The internet is a curious thing. Not only can your website make some great money for you while you run it, it can also make money when you decide to sell. Just like physical properties, web properties can fetch quite a bit of cash during the resale process, and we’d be happy to take a look at yours to see if it’s something that may be of interest to us.

Wondering what people look for when they go to buy a site like yours that’s for sale? There are several factors. One of the first major factors we consider is the size of your site. A larger site tends to be quite a bit more valuable than a one paged placeholder, but that’s not always the case. Another major factor we take a look at is your niche. Sure, there are thousands of websites that sell the same affiliate product, but very few of them sell insects for human consumption. The more unique and popular your niche, the more valuable your site is. The age of the site also factors into the overall price. The older the site, the more established it is, and that can prove a better deal for you. In fact, many companies won’t buy sites that are less than a year old. Your traffic numbers also factor into the price you’ll get for your site. Obviously with more visitors comes more profit, and that can make your site a bit more valuable to buyers like us. Finally, the nature of your site may make it more valuable. Business sites are, naturally, more profitable than informational sites, but there are always a few exceptions to that rule.

While the type of sites we buy vary extensively, the idea I want to leave you with is that we buy quality websites, and we’re looking to add to our list right now. If you’re making any money from your site or you have some traffic numbers, please let us know. We’re not looking for absolute junk here, we’d like a respectable business or information-based site, but if you need cash fast, we’re here to help you out. Take a moment to contact us today for an evaluation of your site. We’ve bought many sites in the past, so if you’re looking for a level of professionalism and experience, you can rest assured that you’ll get it with us. Ready to get started? Drop us an e-mail today.

chapaa[at]likechapaa.com

Interesting in investing in websites? If you want to get into this but have no idea how to search for, value, evaluate and manage a website, give us a call. We’ll work something out.

Perhaps as a shock, #ThingsStrongerThanTheKenyaShilling is currently trending GLOBALLY on Twitter!!!

A trending topic is a word, phrase or topic that is posted (tweeted) multiple times on the social networking and microblogging service Twitter.

I think this points to Kenya being an important part of the Internet, ama aje? Sure, the trending topic is for the wrong reasons but still nice to see. Here are a few interesting tweets:

http://twitter.com/#!/reutersJeremyG/status/118618445049892864

http://twitter.com/#!/KingNurk/status/118642216641110016

http://twitter.com/#!/massakku/status/118642061833547777

http://twitter.com/#!/mailumailu/status/118641906593972224

Here’s a very interesting presentation on MedAfrica which a very ambitious Kenyan company seeking to solve very real and appropriate healthcare related problems.

They look pretty good, don’t they?

This is a follow-up to the recent article on “E-sports“.

Kalongo.com is organising a small StarCraft 2 tournament, the Safari Cup. In their own words:

“We’re very pleased to announce that we shall be hosting our very first StarCraft 2 tournament, the Safari Cup.

We intend for this to be a fun event whose primary goal is to bring Kenyan StarCraft 2 players together in competitive play. Let us not let Kenya be left out of the StarCraft frenzy that is currently sweeping the world – ama aje? Sign up and lets have some fun while gaining some skill & experience.”

So, well, go ahead and sign up.

Video games have come a long way in the last 15 years. No longer is it a pastime of the those locked away in their bedrooms. Now there is a whole world of video gamers playing with friends, and play against others.

Electronic sports, “e-sports“, is used as a general term to describe the play of video games competitively. Nowadays, professional video gaming is quickly becoming a legitimate sport. A few years ago, poker took the limelight, blurring the line between professional gaming and non-athletic sports. Now, Major League Gaming and dozens of other leagues have popped up around competitive games like StarCraft and Halo: Reach.

In the nation of South Korea, StarCraft is literally a national sport and is equally as popular (if not more) as sports like basketball or baseball. StarCraft 2, in particular is currently leading a resurgence of e-sports which tournaments organised online on a daily basis. In fact, the major tournaments attract prizes of up to $50,000 for the winner. That’s Ksh 4.75 MILLION.

Opportunity for our youth
Locally, e-sports is nowhere near the level it is at in more developed countries but the good thing is that there does exist a strong local gaming community and there are efforts to make gaming popular in Kenya led by NexGen and, to a lesser degree Kalongo. This is a good thing and such efforts need to be encouraged for three reasons (among others):

• Competitive gaming can actually easily become a legitimate source of income for at least some of our country’s unemployed youth. if people are winning Kshs 4.75 million just for playing a game, why can’t Kenyans get in on some of that?
• People who are busy get up to less mischief. Again, this helps tackle our country’s problem of having a large number of unemployed, essentially idle, young people.
• It is always good to see Kenyans out there conquering the world and making our country proud!

A couple of years ago, some Kenyan gamers qualified for the WCG (which is like the world cup of competitive gaming). The tournament was to be held in China. Unfortunately, our gamers did not have the funds to travel to China so they approached the government of Kenya through the ministry of sports. Sadly, they were not welcome – “esports” was not recognised as a legitimate sports. This needs to change, fast, lest the great and proud nation of Kenya be left behind.

Opportunity for businesses
Over the last year or so, the number of Kenyan businesses seeking to market themselves online has grown in leaps and bounds. It seems any business that is “serious” needs to be on Facebook or Twitter and it is not uncommon for the big boys to spend lavishly on Google Adwords.

To all the “serious” businesses out there: e-sports represents a massive opportunity to market yourselves online!!

As stated above, e-sports is currently becoming very popular. Very large professional tournaments are beign set up and millions of people are already avid fans of various players and teams. At the very roots of the current resurgence in esports is the Internet. Unlike in the past, e-sports events can now be transmitted “live” to millions worlwide and sites like Youtube make it possible for anyone to be a fan. In fact, popular matches on Youtube are regularly watched by hundreds of thousands of people (see this guy with over 500,000 followers).

Imagine this: what if a nice and lovely Kenyan company sponsored a Kenyan player or Kenyan gaming event on condition that it be publicized massively online? As long as the said Kenyan company chose to work with the right people, this could be a very cost-effective way to reach hundreds of thousands of people online. The best thing is that this would probably be very affordable at the moment due to the idea being so new.

In my mind, businesses in the tourism industry especially need to embrace this unique opportunity as soon as possible. What cheaper way would a tourism firm have of reaching 100,000 potential tourists?

E-sports is here, and it is serious business!

A couple of days ago I was at my local – by local I mean not one of those fancy places in Westlands – barber shop when suddenly two policeman came in and arrested one of the barbers. The crime? Cyber crime (their words). The barber shop offers phone charging services and , apparently, this one barber had figured out how to get into people’s phones when they were charging. He then accessed their Safaricom Bonga points and sent them to himself.

Now, I know the guy pretty well. He hasn’t been to any college or university …. if a guy such as him is into cyber crime, then what of those educated to the highest levels of computer science?

Just recently, I cam across this. Yes. Someone somehow accessed Classic FM’s text messages system and leaked some (very sensitive) text messages to the public. If you have ever sent a text message to Classic FM then you better check if your message has been ‘leaked’. Otherwise you may be surprised to find that your husband figured out what you have been telling Classic about him.

The state of cyber security in Kenya is simply woeful. It seems everyone wants to get online, build fancy websites and all sorts of ‘apps’ but no one wants to invest in basic security. Take the case of the screenshot above which is from www.bettersms.net – they got violated publicly and embarrassed. Just recently, Idd Salim talked about the shockingly lacking security in our local online banking sites.

What’s all this leading to? If it hasn’t happened yet, someone will end up losing a lot of money that will affect a lot of people. Don’t let that be you, sawa?