Helping you pay the bills
There’s a great article on Inc.com written by Jason Fried, co-founder of 37 Signals. He gives valuable insights on how to make money and breaks it down into 6 easy steps:
Go read the article here: How to Make Money in 6 Easy Steps
When we set up this website, one of our primary goals was to teach people what we knew about making money online. This continues to be our goal – we would love to teach as many of our fellow Kenyans as possible. Over the years (its now been tow years!), by and large, we have achieved this goal. We’ve helped grow many business and shared our thoughts and ideas with even more.
However, we feel that even this is not enough. We have not been able to adequately address the needs of a person who is very new to the whole idea of earning online. What is the easiest way to start? How do you start? What do you do? Where do you go? We would love to answer these questions for everyone. we would love even more to take every one of these people by the hand and show them what to do, and how.
Alas, things have changed since the time when we started this website. We now get mountains of email daily and it is just too much work to be able to address everyone individually. And as you are aware, our previous efforts largely failed. Yes, I am talking about Biashara 30.
But we have a plan!
We have been secretly developing a resource – you may even call it an online course – that is targeted at absolute beginners. The aim of this resource would be to act as something of guide that will teach what we feel is the easiest and fastest way to make money online if you are a beginner. Sounds interesting? Here is what it will cover:
First, I must say that we believe the easiest and fastest way for absolute beginners to make a significant amount of money online is to get an “online job”. This is what will be the focal point of the guide, specifically:
Why did we chose for this guide to be about getting an online job? If you go any site that deals with only jobs – freelancer.com, or guru.com, or elance.com, or anything else – then you will find that these sites are vibrant markets and that people make significant amounts of money through them. We believe that when you are getting started, making money through such sites is the easiest way that you can go. It also opens your eyes to see what can be done online and you will be able to later transition to doing something else.
What do you think? Interested? Subscribe to Like Chapaa today, or sign up to receive free email updates so that you can up to date on developments regarding this project.
I think this is a great idea, something that surely came from a smart business mind – topless meetings. What better way to be more productive and have meetings less – ban laptops. What did you think I meant?
Nothing grates me more than long, pointless meetings. I almost avoid them to a fault. Too often, they are someone’s forum to get their own work done and it doesn’t benefit me to help them with their work. So I do everything I can to keep meetings short.
If you’re working and meeting in a physical location, I strongly suggest this rule. It’ll guarantee people get to the point quickly and time isn’t wasted.
Japanese-Style Meetings
When I was still employed (a.k.a working for someone else and not me), there was one guy I used to work with who scheduled Japanese-style meetings. The meetings were held while everyone stood (usually in some common area). The idea was that people wouldn’t waste time if they were standing around. It worked great as we got a ton done in about 10 minutes. I don’t know if this is the real name for this type of meeting but I strongly suggest this type of meeting as well. Force those long-talkers to cut it short.
For those who don’t know, DukaPress is a freely available piece of software that you, or anyone can use to set up an online shop easily and quickly.
screenshot of a DukaPress shop
So, have you ever wanted to have an online shop? As of this moment, DukaPress has been downloaded 8,972 times and here is a list of some of the most beautiful sites made using DukaPress. All those people cannot be wrong, can they?
Get your own shop today: www.dukapress.org
DukaPress is proudly Kenyan!
The WooThemes story is an incredible story right from here in Africa! This is the story of how a young South African built an online business that makes USD 2 million plus a year. You do not need to be in the USA or Europe and get massive amounts of funding to build a wildly successful online business. You just need to believe in yourself, and go do it!
Click here to go see the video interview with WooThemes co-founder that details how, exactly, they built their online business.
Love.Me – this is an online flower shop. The site’s creators must be commended for a job well done. The design is nice, clean and crisp and the buying process is simple and understandable. Kudos for a job well done!
Sandstorm Kenya – the website for Sandstorm Kenya, which makes hand crafted items. We find the website and online shop to be extremely well designed. Kudos!
50-50
Ask a Doc – this is an interesting site that promises answers to all your medical questions. The answers are provided by real doctors. I have not actually received a question to my answer yet (something for them to work on), but the site seems like it can go places. Good job.
UrbanSlice – is a website that is to provide a personal shopping service i.e. you can use UrbanSlice to order from your favourite stores and have them delivered to you, no hassle. The problem is that, currently, it looks like just another online shop and the whole idea of “personal shopping service” seems to be lost. Let’s hope that someone is working on this. otherwise, the site looks good.
State House Girls – the website of State House Girls’ high school. While the web design could certainly do with a little sprucing up – mainly balancing out the page elements and making it look neater – I think the site is pretty good. Someone is certainly working hard to make this site a success. However, perhaps they have overdone it with the ads on the side (I would think that the main purpose of such a site is not to sell ads) and the links for Free and Bulk SMS on the main menu (would high school students really be interested in these?).
Cute & Cuddly an online shop for baby clothing. I like the idea, and the design. However, a few improvements need to be made: 1) the shopping and checking out process needs to be made more intuitive; and 2) for users with screen resoltions of 1024 (width) and below, the site design seems broken.
Much thanks to Kunule of KenyanLogic who kindly informed us that oDesk users can now withdraw their earnings directly into a Kenyan bank account for a fee of just $3.99!
Click here to read more about this.
Things seem to be slowly getting better, eh?