WordPress as my CMS of choice.

For web design and development, of course, I recommend Nickel Pro.

What do you think of mobilizing your website and publishing in more than one language?

PS
Like Chapaa is available only in English. We hope to get it translated soon.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: , ,