Archives for July 2010

Making Money Online Successfully

July 30, 2010 by 1 Comment

So a while back we wrote about how it is better to earn offline than it is to earn online. Part of the reason why we wrote that article is that many people are trying to build revenue around models that will either:

  1. Not be around in 5 years because the powers that be (ie: Google) have changed their operations to make the strategy unprofitable
  2. Replaced by another method or competitor with a new perspective or method to attract customers.

How can we define online success?

How Much Money are You Making Tomorrow?
I think there has to be a certain measurable criteria as to what makes someone successful online and that can be as simple as the ability to make Kshs 5,000 per day, Kshs 10,000 per day, working full-time independently, etc. that a lot of people like to use.

However, I think there are less measurable means to determine online sucess as well. If I were buying a business, I’m not buying the business on how much money it made today, I’m buying it based on how much I think it will make in the future. Because of that, there are some criteria that I would like to add to what I consider online success:

  1. Is the business defensible? Is your business model based on arbitrage of PPC ads or is it based on a steady amount of traffic from a variety of sources (PPC, SEO, direct referrals, repeat visitors, etc).
  2. Are you too reliant on 1 supplier, customer, or web site? Supply chain issues are a reality of any business. Now it’s much more of an issue in a manufacturing or product based business but it’s a reality in the online world. If you have just one web site or one source of income, then your success is at risk. If you have just one product or one major client, an innovative competitor could very quickly and easily sink your business.
  3. Is the Product commoditized? This is one of the biggest mistakes that many people make who are trying to make money online. The web sites that they are offering are, in essence, a commodity. There are thousands of other people or web sites out there who offer the same product (or could easily offer the same product). And the problem with a commodity business is that lowest-price wins. And those hyper-efficient markets are very difficult to win in.

My Definition of Online Success
A. If you are looking for some extra disposable income, Kshs 5,000 per day is a great goal to have and I would consider that a huge success.

B. If instead of just disposable income you want to work for yourself, things are a little bit different – instead of considering 5,000 a day a success, we should look at a number that permits you to live comfortably. If that is 30,000 a month, and you are earning that regularly, that’s awesome. Now if you make 50,000 one month and nothing for 3 more months, that’s not really successul.

C. If you are building a business, that’s much tougher to define. To have a successful business, you must have systems and processes, and if you have systems and processes, then you can have employees. So I think that when you get to a point where can support yourself with company profit and you have an employee on board, then I think you are moving in the right direction.

Successful Online Entrepreneurs
There are a lot of people making money online who make more per month that I do and most people would consider them to be successful. These are often people that are in the top 1% of their market. The diffference between them and the rest of the online entrepreneurs is that they have differentiated themselves.

If they run a successful blog, their differentiation is the personality behind it. If the content was written by a bunch of no-names without the personality, I doubt they would be as successful. And some of the other successful entrepreneurs have built up a portfolio of well-performing sites. They have created processes and eliminated the dependence on any one web site/asset.

Ideas from the Masters
I am a big fan of the ideas of Warren Buffett because I think they can be applied universally. Warren Buffett doesn’t follow the stock market on a daily basis and he doesn’t follow quarterly earnings reports. He’s not even a big fan of annual reports – he doesn’t think businesses should be judged based on the amount of time it takes the Earth to circle the Sun. He believes in looking at businesses over a much longer term.

I think that people looking to make money online need to look more at where they’ll be in 5 years, and not just based on the projects they would like to be working on at that point. If they have a collection of a variety of web sites with increasing traffic from a variety of sources, which have a differentiated advantage, I think they may be much more successful than someone who is making more money right now but with no prospects of growth.

So if you have a software product that you are selling online that only a few people that have discovered so far but they love it…Or you have a community web site that is very small right now but has a strong, but growing base….Or you have a collection of websites with unique content or a unique, driving idea behind them

Then I think you are well on your way to being succesul. Just make sure you have implemented the processes to really grow it successfully.

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Small Business

Hustling Online Just Became A Little Easier

July 28, 2010 by 2 Comments

DukaPressSo tuseme you want “in” on this Internet thing. You’ve heard people make money online, and you want your share. Of course the first thing you should do is get yourself onto a computer and head over to this blog and read up on all the things you can do to make money online.

There are hundreds of things you can do to make money online. One of the easiest, most fulfilling and most intuitive ways of doing so it to sell something online. This is something that most people already understand – you’ve probably sold dozens of things in the offline world. Selling those same things (or others) online may be a new experience but it certainly is something you already understand.

What do you need to do to start making money online in Kenya by selling stuff online? I’d argue that you FIRST need to think hard about your business. Selling online is no different from selling anywhere else. Your business plan must make sense if you are to succeed. You must think realistically and sensibly about what you want to sell, where you will find it, how much you will sell for, how you will deliver it to customers and how you will market and advertise your new shop. This is the hard part.

Next, you should think about technical issues – i.e. find a way to set up an online shop. E-commerce technology has existed for years and there are lots and lots of options here. A sad note is that in Kenya, even very simple online shops will usually cost you at least Kshs 50,000/-. This is a bit high, of course, but it is justifiable given the complexities involved.

Of course this was true only up to last week. Last week DukaPress was launched. What is DukaPress? It is a tool that lets you start your own simple online shop in less than 15 minutes. Have you ever tried to get a blog over at WordPress.com? That’s how easy it is to get a DukaPress shop up and running.

Why DukaPress?
There are many other options to DukaPress (akina Magento, osCommerce, CubeCart, etc etc), so what makes DukaPress worth it? In my opinion, DukaPress is probably the simplest way to get a fully functional online duka. Take Magento, for example, it has a fantastic feature-list but actually setting up and running a Magento shop is a nightmare that is too much to bear for the average person.

How Easy Is DukaPress?
Have a look at this online shop. That shop is powered by DukaPress. It was built in ten minutes! It is a fully featured shop and can accept payments via: AlertPay, Paypal, MPESA, yuCash, and ZAP among others. If you want to build the same exact shop in even less time, you can do so!

All you need to do is:

How easy is that? Should take you a few minutes in total if everything is ready! If you’re stuck, we’re here to help.

DukaPress is and always will be free to use, and it is from Kenya.

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Small Business Tagged With:

Maybe This Aint For You

July 26, 2010 by Leave a Comment

I hate to say it but you’re probably not smart enough to come up with a completely new idea. You don’t have the intelligence or creativity to come up with the Next Big Idea.

Newton thought up the Law of gravity; the founders of Google came up with a breakthrough by inventing the concept of PageRank to rank websites. Do you think you can replicate these feats, much less come up with one from scratch?

The reality is that 99.99% of aspiring entrepreneurs don’t have the mental chops to come up with some totally original idea. These are all smart people but chances are that even if you do happen to come up with a great idea, it will either have been done already or it hasn’t been done for a reason.

The Good News
Before you abandon all hope and embrace your life as an employee, there is some good news. There are millions of entrepreneurs in this world who had just as much originality and creativity as you do. They didn’t come up with the Next Big Thing and they’re wildly successful. What they all have in common is that they are good marketers.

Yes, that evil word – marketer. But the fact is that most successful entrepreneurs are successful because they are good at selling their business. They didn’t come up with some earth-shattering idea that their competitors couldn’t match. They just did a better job at marketing their own business.

Car Dealers Haven’t Invented Anything Lately
Car Dealers are interesting because they are basically selling a commodity product. If you don’t want to buy a car from a particular dealer, you can go to the dealer down the street that sells a car in the same class for a similar price. And if you want the exact same car, go to another dealer 20 miles a way who sells the exact same model. There is almost no room to differentiate their “product” from their competitors’.

But I’m sure that we’ve all seen or know the local car dealer that has 5 dealerships, 3 houses, and is absolutely loaded. Somehow they found a way to turn their commodity product into a goldmine for themselves. Why?

They are good marketers.

Maybe everyone knows their name from annoying billboard ads or painful TV ads. However they know them, the fact is that they do. Now I’m sure that these car dealers also run a well operated business. You can’t afford to bring potential customers in and give them bad service. They still need to be good business operators. But the fact is that their marketing skills got the name of the dealership out there and people in the door.

Do You Know How to Market?
So don’t spend all your time trying to think of the Next Big Thing. It’s a waste of your time. And honestly, you might come up with a great idea but if you don’t know how to sell it, it’s not going to be successful.

You’re may not be smart enough to come up with new ideas. Spend your time learning how to sell and market and you can sell anything. It could be the most boring product – it doesn’t matter. If car dealers can do it, you can too.

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With:

Think DukaPress

July 23, 2010 by Leave a Comment

DukaPress AvatarWell, it is finally here! We just released DukaPress and it is available for download. If you’re interested, you better hurry and get it because we’ve already had 857 pageviews on the DukaPress site (in about 6 hours). Of course if you don’t hurry you’ll still be able to download it.

Download it here: DukaPress

What is DukaPress?
I think this question is best answered with an example. Please have a look at this online shop. That is a fully functional online shop ready to start selling. It can process payments made by credit card, bank transfer, cash AND all three of Kenya’s mobile payment gateways (MPESA, ZAP, and yuCash). And you know what? We set the shop up in 15 minutes at the cost of 0 (zero) shillings.

Do you want your own online shop through which you can sell online and accept MPESA and credit cards at the steep price of zero bob? Then you want DukaPress.

DukaPress is made in Kenya, with love.

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With:

How to use Paypal in Kenya – Part 1

July 23, 2010 by 113 Comments

Update: PayPal now works in Kenya! You can also now withdraw from PayPal through Babawatoto or LibertyReserve.


I’ve always been sceptical about online trading. I’m slightly spooked by the idea of giving my bank account and details to some random guy behind some computer somewhere. I blame it on The Net, a  movie from the early 90s. It starred Sandra Bullock [LOVE her] and it was awesome, but very, very scary. Of course it was based on those old DOS computers with the green text and the black screens, but it’s still pretty scary.

Plus, of course, I don’t own a credit card.

But as I build my business, I find that I do more work online. Most of my clients prefer Paypal, because it’s safe and reliable, even though they charge a small commission on transactions. I got myself a Paypal account some years ago using my mother’s credit card [thanks mum!] and I’ve been using it to buy stuff related to my business.

Recently, I got a client who insisted I open a Paypal account in my own name, because it was easier for him to pay me that way. And no, I didn’t tell him to ask my mother. I opened the account, but I couldn’t receive money through it, because the service isn’t offered in Kenya. Paypal.ke lets me buy, not sell.

I tried to attach my debit card onto the account, and as part of the verification process, the Paypal people charged $2 to my bank. It’s a safety measure to prove that it’s my card. The transaction would appear on my card statement with a secret four-digit code. I would take the code and enter it into my Paypal account to prove the card was mine. The $2 would then be refunded.

Oddly, when my statement came, what I got was a six-digit code, and when I tried to enter it into my Paypal, the card was blocked. I first tried to type in all six figures, but of course, it only took the first four, and pulled an ‘access denied’. I then tried the last four digits with the same result, and by the time I tried a random combination, I could almost hear the buzzers ringing and the metal gate clanging shut. After that incident, any time I try to use the card to pay for anything, even if it’s on a totally separate site, Paypal politely refuses.

Kelvin suggested I try Moneybookers, and it looked promising. I went through the same process, opened an account, attached my debit card, allowed them to charge my account for verification purposes. This time, the process was slightly different. Moneybookers was to charge my account with between $1 and $3. I would check my card statement, find out the exact amount, and fill in that information to prove myself. Unfortunately, Moneybookers can’t refund.

The trouble is … the amount on my statement was in Kenya Shillings. And with the exchange rate moving constantly, I couldn’t verify the amount to specific cents. Le sigh.

An associate told me about a system KCB has with Paypal, so I checked it out. Apparently, KCB has a debit card specifically for use online! How cool is that?

What happens is you open a prepaid card account with KCB. You don’t have to be a member – I personally bank with Barclays and NBK, and I was worried about joining a third bank. So I was relieved to hear I didn’t need a regular KCB account.

The card account takes Ksh 1000 to open, and all you need is a copy of your ID and a passport photo. The guys have a digital camera on the ready, just in case.

As far as I know, the account has no minimum balance and no service levies. You can receive money online once you attach the KCB card to your Paypal account, and you can withdraw the funds from any ATM at a charge of Ksh 20. You can top up the card at any KCB branch; you simply deposit the money at the counter using the 16 digit number on your card. It’s kind of like M-Pesa, with shorter banking hours.

Of course, you still need to have a Paypal account in the first place. You can get one at www.paypal.com, which redirects you to www.paypal.com/ke. It’s a pretty straightforward process, and I’ll be writing more on how succecsful the KCB card actually is. Specifically, I’m curious to see about verification.

I opened my card account a few days ago and haven’t received or used it yet, but it seems like a good deal. I don’t know if you can use it with agents other than Paypal, but you probably won’t need to; Paypal is already the Safaricom of the online world. Hopefully, its service is better.

The second step in working online [where Step 1 is deciding to work online] is probably getting a KCB-Paypal debit card. How else will you get paid?

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

Filed Under: Internet Culture Tagged With:

Ship Early, Ship Often

July 18, 2010 by 1 Comment

You know what you do so that your projects are always on time and within your budget? When you run out of time, or out of money, you ship it. What does this mean? It means you present it as it is instead of wasting time making it ‘perfect’.

What does this mean (again)? Action speaks louder. Don’t just think about it, or even just talk about it. Do it!

A video worth watching, yes?

Filed Under: Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With:

Less is More

July 17, 2010 by Leave a Comment

I find myself watching some strange reality shows at times and last week I was watching Kitchen Nightmares. It’s hosted by that British chef who’s always swearing at people in his “game show”. The premise of this show is that he goes into a restaurant that is failing for some reason and some drastic changes, brings it back to life.

Don’t Give Customers What They Want
In the show that I was watching last week, he visited an Indian restaurant that was bleeding money. The biggest problem he found in the restaurant is that they gave their patrons too many options. The customers were able to customize the sauce that they wanted. The owner came from a sales background so he had a noble strategy – he just wanted to give the customers what they wanted. Great intentions but bad results.

The problem with this strategy is that everything suffered in the business because their was no consistency:

  • The customers thought they knew what they wanted but the fact was that the experts (the chefs) could put together a better combination of flavors that the customers would enjoy
  • The orders would not come out in a timely matter because there were so many different combinations and the chefs could not operationalize the preparation
  • The waiters could not stand behind and recommend different dishes because they were all just slight variations of each other and could not be differentiated from each other in blind taste tests
  • The customers were left paralyzed with too many choices and felt unsatisfied that they weren’t getting what they want (having too many options is a classic in limiting sales because of “paralysis by over-analysis“)

Less is More
The lesson in this when running your business is that you should limit the options for your clients. Too often, we try to satisfy the wants and desires of our clients and what we end up giving to them is something that they don’t really want. They may think they want it when they “order” it but they leave our “restaurant” unhappy with the whole experience.

Even worse than a restaurant, we get clients who just get up and leave. If we don’t present a clear offer with a limited number of options, they’re less likely to become our clients.

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: ,